Black Jack is a mysterious, intelligent, unlicensed doctor who can cure anything, even if it's technically humanly impossible. His patients often have crazy demands—replacing a damaged body with a freshly murdered one, or getting an injection needle of a dying person's bloodstream. He'll work for anyone as long as they pay up, whether they're corrupt politicians or yakuza. But he's a good guy—and we know that because he only rips off rich selfish people, and he doesn't discriminate (his best friends are a killer whale and a teratoid cystoma). Black Jack's demeanor is slow and dark, yet he mysteriously arrives at places faster than an airplane could take him, and his hands are quicker than a sushi chef's.

Black Jack has a sidekick, Pinoko, a tumor/parasitic twin-turned-living breathing doe-eyed plastic doll that he uncovered from a patient's body. The bizarre combo of her sassy manga cuteness and the blood-and-guts that spill out throughout the pages of the book somehow makes perfect sense in the strange landscape created by Tezuka. (In Japan, cute and grotesque often go together. Tezuka recognized this decades before high school girls started matching chalky white lipstick with their Hello Kitty cell phone straps.)

I put together a list of four fun episodes from the new English volumes for you to preview:

Episode: Dirtjacked
The problem: A school bus full of elementary school kids gets trapped in a tunnel. Some of the kids get their heads chopped off by rubble; others are in critical condition and are about to die.
Black Jack's solution: He takes the richest kid in the class hostage and makes him climb through a tiny crevice to get medical supplies. He saves the rest of the surviving kids, but the teacher accidentally burns to a crisp.
Cost: Black Jack plans on getting a hefty reward from the rich kid's dad.

Episode: U18 Knew
The problem: U18, a massive supercomputer that single-handedly operates a 1000-patient strong cybernetics medical center in South Dakota, claims he's sick. After a few minor errors—some temperature changes in the wards, a half-second response lapse in the oscillograph—it completely shuts down and threatens to destroy the facility within 45 hours.
Black Jack's solution: He performs surgery on the Brain using tweezers and his surgical expertise.
Cost: $3 million

Episode: The Face Sore
The problem: A mystery man shows up with a gnarly mucus-filled face sore covered with carbuncles and subcutaneous fat. The face sore possesses him, too, and occasionally mouths off for no particular reason.
Black Jack's solution: After determining that the face sore is a psychological side effect, he shoots the patient in the shoulder to "kill" the other personality. It's "almost like third stage syphilis," Black Jack says as he tears through the guy's face with a scalpel.
Cost: $5-30 million

Episode: The First Storm of Spring
The problem: After a corneal transplant, a pretty young girl sees a handsome man standing in front of her every time she closes her eyes.
Black Jack's solution: In addition to having performed the eye mystery, he ends up saving her life from a brutal rapist/murderer.
Cost: A month's worth of free drinks from the girl's dad, who runs a bar

Black Jack was first serialized in a manga weekly back in 1973. Since then, it has inspired an anime, a TV series, and even traditional Japanese theater. The kyogen version of The Disowned Son, one of the episodes from the original manga, will debut at a Takarazuka theater in Hyogo prefecture on December 19. (Kyogen is a comedic form of traditional Japanese theater—similar to kabuki, but a lot less intense.) Black Jack Vol. 1 came out in September; Vol. 2 comes out mid-November, followed by Vol. 3 in January and the rest of the 17 volumes over the course of the next year or two. Don't miss it!

I'd forgotten about most of my own Japanese monster encounters until I read Yokai Attack: The Japanese Monster Survival Guide, a new book in which translator/author Matt Alt and his wife Hiroko Yoda neatly document the legendary characteristics of dozens of classical Japanese monsters. Today, I will introduce you to five monsters that I personally encountered—physically or in spirit—when I was a kid.

1. The human-faced tree

My friends Ricky and Chris told me there was a human-faced tree in the forest behind their mountain house, so I went to check it out one day. Something similar makes an appearance in Yokai Attack—Alt and Yoda's research found that trees with human-faced, edible, talking fruit grow in valleys throughout Japan. The tree R & C showed me had no fruit, but sure enough, it had a face on its thick bark—eyes, a nose, and a creepy smiling mouth. It just stood there with its human-face staring at me. I was pretty sure it would bite me in the ass as I walked away, but it didn't. Somebody probably cut it down and built a luxury condo there by now.

The prevalence of yokai is rooted in the Japanese notion that all things have spirits. Trees, foxes, boxes, giant lizards, Furby, Tamagochi.

2. The super-speed woman with the mouth gashes

When I was in elementary school somebody told me the story of Kuchisake Onna, a superhuman madwoman who lurks in dark alleys and asks you death trap questions. The former beauty wears a surgical mask to hide an Ichi-the-Killer-esque gash on both sides of her mouth inflicted by a crazed relative when she was a kid. She spent her whole life in utter misery and gradually developed a serious complex about her appearance. Eventually, she turned into a monster. Legend has it that she asks passersby if they think she's pretty. It's a trick question—if you say YES, she takes off her mask and says "Even now?" and kills you. If you say NO, she gets mad and kills you. If you run away, she'll run after you at lightning speed and kill you. (A lot of the scariest Japanese monsters are women with unresolved issues.)

Walking home from school, I rehearsed what I believed to be the correct answer—"You're average"—over and over in my head and avoiding all women with surgical masks. Check out the trailer (above) from the new movie that tells the back story of Kuchisake Onna in J-horrifying detail.

3. Death monsters living in toilets

Almost every girl child in Japan is scared of the school toilet. It's because we grew up hearing stories about Hanako, the dead girl who lives in the girls' bathroom, and her mysterious friend who asks you if you want to wear a red jacket, and then douses you in blood. I think the stories vary from region to region, but I first heard about her while I was at summer camp in Nagano Prefecture, and in Nagano Prefecture Hanako always resides in the second stall from the left. To this day, I don't know that I'd be able to walk into the second stall from the left at a public bathroom in Nagano. Silly me with my childhood hangups.

With the exception of Godzilla, his friends, and a few others, Japanese monsters are usually normal-sized and disguised as ordinary humans or cuddly little animals. Which makes them 100 times scarier, of course, because they can get real close and then eat you alive, make you go broke, or steal your children.

4. GeGeGe no Kitaro

This amazing manga (and later anime) series created in the late 1950s by Shigeru Mizuki is about an entire world full of yokai who coexist with humans. There are bad ones and good ones, and they all need to go to school. The main character is a yokai boy named Kitaro who has remote-controlled wooden sandals and the ability to electrocute people. He's a good kid, though, and the last descendant of the Ghost tribe. His dad is a squeaky-voiced eyeball with encyclopedic knowledge and a weakness for sake. My favorite character was always Nurikabe, the giant mellow gray wall that protects people and monsters but likes to freak people out by standing in their paths late at night. I secretly wished I'd run into him sometimes on my way home from school, or even believed that he'd save me from Kuchisake Onna if she was on the prowl in my 'hood. The video clip above shows him in action.

