ASIAN POP The Gadget Gap / Why does all the cool stuff come out in Asia first?: "Let's call him Johnny Sokko. A deputy assistant office manager and aspiring rock guitarist, Johnny lives in Tokyo in a cramped three-bedroom apartment shared with his parents and his teenage sister. Upon waking up in the morning, Johnny stumbles to the bathroom to answer the call of nature using the household's amazing Matsushita-brand Smart Toilet, which automatically measures his weight, body fat, blood pressure and urine sugar and sends the results to the Sokko family physician via the Internet. Over breakfast, he checks his daily schedule on his Sharp Zaurus SL-C3000 -- the first PDA to feature a 4-gigabyte internal hard drive -- and confirms he's free until noon. Great; he can spend the morning trying to beat the Puzzle Bobble Pocket high score his sister rang up on his brand-new Sony PlayStation Portable.

Japan's trade surplus with the United States remains astronomically high, at over $6 billion; yet any regular reader of technophile Web sites such as I4U, Engadget or Gizmodo knows that the world's biggest exporter of consumer electronics regularly keeps its most innovative and exciting widgetry to itself, selling it only to the domestic market. Cell phones that do everything but make toast (although appropriate attachments are probably available from third-party accessory vendors). Gigapixel digital cameras. Laptops so tiny that "My dog ate my homework" is once again a valid excuse. And, of course, the most incredible toilets in the history of humankind. "

by Jeff Yang,
Special to SF Gate
San Francisco Chronicle