The lights dimmed, the sold-out hall grew hushed and out walked the conductor -- shiny, white and 4 feet, 3 inches (1.3 meters) tall.

ASIMO, a robot designed by Honda Motor Co., met its latest challenge Tuesday evening: Conducting the Detroit Symphony in a performance of "The Impossible Dream" from "Man of La Mancha." "Hello, everyone," ASIMO said to the audience in a childlike voice, then waved to the orchestra.

Teachers wash their students' feet at a Seoul high school on May 14, a day before Teachers' Day (May 15th), to thank students for respecting them:

Angry Chinese netizens lashed out at a female CCTV reporter for doing a live broadcast from a Chengdu hotel room when she was supposed to be reporting over the telephone from in front of a collapsed high school.

Labelling reporter Xu Na (徐娜) "a deserter" and "unprofessional", many messages posted in online chat rooms called for the state-owned television network to sack her immediately. "Premier Wen Jiabao is still at the disaster front line. Are our reporters more precious than the premier?" some asked.

Very cool commercial from Japan Probe: there's need to worry about earthquakes or helicopter attacks when you live in the “Grand Guardian Tokyo” apartment building.

Japan sent a radio-wave signal consisting of 13 binary-encoded images toward Altair in 1983, the message was believed to have reached Altair in 1999, Japanese astronomer suggests we may receive a reply in 2015 if aliens received the 'message'.

An “e-mail” message from aliens inhabiting the Altair solar system could reach Earth within 7 years, some astronomers suggest. The alien message would come in response to a radio-wave signal sent toward Altair 25 years ago by Japanese astronomer Hisashi Hirabayashi, who suggests we may receive a reply as early as the year 2015 if intelligent aliens received, decoded and responded quickly to the message. Altair is located approximately 16 light-years from Earth.

Which one is the weirdest Japanese commercial - The scary anime insurance commercial or the creepy Tarako baby dolls commercial? Japanese blog 3Yen finds out Japan's 5 weirdest commercials for you.

A 7.9 magnitude earthquake shook Southeast China's Sichuan province on Monday, May 12 at 2:28pm local time, it is said to be the worst earthquake striking China in the past century. The epicentre was at Wenchuan County (100 km northwest of provincial capital Chengdu), victims were reported in many neighboring towns such as Belchuan, Mianzhu, Mianyang, Chengdu, Shifang, Deyang, Wenchuan, Longnan... Here you'll find lots of scene photos from the above mentioned places, let's pray for the people:

The recent poll from goo Ranking picked out the top 30 cutest corporate mascots in Japan. Kyoro-chan (キョロちゃん), the mascot of Morinaga Chocoballs ranked no.1 on the list:

Love these Japanese wild animal book ends (animal index book dividers) -- by artist Hiroshi Sasagawa, made to look like animal silhouettes -- $15 each, give or take!