Today I visited Panasonic Center OSAKA which was probably one of the most interesting places I’ve visited in Japan. It was a product showroom and a museum. They had cutaways of many products and explained how they worked and how they gained efficiency. Probably too many things to list, but I saw a 103" Plasma TV, some super small laptops, a Quad-Digital TV tuner for a car (so you can have 4 TVs in your car on different stations), products for home networking over 110V lines or Coaxial lines, an accessible kitchen, compact dishwasher, steam oven, advanced air conditioners, and more. They were showing things like how to make electric ranges more efficient by using many thin strains of wire (like 10x as many) instead of fewer thick strains in the burner element.
They even had a home fuel cell system which runs on natural gas and outputs hot water and electricity. I asked if this is commercially available and they said yes in Tokyo you can lease it for under $9000 per year. So I don’t think this system would save you money, but apparently more environmentally friendly since the natural gas doesn’t lose much energy in transmission compared to conventional electricity.
Too bad they had signs that said no photos throughout the building, so don’t have too much to show.
I headed over to Kobe, Japan and walked around that city for a little while in the afternoon. The city had a major earthquake last decade, but is doing fine now.