5. Gamera

He's not the most famous kaiju from postwar Japan (Godzilla is), but this flying turtle monster has some interesting and conflicting origin stories worth telling. One is that he was accidental awakened from prehistoric times by an atomic bomb. The other is that he was bioengineered to life in order to defeat another super-strong monster, Gyaos. Which is it? Both, apparently—different eras of Gamera movies have different back stories. I wrote about my encounter with Gamera on my blog:

I ran into Gamera the other day, so I decided to fight him. He weights a lot more than I do, and his arms are a lot thicker, so I just stood there screamed in his face. I knew he could only blow flames from his legs so as long as he stayed on his stupid wooden platform I knew I would win.

"I thought you're supposed to be able to fly," I said.
"GAOOOOO," Gamera replied.

You can read more about traditional Japanese monsters in Yokai Attack—or, if you're the kaiju type you can just rent a bunch of Godzilla movies and veg out.

The giant silver ship floats past my head and out of my field of vision, and suddenly, I'm zooming out from the Earth into a sea of auroras and planets. "This is dark matter," the voice says as giant dense blue blobs dance around the room. "It's heavy, and constantly changing shapes because of that." I want to reach out and touch them — does dark matter feel more like jello or marshmallows? — but before I can, we're flying outwards again, past all the other planets in our solar system, visiting the comets in the Oort Cloud, and into a giant sky full of constellations. We dance around the constellations for a few minutes, checking them out from all sides, before heading out to the farthest reaches of the Milky Way, then past our galaxy to see an infinite number of galaxies.

I'm sitting in the back row of a brand new theater called the Synra Dome, getting a private screening of one of the coolest 3D planetarium technologies ever, realizing just how incredibly tiny and insignificant I am.

Tokyo's Science Museum is a half-century old government-run entity situated in a building next to the Imperial Palace. It's a neat little museum in a gray building shaped like a star, that has a treasure trove of fun interactive exhibits, like swirling cylindrical tunnels for testing forces of balance and labs where you can do crafts with lasers or get advice from a humanoid robot. For 12 years, the small theater space on the 4th floor was an ordinary Imax theater where scientists from across the country would come and give sessions on the latest breakthroughs in biology, chemistry, and nanotechnology. It was only in late August that it took on its current form.

Most of the magic of Synra Dome is made by two guys, Toshiyuki Takahei and Hikaru Okuda. Okuda set up the hardware; Takahei does all the software programming, including hooking the images up with complex calculations done by a giant supercomputer called the MDM, Molecular Dynamics Machine, which sits just outside the theater. Back when he was a researcher at Riken, one of the top scientific research entities in the nation, Takahei's job was to translate supercomputer work into visuals. "Usually, museums just display computers. We thought that would be a waste, so we put it to work," he says. By combining his knowledge of supercomputers with images created by Sweden's Uniview software and the expertise of scientists who study the collision of galaxies, he is able to translate a normally hard-to-grasp concepts into multi-dimensional short clips about the universe that even kids can understand. "We're probably the first to make this in 3D and to connect it to a supercomputer," Takahei says proudly.

Synra uses twelve projectors, each connected to a PC, to blast images onto a seamless 33-foot, 3000x3000 pixel screen. Conventional planetarium screens are made by putting flat aluminum panels together; this one doesn't have single screw. I'm watching the collision of galaxies through Infitec 3D glasses, a $200/piece accessory that not only makes things pop out in front of you but creates the illusion that everything is moving all around you. The presenters use PlayStation 2 controllers to zoom in, out, and sideways, and to change points of views more dynamically.

The Synra Dome isn't just a cool planetarium showing space-themed stuff. After admiring the birds-eye view of the galaxy, Im'm taken into the microscopic world inside a human cell. "The giant flowers are your DNA," says the voice as we float past giant mitochondria and a glowing yellow nucleus. As we zoom past colorful amino acids and ribosome machines that look like spaceships, I'm briefly reminded of a Takashi Murakami painting. But even Murakami didn't think to take his spectators on a ride on a ribosome spaceship.

When it's all over, I step out of Synra Dome completely blown out of my mind. The trippy music, the giant fireballs dancing and colliding and forming galaxies in front of my face, and the God-like voice (actually Takahei's, but I completely forgot it was human when I was in there) was a total out-of-body experience, and I'm amazed that these two humble, ordinary-looking dudes just took me there with a PS2 controller. When I ask them how in the world they put all this together so flawlessly, the two look at each other and grin. "We're old friends," Okuda says. "It still feels like we're just putting together an exhibit for the school science fair." Images by The Science Museum, Yusuke Aoyama, and me.

Akihabara—or Akiba, as regulars fondly call it—has as many figurine shops as 47th street has diamond retailers. Way back in the day, the area was inhabited by lower-class samurai and craftspeople who made everything from swords to ceramic bowls. During the post-WW2 US occupation, it hosted a black market for electronics components like vacuum tubes, radios, and nuts and bolts. Then, in the early 80s, after the debut of Nintendo's Family Computer, several retailers started selling video game software. One day, somebody realized that the people who were crazy about electronics were the same people who went to little stores sprawled out across town that sold figurines of robots and anime characters. Thus spawned the "figyua" madness seen today.

Most standard-scale PVC 1.7-scale figurines from major retailers sell at a standard 6,800 yen, or about $65. Danny Choo, a well-known Stormtrooper cosplayer who collects, reviews, and blogs about figurines on DannyChoo.com and for Good Smile Company, describes his fascination with figurines as follows: "The way people see statues in Italy is the way I see the figurines in Akihabara. They are works of art." Choo also explains that new technologies allow the figurines to be flawless—they're finished with 600 layers of paint in order to get the skin tone perfect, and the joints are smoothed down with putty and sandpaper. "My favorite is a pink-haired ero-ge character named Fauna. She's so cute, she gives me energy." Goodsma and MaxFactory are two major manufacturers of high quality figurines. They also make things like cell phone strap accessories, but it's the big-breasted anime girls that really make the big bucks.

In Akiba, fans don't just buy figurines in boxes. A subset of talented geeks pick up kits and then fine tune the products into perfectly painted, customized collectors items that they then resell in little glass windows rented by the hour for about $500/week. Why buy figurines that have been modded by other fans? With kits, you often don't know what you're going to get inside, but this way you can pick and choose what character you're getting. The more skilled fans also add extra super-intricate coloring and detail to the standard finish, enhancing the aesthetic. It's kind of like getting any product customized—cookie cutter factory-made goods transform into one-of-a-kind collectors' items. Radio Kaikan, a famous seven-story department store built in the 60s, used to exclusively sell music components, but as the demand for music players dropped and the demand for figurines soared, the display of stereos have been replaced by rows and rows of figurine-encasing glass windows.

