Seasonal geekery

For pure, unfettered geekiness Tokyo is the place to spend the festive season. Oh sure, Akihabara is great for shopping, but if you like your tech with an exclusive edge, where else, I ask you, could you pick up the phone to the world's biggest consumer electronics company, demand that they break off from their festive preparations to show you their most exciting new toys and be told "would this afternoon suit?"

Cut to the strange and remote reclaimed island (read massive earthquake hazzard) of Odaiba and the Panasonic Technology Centre. The vast building is arranged somewhat like those laboratories where they study infectious diseases, and my guide was ready to take me to the technological equivalent of the Ebola room.

The first floor is much as you would expect - the latest plasma screens (big, looked superb running a Blu-ray disc), digital cameras (one with a very effective anti-tremble setting)  and car navigation systems that lock the house and feed live webcams from all the rooms in the house straight to your dashboard. All very nice.

On the second floor, they turned up the tech with a "kitchen table of the future". The concept here - and it was all in fully-functioning order - was that whoever sits at the table establishes their "seat" by putting their ID-chip enabled mobile phone on a little pad. The table itself is made of hardened glass, beneath which is a 60-inch screen facing upwards. Swimming around the screen are little fish with words such as "calendar" and "internet" on their back. Tap one of the fish and the relevant window opens. Once your phone is on the pad, little fish swim out of it representing the files (pictures, music etc) that you are now prepared to share with everyone else in the pond.

But the best, lurking behind a secret door on the third floor, was yet to come. Explaining that this had only been seen by a few researchers and corporate customers (so not that exclusive) Panasonic unveiled their concept home of the future, the centrepiece of which was an interactive screen occupying one entire wall of the mock-up house. The idea is that anything can be done on this screen. Kids want to scrible? Draw a square on the screen with a finger and it turns into a blackboard ready for action. Want to watch a film? Draw a square on the screen with a finger and it opens a screen of that size with your movie or TV running through it. ...you get the picture. Games ditto, internet ditto. Somehow nothing on sale in Akihabara quite matched up.