Maker Faire Tokyo 2025

I was fortunate enough to recently attend Maker Faire Tokyo 2025 as a guest of host Impress Corporation, where I experienced their amazing show!

Coming on the heels of our own Maker Faire Bay Area, I was curious about the Maker Community in Japan, and what Maker Faire means to its exhibitors and attendees.

I’m happy to report that Maker Faire plays a similar role in Japan as it does in the United States, inspiring innovation, curiosity, and passion, as well as creating a nexus for makers of all sorts. I was blown away by the projects that were shared, and delighted by the enthusiasm by the public. Here is just a fraction of the fun things I saw.

Wheels that Climb!

Reinventing the wheel is thought to be a waste of time, but J to Z Design demonstrated that it can be a potentially life-altering endeavor with an innovative wheel design that enables wheeled objects to climb stairs!

Their prototype StairFree design uses laser-cut wheel components that enable a wheel to change shape from a standard circle into an oblong version that’s long enough to extend over a stair and rotate itself up. Once on level ground, it changes back to a circle for normal rolling.

Their vision is of a future where rolling objects (wheelchairs, strollers, cars, Daleks, etc.) can access different levels through steps and stairs. This reimagining of a foundational object is the kind of creative engineering that changes the way people look at the world around them!

Hello, nice young lady at Keio University’s Future Crafts exhibit—if by chance you read this, please email me and I’ll update it with your name! Because I really liked your project!

The Future Crafts exhibit featured projects that turns digital data into physical form, like this project that’s a kind of update on the Japanese dying process called shibori. The fermentation of the indigo dye creates chemical energy that’s converted into electrical energy, which in turn controls linear actuators to create the folds that influence the patterns as it’s dipped into indigo dye. It’s an astonishing combination of craftsmanship, science, and tech!

Stepper Bikes

There were two versions of stepper bikes on display, this six-legged model and a two-legged model. Both were really interesting to watch—they reminded me of an insect and a robot.

While the mechanics and drivetrain were neat, the steering was what really fascinated me. In the two-legged model, there is a tiny wheel under each “foot.” When the steering wheel is turned, it stops a wheel so it pivots on the other. In the six-legged model, turning the steering wheel disengages the drivetrain for one of the sides, enabling the active side to rotate. Smart mechanical engineering!

Robot Teacher

I was impressed with “Minoth,” an Othello-playing robot which uses two cameras to identify the board and an arm with electromagnets to move (and flip!) pieces around the board. But I was really impressed when the University of Tsukuba team explained that it doesn’t just play the game—it teaches the game!

Takuto Yamana, who’s working on his Master’s degree in design, developed his own Othello AI that efficiently runs through move evaluations, then created a system that teaches players how to be better at Othello: After making a move, players push a button that analyzes their choice and explains why a different move would’ve been more advantageous!

This scene from 1987’s Summer School hit uncomfortably close to home: When I was in high school, it was generally believed that “C” was the most common answer in multiple-choice tests, so kids across the country would pencil that choice into their Scantron sheets in the hopes of getting a few blind guesses correct. But that was actually just a widespread rumor not grounded in real research. So why not totally randomize your guess?

Shintaro Tamefusa had a device on display that did just that, using a spinner, plotter, and some DVD-player parts to create a device that fills out a Scantron sheet based on your wheel spins. (He even tried it with the Japanese university standardized math and history tests, with surprising results!)

Power-Up

One of my favorite types of exhibits at Maker Faires is accessibility inventions by makers who use their engineering smarts to help other people. The heroes at @Team had one such exhibit, the awesome TwinHam bolt-on electric assist device for wheelchairs. The TwinHams connect onto each wheel to transform a manual wheel chair into a powered chair. Apparently under development for several years and becoming increasingly compact, powerful, and smoother on turns and stopping, I can’t wait to see the next generation of the TwinHam!