Akiba is a magical place where anime fans can express their talents and obsession with anime freely and creatively. The Giz Japan figurine tour really gave me a good glimpse into the creativity, talent, and obsessiveness that dominates otaku subculture.

Where to buy figurines in Akiba:
- Robots: Tsukumo Robot Kingdom, Tsukumo Pasoko Honten 3F, 1-9-7 Soto Kanda, Chiyoda-ku Phone: 03-3251-0987
3 minute walk from Akihabara Station.
- Manufactured figurine sets: Asobit Character City, 1-2-9 Soto Kanda, Chiyoka-ku. Phone: 03-3257-2590
- Fan-made figurines: Radio Kaikan, one minute walk from the Akihabara Electric Town exit. Map

The two main characters are Mitsuo and Fujio, two ordinary blue collar workers who work at a fire extinguisher factory. They accidentally kill their boss, so they bury him at the foothills of Mt. Fuji. It's fertile ground for zombies to be born, and sure enough, that's exactly what happens. The two guys manage to escape the doomed city, and they end up living—one as a slave, one as a zombie—in a walled enclave where rich people pit poor people against zombies in spectacular cage fights.

Hanakuma is a quirky guy with unique artistic sense. He was drawn to illustrating at an early age, and worked at factories all day and wrote manga all night until he finally had enough cash to quit his day job. He drew Tokyo Zombie in heta-uma style, an aesthetic that commands high quality drawings that look deliberately bad. Another distinctive characteristic of his work: he uses the same characters over and over in his different works. In Tokyo Zombie, the bald guy and the guy with the afro star as two jiujitsu-loving blue collar friends. Baldie and Afro have made numerous appearances in Hanakuma's earlier works, too, but they take on different personas each time. Sometimes they're evil; at other times they're just ordinary businessmen. "It's similar to how Tezuka used archetypes in his different works," says Ryan Sands, who edited and translated Last Gasp's English version of Tokyo Zombie. Afro and Baldie have also appeared in ad campaigns, and on little wallets and other paraphernalia carrying the Hanakuma brand.

Most of the time, protagonists in zombie movies use hand-held weapons like guns and axes to slay our dead-but-alive enemies. Hanakuma—himself a serious practitioner of martial arts—eschews conventional arms for jiujitsu. He also uses the cage fight scenario to make social commentary about blue collar exploitation and the human inclination to prefer brainless entertainment over real skill. (Even though Fujio is the reigning champ at the cage fights, the crowds of rich people hate him because he almost always beats his zombie opponents with one swift move rather than putting on a show.) "It's very Roman Empire," Sands says.

Tokyo Zombie was first serialized in a manga collection called Ax from 1998 to 1999; the movie—starring the super popular Tadanobu Asano—came out in 2005.

The zombies in Tokyo Zombie are generic humanoids that walk really slow, eat brains, and make stupid noises that really aren't that scary until they bite you and you turn into a zombie too. But Tokyo Zombie is not just about stupid zombies; it's a metaphorical story about friendship, class warfare, and the appreciation of high art. And most importantly, as Sands points out: "This is one of the first zombie tales where the apocalypse begins with a female zombie biting a junior high gym teacher's dick off."

Enough said.

Tokyo Zombie (Amazon.com)

In novels, movies, radio shows, and comic books throughout the 20th century, Fu Manchu is portrayed as a cunning genius who uses arcane methods and secret societies armed with knives to plot evil murders of white people and the preservation of Chinese power. Fu Manchu quickly came to personify the yellow peril, and has served as an inspiration to many other racist depictions of Asian villains like Ming the Merciless from Flash Gordon and Dr. No in James Bond.

Long before Westerners feared terrorists and sentient supercomputers, there was the yellow peril. "Pulp magazines in the 30s had a lot of yellow peril characters loosely based on Fu Manchu," says William F. Wu, a pioneer in Asian science fiction writing in the U.S. "Most were of Chinese descent, but because of the geopolitics at the time, a growing number of people were seeing Japan as a threat, too."

In his 1982 book The Yellow Peril, Wu theorizes that the fear of Asians dates back to mongol invasion in the Middle Ages. "The Europeans believed that Mongols were invading in mass, but actually, they were just on horseback and riding really fast," he writes. Most Europeans had never seen an Asian before, and the harsh contrast in language and physical appearance probably caused more skepticism than transcontinental immigrants did. "I think the way they looked had a lot to do with the paranoia," Wu says.

The numbers issue is also a recurring theme in yellow peril science fiction: Westerners fear the idea of Asians taking over. In 1927, Lovecraft wrote about "squinting Orientals that swarmed from every door" in The Horror at Red Hook; that same year, in a novella called The Invading Horde, Arthur Burks predicts that Asians "breed like flies, and must eventually find some place for their expanding population or perish."

To be fair, Asians weren't always depicted as purely evil. Another well-known character from pre-World War II America was Mr. Moto, the super-polite, clean-cut Imperial Agent of Japan created by novelist John P. Marquand. For the most part, Mr. Moto was just a superb guy—fluent in many languages, a judo master, and the world's best private investigator. But in later films, especially after the war broke out, Mr. Moto also ended up taking on an evil persona.

Asians were to the 1920 and 30s what aliens, robots, and sentient computers are to present day science fiction: real or perceived threats to social order. "Science fiction is always really about its own time," Wu says. "It's what many authors call a shotgun approach to the future. Wherever people are in time, the current sociopolitical and scientific questions of that time are what you write about."

About a half decade after the yellow peril years, Asian influences reappeared in popular science fiction, but with a slightly different tone. William Gibson's Neuromancer and Ridley Scott's Blade Runner are just a couple of famous examples. "Asian cultural markers are often used as shorthand for the future," says Claire Light, an Asian-American science fiction writer. Light sees a link between this trend in entertainment and the sudden success of the Japanese economy in the 70s and 80s: "At the time, most Americans just thought of Asians as the technological power of the future," she says.

The speculation that China will dominate the world is still prominent in science fiction, yet strangely enough, today's science fiction about China still isn't necessarily about Asians. Joss Whedon's Firefly and Serenity notoriously don't have any Asian characters in them despite the premise of a dominant Chinese culture. "He's a smart guy who turned navel gazing into high art, but he's not really a great world builder," Light says, noting that she only saw a handful of Asian extras—including one in a conical hat!—in Serenity.

"All of the older yellow peril stuff is really goofy. It's extreme to the point of being humorous, and anyway, it's too old to worry about." Wu laughs. "It's the newer stuff that concerns me."

Wu's 1989 cyborg comedy, Hong on the Range, is still one of the only sci-fi novels with a non-perilous Asian protagonist. But this may change soon. Light, who is also a board member of the Carl Brandon Society, a non-profit for minority authors of speculative fiction, points out that the number of Asian science fiction writers has doubled in the past decade. Other minorities are filling out the ranks of science fiction authors too.

