Photos from an year old super high-tech apartment building in a suburb of Tokyo.

The photo above shows an elevator hall with a CCD monitor which captures the passengers inside the lift, making sure that there is nothing strange taking place inside.

Then the photo below shows a high-tech door bell, which automatically records a video clip of your visitor at the entrance (by the way that is me in the monitor screen). The monitor comes with a feature to play back the clips and record them onto a memory card if necessary.

While I was surprised how old houses are well kept and continues to provide great homes in Europe, I am equally surprised how Japanese housing industry keeps on adding features to what they provide. Security in a large apartment block is certainly an issue in Japan, but how quickly the technology is providing solutions to those problems, is something. If I were to be rather critical, I wonder how much are they used? Any negative impact other than positive ones? I hope the industry also have decent answers rather than mere solutions.