You're going to need a powerful computer to make this work... but if you can, the rewards will be stupendous. The Japanese horse racing association have spent a small fortune on website that aims to help connect the younger generation with the excitement and thrills of horse racing.  

Leaving aside the whole "getting young people to gamble" thought for a moment, this is one of the most amazing sites I have been to in a long time. If you can navigate the Japanese (and it might take a while - but persevere if you can with trial and error), you can end up betting in a virtual horse race. 

This being Japan, this is of course, no ordinary horse race. As you can see from the screen grabs below, you can choose from a selection of peculiar animals, including a long "tandem" horse, built for two riders, a bull, a giraffe and my personal favourite, a horse with an Elvis-style hair-do. 

From what I can work out, you place your bet, and they're off! Odd things happen during the race - which I managed to capture on video. My horse fell over and broke into several pieces early on, the jockey on the zebra got up and started dancing, and without spoiling the ending, some very strange things happened when the bull got excited. 

Visitors to the site might notice the curious tag at the bottom of the screen, "Love and Horse" which frankly was too good an opportunity to miss. 

If you're brave enough to click through, you're taken to the campaign site for the Japanese Horse Racing Association, which again, is aimed at getting teenagers interested in the sport of kings. 

Quite what the thinking was behind the four red dancing gimp figures is anybody's guess. But I think Royal Ascot is definitely missing a trick somewhere.