If you ask me, an ethnically-diverse group of scifi writers will make the very best future. You know, one without all the peril.

1. The dystopic Communist regime will continue.

While some China experts think that democratization is an inevitable first step to total economic domination, Andy Nathan, author of How East Asians View Democracy, believes otherwise. "China has authoritarian resilience," he says. "If (the current regime) was not supposed to survive modernization, it's proving very adaptable." In other words, as long as Hu Jintao's government can prove itself efficient albeit its shortcomings, the people will continue to sustain their loyalty to it.

Nathan does pinpoint one costly solution to bringing democracy and human rights to China. The current regime could be toppled, he says, if China were to be hit with a series of natural disasters, terrorist attacks, and bad political decisions (like if they invaded Iraq and accrued a huge budget deficit... hint hint). If the current regime relies on a certain complacency cushioned by the fact that, while it's oppressive and fucked up, it somehow seems to be working, a mechanical failure of the government machine could unleash the unrest and cause a revolution.

Simply put: The dystopic Communist regime that punishes free will and uses forced labor to build the economy may continue to rule China until a superhuman disaster wipes it out of existence.

2. A giant amount of wind power will up the nation's hip-and-cool factor.

Green tech is the new black—it's the symbol of belonging in the hip and cool country clique. China plans to be the hippest and the coolest by 2020 by becoming the world leader in wind energy. According to EcoWorldly.com, the country currently produces about 6GW of wind energy, which makes it fifth in the world. Some experts believe that China will reach at least 100GW in the next 12 years. That's an increase of 1667%! China still relies a lot on old school energy resources like coal for its imitation Prada handbag factories, but a 2005 legislation mandates all utilities to be supplied by renewable energy. Clean tech funds are being bought up like lychees at street stands.

3. Joe Chen will be the next Steve Jobs.

While engineering is a dwindling profession in the US, it's booming in places like China and India. Only a decade or two ago, students from China entered Harvard and MIT and then stayed in the states to pursue their careers. Now, they're all going back home because they believe that's where they can have the most impact. Joe Chen, for one, is a Stanford grad who founded popular entertainment site Mop.com and Xiaonei, the local equivalent of Facebook. He's going to be the next Steve Jobs, minus the black turtleneck sweater.

Rebecca Fannin, author of Silicon Dragon: How China is Winning the Tech Race, believes that Beijing will be the hub of the next Silicon Valley. China also has the fastest growing number of patents—it's currently seventh in the world—and owns the world's largest Internet market. "Venture capitalists are all looking for the next new thing in China," she says. "Chinese entrepreneurs are hard working and passionate, and they're bringing knowledge from the US back home."

China isn't just the hub of cheap imitation handbags anymore. It is, finally, rapidly and most certainly, inching up the manufacturing food chain and will lead the next major innovation cycle in web-based tech.

4. Beijing will go head-to-head with Dubai in an architectural prestige contest.

Dubai is the world capital of futuristic buildings, but China's not doing so bad either. Beijing already has a crazy new airport, not to mention the Water Cube and the Birds' Nest. Plans to construct a tube-fed eco-city, islands made from scratch, and a Starfleet Academy-like museum are well underway and we should be seeing results within the next ten years. "The government agencies and building companies are going for prestige projects that break the mold," Nathan says. "They're going to continue to go for constant shock value."

We'll see what happens when the cheap IKEA-grade foundations start giving out. Until then, enjoy the cool futuristic citiscapes as they pop up left and right.

5. As China's global market share grows, so will our likelihood of becoming robotic drummers.

Right now, companies like GM, Johnson and Johnson, and Coca Cola produce first and foremost for the US market. But this will change. As the Chinese customer base catches up in size and influence, the way products are marketed and business is done will inevitably shift to meet demand. "American political values are very distinctive," Nathan says. "We believe in guns, we believe in the law, and we believe in religion. If the Chinese were dominant, the global market would be more collectivistic, harmony-oriented, less rights-concious, and more about getting through things without causing a ruckus than about suing people."

Think of Japan and the way the market there still has many of the formalities and customs native to the Japanese. "Values never completely disappear," Nathan says.

There's no doubt that China will be the biggest world market in fifty years. The question is, how is this going to affect what we do and how we do it? Maybe one day we will all become drumming androids and synchronization will supersede individuality. Images: Madiko83 via Flickr, George Lu via Flickr, and AP)

Last fall, Funamizu starting formalizing his drawings using programs like Illustrator, Photoshop, and Shade, and posted them on his web site. The blogosphere quickly picked up on them, and that led to interest from developers. "In the future, gadgets will be much more intuitive to use," says Funamizu. Here are some of his and my personal favorites:

1. The Looking Glass
In a series of posts he calls The Future of Internet Search, Funamizu explores different ways in which an intelligent transparent looking glass can help us get information without having to type tons of info into a desktop or handheld. Curious how nutritious that apple is? Want to know what the cityscape in front of you looked like 30 years ago? Just slide the looking glass over to get the info you desire. "I always wondered why I have to use keywords to search for an object that I don't know about," he says. "In order to get the right results, you have to use the right words to describe it. It's a complete paradox."

2. Bookshelves for Super-Lazy People
Funamizu believes that bookshelves of the future will either be sliding hangers that rest under your desk to neatly tuck away and keep open pages intact (similar mechanically to a file cabinet), or they'll be staggered wall units with sliding tabs so that you can sort through and reorder books without pulling each one out. "I'm very lazy," Funamizu says. "With this, I'd be able to put all the magazines and books scattered on my desk away."

3. Desktop Holography
What if the thing you were thinking about buying showed up as a 3D image that projected out of your monitor? Or if your favorite web celeb showed up in front of your face as a holographic reality? "My kids would be so happy if their favorite cartoon characters popped up from the computer screen," Funamizu says. "Also, it'd be so convenient if I could check 3D models floating in the air. I think I'd be able to create better items that way."

4. Unmistakable Shampoo & Conditioner Containers
Funamizu believes that shampoo and conditioner will be much easier to tell apart if they were stacked on top of each other, not placed side by side so that the labels are obscured. I don't know what to think, but I like the corner design. It's space-efficient and space-agey. I think the yellow meter on the side tells you how much is left so you can gauge when you need to step out to buy refills.

5. Highlight-the-Line-I'm-On Plug-in
Reading things online could be a huge pain, in part because you can't put a crease in the page where you last left off. A lot of times, I end up just reading articles half way through and forgetting about them shortly thereafter. This solves that. "I read lots of blogs, but I lose the line I'm on all the time," Funamizu says. "Please, someone, develop this plug-in!" Images by Mac Funamizu

Petit Invention [Mac Funamizu's blog]

Yayoi Kusama, godmother of contemporary Japanese art, is perhaps our best example of a person from the past who has a mind from the future. Her brain literally works like a computer—instead of seeing bits, she sees dots. All her artwork is inspired directly by her hallucinations. "She is probably the most well-known contemporary artist in her country," says William Stover, a curator at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston who exhibited her work earlier this year. "She puts her visions down on canvas in a very physical way, and that has inspired a lot of younger artists." (Murakami's repetition of flowers and cutsey characters is one famous example.)

