Living in Tokyo has its advantages. One of them is to get invited (as the first non-Japanese blogger) to make a tour through the showroom of NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp.), one of the largest telecommunications companies in the world (195,000 employees). The showroom, dubbed NOTE [JP], offers some pretty cool, futuristic technologies.

And thankfully, NTT let me capture some of the stuff they are working on in video form. One of the most impressive demos (more will be posted later) revolves around “Home ICT”. The idea here is to create a single, unified “Home Gateway”, which makes it possible to organize and control all devices and appliances people have in their houses through a cell phone, TV or other device (in a network).

Practical applications include energy management, remote health care solutions, entertainment (i.e. device agnostic, wire-/and cable-less and remote sharing of content), or or even crime and disaster prevention. In the case of an earth quake, for example, users will be warned via a message on the TV screen while the system automatically cuts off all gas mains in the house. Very cool idea (and captured on video below).

This video I took directly in the showroom provides more insight and shows more examples of Home ICT (it’s in English):

Many thanks to NTT Communications for organizing the NOTE tour.