Smart Trains

In 1959, Japanese toy company Tomy introduced Plarails, a train and track system that’s still sold today. The University of Tokyo Plarailers club combines these classic toys with contemporary sensors and controls to replicate autonomous driving of real railway lines. Multiple trains run at the same time, and track sensors determine their locations and continuously adjust their speeds so they never collide!

Prepare to Qualify

Further proof that kids (and adults!) love the Nerdy Derby! Thanks to FabLab Kanda Nishikicho for supporting this popular activity!

Home Remedy

What’s this? Oh, just a guy who built a homemade MRI machine!

If you play sports, you’ve probably been unlucky enough to need an MRI. Unlike X-rays, which use, well, X-rays to create a 2D image of dense material like bone, an MRI uses magnetic waves to create a 3D image of soft tissue such as muscles or ligaments. Hospitals will often make you get an X-ray first, even if a doctor suspects a soft-tissue injury, just in case it is indeed a bone fracture—MRIs are much more expensive. (At least, that’s what I suspected when I ruptured my Achilles and couldn’t move my foot but still had to get an X-ray first.)

But perhaps you can just self-diagnose at home? Well, this setup isn’t quite there yet—it’s small enough to sit on a desktop, after all—but it’s close!

Making in the Workplace

My in-laws watch a lot of NHK, a Japanese public broadcasting channel that’s available in the United States. I tend to ignore its shows and instead check my fantasy football scores, but I’ll pay attention if it airs the Night of Magical Modification series!

This kind of gameshow pits teams of engineers against each other in designing and building extreme versions of everyday objects. Suzuki—yep, as in the cars and motorcycles—had a team participate, and they did well. But after their episode was recorded, Suzuki’s engineers felt they could’ve done better.

So just like any other maker, they reconvened and kept iterating. The results were on display at Maker Faire Tokyo in the form of a crocodile-shaped water gun that could shoot out birthday candles from cross the room, and a racer that converts vibrations from an electric massager into propulsion.

Corporations get a bad rap for being all about the work, but some companies embrace their employees’ interest in problem solving. Pretty cool.

Mech in a Bottle

Will someone please tell these guys from Tokyo University of Science that I work for Make:, so they don’t think I was stalking them? I stopped by their table four times over the weekend because their work is insane.

A maker twist on the “ship in a bottle” projects popular in the 1800s, this team builds mechanical machines in a bottle! Tiny gears and other moving parts were assembled into these fun machines with tweezers, Allen wrenches, and way more patience and focus than I’ve ever had in my life. They even had a mechanical music box that played by magic! (Well, it was either magic or a spinning magnet turning the crank through the glass, but I’m pretty sure it was magic.)

robots, Robots, ROBOTS

And how could I go to Japan and not check out some robots? The Droid Builders Japan group had these two little dudes:

Hygrado exhibited a 7-axis robotic arm with 15 degrees of freedom. Amazingly light touch and finesse to use a shape sorter! It kind of reminds me of the Power Loader that Ripley used in Aliens, with a human operator using natural movements to control the arms.

But let’s stop fooling around here: When I come to Japan, I want to see a ROBOT! I want to see something that transforms. I want see something that can battle kaiju. I want to see . . . Fiberion!

Brought to Earth (and Maker Faire Tokyo) by the Brave Technology Research Institute, Fiberion is more than eight-feet tall and will be able turn into a car. Soon. Don’t believe me? Check out this 2018 video of Brave’s J-deite RIDE, where two guys are sitting inside the moving car as it transforms into a robot!

This young child may seem tentative now, but destiny will bring them back together as an adult they’ll be defending our planet against mad scientists and galactic threats. And I’m pretty sure their name will turn out to be something like “Alex Bravestarr” (in the United States).

I could go on and on about the excellent projects being shared, but hopefully this gave you an idea of the magic that happens in Japan. If you’ve never been, start planning a trip in 2026—it’s totally worth it.

Maker Faire Tokyo: This is where it all starts!