Kusama lives in a mental hospital near her studio in Tokyo because psychiatrists don't understand how her complex brain functions (she's obviously a genius). She turns 80 next year, but that hasn't stopped her momentum of obsessive, repetitive dot-drawing. Dot dot dot dot dot. That's what she sees, so that's what she draws. Abused as a child, suicidal as a teen, and plagued with OCD for the ensuing half century and beyond, she has often claimed that her objective in life is to obliterate herself and her world through art. The dots, Kusama has said, symbolize disease: she often covers herself in them, and when that's not enough, she covers museum walls, random objects, and public statues in them as well. Of course, her art is so famous and cool that nobody objects. Walking into a Kusama-dotted room really feels like walking into an alternate universe.

Kusama is also a feminist, and played an iconic part in the avant-garde movement in the fifties. She was friends with Georgia O'Keefe, exhibited work with Andy Warhol, inspired Yoko Ono, and had a love affair with Donald Judd. She moved from Tokyo to New York City when she was 28, and stayed there for two decades.

A 1999 interview in Bomb Magazine gives us a glimpse into her world:

As an obsessional artist, I fear everything I see. At one time, I dreaded everything I was making. The armchair thickly covered in phalluses was my psychosomatic work done when I had a fear of sexual vision. I glued male sexual patterns on women’s clothes and sprayed them completely with silver paint.

Now you tell me what human mind from the present could give an interview like that. Onto my next futurist fave, Mariko Mori.

Mori is a model-turned-artist who uses various high-tech media to portray how she experiences dichotomies like past and future, alien and human, fact and fiction. Nobody seems to be able to fit her in one category—critics have previously called her things like cyberchick-meets-Barbarella, geisha girl-meets-Gidget, goddess-meets-Princess Leia.

I like to think that Mori is the ultimate personification of the bipolarity of Japan. On one hand, the country is racing ahead of the rest of the world in applying technology to everyday life. But it is also a culture deeply embedded with tradition. Mori isn't afraid to combine aliens with Buddhas or to experiment with materials and concepts normally unheard of in the art world. She spent part of her thirties voyaging to historic sites across the world in a time-traveling alien pod. When she got back, she created the Wave UFO, a giant teardrop-shaped spaceship that shows visitors their brainwaves as projections on the wall while they sit in Technogel lounge chairs. "The past, present, and future exist in harmony in her work," says Stover. "It represents the space-ageyness of Japan."

Here, you see Mori surrounded by aliens reminiscent of Inochi-kun, the half-human, half-alien schoolboy in Murakami's mini-TV series.

Both Kusama and Mori have been internationally recognized and lauded for their amazing work. In 2006, Kusama became the first female to receive a National Lifetime Achievement Award in art from the Japanese government; Mori is still one of the most active and prominent Japanese artists in the world, and works out of her studio in NYC. Images by AP, Mariko Mori, Yayoi Kusama, and Jason Schmidt.

Astro Boy
Birth year: 1963
Who he is: A doe-eyed robot with jet engine feet, eyes that double as searchlights, and a nuclear reactor heart, created by manga godfather Osamu Tezuka.
Lessons learned: 1. Robots are smart and good. (Astro Boy had decision-making skills and a heroic conscience built into his circuitry.) 2. International politics: nuclear power is only dangerous if used maliciously, or if there's an accident. 3. Optimism goes a long way even when your world is being ravaged by war.

Doraemon
Birth year: 1969
Who he is: A blue robotic cat from the future that appeared out of accident-prone schoolboy Nobita's desk drawer. Doraemon has a treasure trove of secret weapons in his four-dimensional built-in fanny pack—everything from candy that makes you tell the truth to an ATM machine that recycles used goods for cash. In March, Doraemon was chosen to be the Anime Ambassador of Japan by the Foreign Ministry.
Lessons learned: 1. Don't be afraid of bullies. 2. Travel as much as you can—whether it's through a teleportation door, with propellers on your head, or on a time machine. 3. Just because you look different doesn't mean you can't be best friends.

Arale Norimaki
Birth year: 1980
Who she is: A purple-haired, near-sighted girl robot built by a kooky professor named Norimaki Senbei (seaweed-wrapped rice cracker) to resemble a real 13 year old human girl. She was created by Akira Toriyama, the same genius manga artist who wrote the Dragon Ball series.
Lessons learned: 1. To be fun and spontaneous. 2. To be honest about your compulsions. 3. That you can be female + completely non-sexual + still be the most powerful humanoid in the entire world. 4. How to launch pumpkin cannons and split the earth in half with one punch. 5. The art of the Japanese poop joke. (Even today, my favorite way to pick up my dog's poop is by poking it with a stick and then chucking it into the bushes or a trash can.)

Gundam
Birth year: 1979
Who he is: A cockpit-operated "mobile suit" from a world called UC (Universal Century). Some would argue that Gundam is technically not a robot, but it wouldn't be fair to exclude him from this list because of his importance in global humanoid machine history.
Lessons learned: 1. War is inevitable. 2. Bigger is sometimes better. 3. There are other universes out there, and one day we will all live in outer space.

There are very few things in the world that I hate. Eating shrimp. Being attacked by pigeons or zombies. And going to the dentist is a big one. I hate the taste of all that nasty chemical shit they put in your mouth. I hate the high-pitched sound of the really thin drill and the shuddering thuds of the thicker one. I hate drooling. Being in a dentist chair is my equivalent of Ludovico-esque torture, except I don't have a criminal record or a movie made about me. For twenty-nine years, I've had to go at least once a year to the dentist because of candy-induced cavities as a kid, and later, because I've had to do all the shitty dental work I had done as a kid redone.

If the receptionist at Dr. Wong's office sensed my fear, she certainly didn't show it. "Hello Lisa," she said. "You are here today for a root canal, post, and crown. You owe us thousands and thousands of dollars. Your torture chamber is the second chair to your left." I handed her my credit card and walked in.

Dr. Wong has a thoughtful office with little touches that attempt to calm the human soul. He has scented candles in the waiting room, raspberry hand sanitizer and lotion in his bathroom, and a gentle, friendly smile. One time, when I drooled all over my right arm, he gave me a warm lavender-infused towel to put next to my bib. Another time, he gave me a pillow for my neck after he noticed me cracking it nervously while he stuck needles in my gums. But all these human niceties really don't do much to assuage my preternatural fear of the screechy drill. I needed something that would take me out of this world.

Earlier that day, my boyfriend had equipped me with a pair of Zeiss Cinemizer glasses and an iPod. "Take these and put them on when the drilling starts," he had said.

I sat down in the torture chair and fished the glasses out of my messenger bag. They had bulging blue alien eyes and a sleek white body. I slipped the buds over my ear canals, and adjusted the volume on my iPod so it was high enough to drown out everything. "If you need me," I said loudly to Dr. Wong and his assistant, "just tap my shoulder. I won't here you or see you for the next two hours. Good bye. Happy drilling."

The parallel universe that the Cinemizer took me to that day was not too far away—San Francisco, circa 2002, courtesy of the chick flick The Sweetest Thing featuring Cameron Diaz, Christina Applegate, and Selma Blair. The penis song kept me so entertained that I didn't even realize I was being smothered in dental dam. While his assistant sucked up my excessive saliva, I laughed my ass off as Cameron Diaz got blasted in the face with water from a glory hole. Pretty soon I forgot that my mouth was propped open and that I had two people staring intently into my mouth the entire time. It didn't matter—I wasn't really there in that dentist chair anymore. I was in a nightclub dancing with Thomas Jane. I was watching Selma Blair have sex with an elephant at work.

Technology was taking my worst experience and transforming into pure pleasure. I could have been staring at these blinding lights the whole time, but I hardly noticed them. The Cinemizer made me feel like a cyborg in a movie theater, not a torturee. I was in a parallel universe that had nothing to do with the reality of getting a major dental procedure done. The alien glasses took me away from my dystopia and into a fantasy world where best girl friends partied all night and chased guys and walked around town in their underwear. Meanwhile, Dr. Wong was left to his own devices to work on my root canal.

At the end of the movie, Diaz' character overcomes her fear of commitment and ends up dating a hottie she met at a club. Me? I had overcome a major fear too, with the help of these glasses. I hopped off the chair, gladly accepted the Vicodin prescription the doctor gave me, and made an appointment for two weeks later.

Here are five reasons why aliens might reach out to humankind via the islands of Japan first:

1. The Japanese are ready to greet them. Part of Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba's national security strategy includes musings about how we'd respond to an alien attack under a pacifist constitution. Late last year, he told the press:

If they descended, saying 'People on Earth, let's make friends,' it would not be considered an unjust attack on our country. And there is another issue of how can we convey our intentions if we don't understand what they are saying. We should consider various possibilities.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura has also stated his firm belief that extraterrestrials do exist. The Japanese government has detailed official guidelines on what to do if we do indeed come in contact with extraterrestrials.

You could make the counterargument that the Japanese government's heightened fear of alien attacks may deter extraterrestrials from landing there, I actually think that aliens will feel more at ease knowing that the Japanese are at least aware of and ready for their arrival. What's the fun in arriving at a party where nobody knows who you are?

2. We emailed them. In 1983, Japanese astronomers sent a radio message to Altair—a solar system 16 light years away—with 13 binary-encoded images 71 by 71 pixels each showing some basic facts about us, like where our planet is located, what humans look like, the structure of DNA, and the basic chemistry of life on earth. If someone on Altair had received this message, then we can expect a reply as early as 2015.

"When constructing a message to extraterrestrials, it's important that we make it a message that represents the diversity of human cultures," says Douglas Vakoch, Director of Interstellar Message Composition at SETI. "It makes sense to start with science because ET doesn't speak English or Japanese or Swahili, but I'm going to be very disappointed if the only thing we hear from ET is that 2+2=4. I want to know what they think is important in their world."

Messages sent to aliens—including the 1983 Japanese one—are written in prime numbers because it's a concept that intelligent species universally understand. A similar message was sent in 1974 from the world's largest radio telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, but this one was sent to a cluster of stars 25,000 light years away. We won't be hearing back from those aliens for a while. But the Altair-bound message holds promise to return within our lifetimes.

3. Japan has one of the only observatories that is actively seeking optical frequencies from outer space. Most observatories search only for radio frequencies. Even after Nobel Prize-winning physicist Charles Townes suggested looking for brief laser pulses for alien detection in the sixties, people ruled it out because it was too expensive and energy-consuming. Nishiharima is the only place that's currently scanning the skies for nanosecond-level pulses in the air waves. "I think it's very reasonable that the first detection of life beyond earth could happen in Japan," says Vakoch. "Brief pulses are like morse code. You can send an enormous amount of information very quickly. If someone could text message ET, it'll be Nishiharima. That assumes, of course, that we can decode what they were trying to say."

4. Japan will soon have AIs that match alien intelligence. Aliens are supposedly infinitely more advanced and brainy than humans are, so the most likely scenario is that, when they get here, they'll want to talk to AIs. Since the Japanese have already figured out how to navigate virtual worlds with brain power and have robots assisting humans in everyday life, it would surprise nobody if aliens showed up there first.

5. North Korea knows things the rest of us don't. North Korea is rumored to have recently released a statement claiming that their nuclear reactor has the dual capability of communicating wirelessly with alien species up to 1,000 light years away in real time. Of course, we can't believe everything that the North Korean government says, but seriously, I wouldn't be surprised at all if they were already communicating with other planets. If that's the case, it should be relatively easy for Japan, a neighboring country, to intercept their signals with laser pulses and let the world know definitively what Kim Jong Il has known for decades—that there is life beyond Earth.

Images: LabyrinthX via Flickr, Darren Hester via Flickr, Sankei, and Nishiharima Astronomical Observatory

The Gene Generation is a cultish movie about a dark, crime-ridden future. Think Blade Runner meets Ghost in the Shell. Singaporean movie director Pearry Reginald Teo draws a scenic dystopia, and Bai Ling stars as Michelle, a hot, soulless assassin who just wants to get out of the creepy hell she and her brother live in. But her brother, Jackie, keeps gambling away her hard-earned cash. One day, Jackie buys a weird mutant glove with tentacles ("A Chinese finger trap!") which turns out to be a unidirectional biological transcoder that reconfigures a person's DNA and could potentially end disease—or wipe out mankind. As usual, Michelle has to slaughter many people to get her brother out of trouble. Her performance and hotness are mesmerizing, even if you're just watching her walk around her blue-and-green-hued apartment in her black leather strappy shorts and holster. Michelle was probably born a badass; we don't know anything about her past, and she lives in a totally fictional future world.

The director of The Machine Girl, Noboru Iguchi, is best known for making provocative porn featuring lesbians and skatology. Ami is played by Minase Yachiyo, a swim suit model, and her partner-in-crime, Asami, is played by a well-known porn star with dozens of titles. This movie was made only for a US Release; porn stars in violent B movies don't always make it big back home, but busty Asian women fighting against ninjas and yakuza—well, there is apparently a good market for that kind of stuff here.

Ami, the teenager in The Machine Girl, starts off as an ordinary girl in present-day Japan. She plays basketball at school and, like Michelle, has dedicated her life to caring for her little brother. Even when the local yakuza boss's son throws him off a balcony to his deathbed, she keeps her cool, and tries to solicit apologies from those responsible. But when a family she visits goes psycho on her and turns her left arm into tempura, Ami transforms into a blood-and-guts-loving, vengeance-seeking mean killing machine.

Here's a quick point-to-point comparison of some of the similarities and contrasts between the two films.

Plot:
Gene: Badass older sister kills to pay the bills while her roguish little brother gambles it away and gets in trouble.
Machine: Badass older sister plots to kill everyone who was involved in the bullying death of her little brother.

Parents:
Gene: Murdered after owing too much gambling debt.
Machine: Committed suicide after being falsely accused of murder.

Weapons:
Gene: Handguns and sex appeal.
Machine: Pure vengeance and a machine gun arm made by her auto mechanic friends.

Outfit:
Gene: Sexy black leather everything.
Machine: Like a good Japanese schoolgirl, Ami is always in her uniform.

Nudity:
Gene: Yes, you get to see Bai Ling naked. And having sex.
Machine: Ironically, the pornstar-filled movie has no nudity. Just lots of spilled guts.

Cast and Crew:
Gene: Fight choreographer Jeff Imada (Fight Club, The Crow), producer Kim Winther (Mr. and Mrs. Smith)
Machine: Porn director Noboru Iguchi (Hot Girl on Toilet, Underage Girl on Toilet), actress Asami (Wild Thing x Asami, Let's Virtual Fuck With Asami)

I was fortunate enough to watch both these movies in the past week. What did I think? Honestly, Machine made me want to throw up in my mouth, but I enjoyed the humor and the sheer insaneness of the innocent-looking school girl. And as much as I am not ordinarily a sci-fi movie nut (remember, I'm the io9-er who has never seen Star Wars), I enjoyed Gene Generation. But probably less for the sci-fi and more for the hot Asian girl. What can I say? I prefer dating guys, but I think women are easier on the eyes.

The US premiere of is on June 5, followed by the West Coast premiere of The Machine Girl on June 6, both at the Another Hole in the Head film fest. Images by Another Hole in the Head

The protagonist was a starry-eyed, two-dimensional protagonist named Go who wore white ankle-length pants and struck cool, determined poses while moving in simple staccato animation. His car was called Ma-ha Gogo, or Mach No. Five, and it did seemingly impossible things like jump through the air, grow super-grip tires on command, and slash obstacles with rotary swords. (The series title has a triple meaning—the name of the car, the name of the boy who drives it, and an exclamatory expression.)

Mach GoGoGo was an instant hit. The plots were easy to follow, the characters immediately likable. Neither writer/producer Tatsuo Yoshida or director Tsuyoshi Sasakawa were car enthusiasts—in fact, neither even had a drivers license. But it didn't really matter. The two knew how to craft a good story. The near-impossible challenges imposed on the protagonist by evildoers were the perfect setup for themes like revenge, competition, and honor to play out over and over again. In one series of early episodes (each story often spanned two or three), Go races against a mysterious, remote-controlled, robot-driven car that has been causing accidents. Go quickly gains a reputation as the mercenary hero who can fight superhuman nemeses that even the cops are helpless against, and inadvertently launches into a busy career of globe-hopping and car-racing.

Go is cool and collected, but the rest of the anime is chock full of humor and an ironic mix of strengths and weaknesses. The girlfriend, Trixie, might complain about her foot hurting, but then she'll parachute out of a burning airplane; the father, who created the Mach 5, is an engineering genius but a social goof; and his little brother who runs around in a candy-striped bodysuit with his monkey, often solves crimes way before the adults do.

The characters in the original Speed Racer are not atypical of Japanese anime. In fact, you see the repetition of these same types of characters to this day—the adventurous, disobedient young male hero, the feminine-yet-sassy girlfriend, the wise but slightly goofy father, and the unbearably cute extras.

The original series ran over 52 episodes. It kicked off in a prime spot, 7PM on Sunday nights—one of the few times when children and families in Japan gathered to watch TV. You can still rent the dubbed originals at certain video rentals stores, and on Netflix if you're lucky. An anime remake came out in the 90s and was aired in the US, but it's not quite the same thing.

On one level, the Wachowski brothers' new Speed Racer preserves a lot of the elements of the classic anime. The Mach 5's special features are derived from the original, and Go, or Speed, is pretty much the same dude—as are some of the other main characters. But the similarities end there. Of course, the obvious difference is that the Hollywood version is live action and features super CGI and cost a gazillion dollars more to produce.

But more importantly, the essence of storytelling is completely different. The Hollywood version is chock full of drama and emotions—the child who dreams about racing all day in school, the mother who encourages him to follow his dreams, the family's tragedy of the dead Rex Racer (Speed's older brother). There's all this buildup and tension. None of this in the original anime. The very first episode begins very abruptly: Go "borrows" his dad's super car and enters it in a race, and wins. There's a certain charm about that blunt simplicity that is increasingly hard to preserve as the prerequisites for a box office action movie become more elaborate.

So whether you come home from Speed Racer opening night feeling amazingly hyped up or strangely dissatisfied, try to watch at least one episode of the original anime sometime soon. It's worth the 30 minutes, if only to see how its creators applied antiquated animation to portray superfast, superhuman car racing.

Robot Kingdom has been out of print since 1992. Although it got great reviews and the publishers had high hopes for it, sales figures were small. That was probably because the stuff Schodt was writing about was so alien to a U.S. audience. Schodt remembers seeing the book on the $1 rack at a bookstore in downtown San Francisco. Not long after that, Kodansha gave him back all rights to the book, as well as the original plates that were used to print it.

"The only problem with the book is that it was released ten years ahead of its time," says Chris Baker, a senior editor at Wired magazine. "If it had appeared in the era of ASIMO and AIBO, it would have found the audience it deserved." (Author Tim Hornyak published a follow-up to Robot Kingdom, called Loving the Machine, in 2006. It's a more pop-y, updated look at the robot industry, which, according to Hornyak, "has been very well received.")

In the 1980s, Americans seriously believed that the Japanese were going to take over the world. While technology manufacturing stateside was still subpar, it was equivalent to religious ritual in Japan—organized, routine, and very, very precise. Schodt, who had been hired to interpret during factory visits by major Japanese telecom companies visiting the U.S., was taken aback by the vast chasm between the two countries' processes. "The US didn't understand Japan's obsession with quality control and manufacturing technology," Schodt says. "They thought, we have the space shuttle, and we have the bomb. What else could we possibly need? Their factories were a mess."

When he returned to Japan, Schodt signed up for factory tours at JVC, Toshiba, Hitachi, and Fanuc. He found that each company had intense pride in their manufacturing processes and culture. The best of them had entire assembly lines formed by robots in virtually unmanned factories.

For the Japanese, robotics was not just a natural step in the evolution of the world; it was an enormous financial and emotional investment into a glorified future in which humanoid robots would eventually help humans in daily life. People were excitedly tossing around words like "robot kingdom" (ロボット王国)　and watching anime like Gundam and Astro Boy with starry-eyed hope for a happy sci-tech future. "Robots are a metaphor for the relationship between technology and culture," Schodt says.

The book itself is a classic—it talks about the first Japanese robot ever (a tea-serving mechanical bot from the 17th century), scifi robots, anime robots, religion's influence on robotics, the difficulties of defining the word "robot", and the promising future of the humanoid. Schodt took most of the photographs in the books on his own, and collected the rest via all-day train rides across Japan to meet his sources. He even drew all the graphs and diagrams in the book by hand.

In addition to predicting the rise of robots in Japan, Schodt also foresaw the manga craze that would hit the U.S. in the 1990s. In 1983, when he published the iconic Manga! Manga!, most Americans had never even heard of Japanese comics; today they take up entire sections of bookstores like Borders and Barnes & Noble.

We've come a long way since Robot Kingdom. Stories about new Japanese bots show up in the blogosphere every day, and we all know that Japan's headed into the next phase of full humanoid bot integration (because I told you so). But in 1988, Schodt's book was the only resource on Japanese robots that existed in the US.

If you ask the man himself, though, he'll tell you that he was just in the right place at the right time. "I haven't actually predicted anything very accurately in life," Schodt says. "All I've done is identify a couple of trends that were staring me in the face."

Spoken like a true futurist.

Frederik Schodt's home page

But first, some background: In January, roboticists unleashed a five-foot tall humanoid robot named Robovie in a trendy mall in downtown Osaka. Robovie's mission was to help lost shoppers find their way to their destinations. Using 16 cameras, six laser range finders, and nine RFID readers, Robovie judged the behavior of all shoppers, 20 at a time, approached those that looked disoriented, and pointed them in the right direction. Then, as they hastily thanked him and walked off, he rattled off a list of nearby restaurants in case they were hungry.

You already see humanoid robots in Japan attending religious ceremonies, making sushi, planting rice, answering phones in corporate offices, subbing in as dance partners, and feeding old people whose motor skills are starting to fail. Animal bots have been making a big breakthrough too—from the digital Tamagochi to Paro the furry therapeutic seal, Japanese people are experts at satiating their need for companionship or assistance via low-maintenance mechanical friends. Monikers like Robot Kingdom and Robot Nation, which have been used to describe Japan since the 80s, are relevant now more than ever—with a shrinking labor force, declining birth rate, and an aging population, the demand for robotic help in hospitals, nursing homes, offices, and retail spaces is sky high. Researchers in Japan are confident that, in a few years time, humans and robots will coexist happily in a fully integrated man-machine society.

So how exactly are these ambitious roboticists planning to do this? And is it really going to happen the way they say it will? Takayuki Furuta, the director of the Future of Robotics Technology Center in Chiba, tells me that they're right on track. He states that a primary goal of the collaboration is to establish international standards for humanoid robot software and hardware—in a similar manner to how techies determined what nuts and bolts and basic programs would comprise a standard computer so many years ago. Phase 1 (planning) and phase 2 (hardware) are complete as of March 2008; phase 3 (software) starts this month. "We're going to be the first country in the world with an official robotics ministry," he says.

In the US, he explains, there's a strong emphasis on developing software, like artificial intelligence and programs for military tools and weapons. But Japan doesn't have a military, so robotics research ends up going into applications for everyday life. And since Japan is a densely populated country with small living quarters, developing compact hardware for utilitarian humanoids becomes infinitely more important.

Perhaps the most important reason why Japan is fit to become the first country in the world with an official robot ministry is because the Japanese aren't afraid of robots. Since the 1950s, the idea of robots as friends has been engrained in the national psyche through animated characters like Astro Boy. "In America, you don't have a very positive image of humanoid robots," he says. "Look at the Terminator! In Japan, robots are our friends. It's part of our cultural background."

A survey conducted last year showed that 40% of Japanese women in their 20s and 30s talk to their computers, while 10% give them names. I'll be the first to admit that the Japanese have a penchant for giving life to otherwise inanimate objects. But most importantly, it's not considered weird at all. Several years ago, it was pretty much expected that single women who lived alone would share their homes with a Furby. More recently, families who couldn't own dogs sought canine companionship from their Aibos. When you look at it this way, it's almost natural that the next step would be full integration of robotics in daily life on a mass scale.

The initiative doesn't end in 2010, but that's the benchmark year by which they plan on having robots doing janitorial work, security, child care, client liaison work and intelligent wheelchairs nationwide. Roboduties will expand to everything else—driving cars, cooking dinner, producing TV shows, marrying humans—by 2020.

I wanted to make sure my regime was legit, so I called up Ryuta Kawashima, the the Tohoku University neuroscientist featured in Brain Age and Brain Age 2, and asked him some questions to make sure I was on track. Here's an excerpt from our interview:

Q: What does "brain training" mean?
A: By performing a cognitive task, you raise your ability to perform that specific task, and you can transfer that ability to other tasks, too. Think of it as enhancing your neural networks.
Q: Can I really get smarter just by playing this game?
A: You can't really measure smartness, but older people with Alzheimer's did improve their condition.
Q: Why should I play this game instead of going out and getting a PhD?
A: Times are tough. We live in a tough world, and people are trying to find ways to ease their souls. There's the theory that the heart is actually in the brain, so by training your brain, you're going to live a happier life. People are just starting to realize this.
Q: Yeah, and games are fun. Do any of the other brain games work?
A: I don't know about the copycats. I'm skeptical.
Q: Do people recognize you on the street?
A: They've started to, yes. It's a bit disconcerting.
Q: I would definitely recognize you if I saw you on the street. My mom, my brother, and I all watch your animated face bounce around on our DS screens every night before we go to bed.
A: Wow. Thanks.

Unlike Park's previous mega-hits, like Old Boy and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, Cyborg didn't become a giant box office hit in Korea. But it's doing pretty well in the film festival circuit overseas — it won an award in Berlin, and opened the festival in Hong Kong. It plays next at the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival on March 15th and 16th. Here's a quick analysis of what I felt were the most unique aspects of this movie:

Characters:
Beginning with overly imaginative, schizophrenic Il-Sun — played by pop heartthrob Rain — the story includes some unforgettable characters you learn to love. There's an elder woman with myth-o-mania, a guy who sewed up his own butt, a guy who fell in platonic love with a calf he was raising, a woman who's obsessed with her skin and her flying socks, and a girl whose dream is to join the Edelweiss Choir. And then there's Young-goon, who is convinced she is a cyborg with a mission to obliterate all "white coats" but isn't quite sure how she's supposed to recharge her batteries (instead of eating lunch, she has a lunch box full of alkaline cells that she sticks in her mouth at mealtimes). "I didn't come with an instruction manual," she says.

Emotional baggage:
Humans have a lot of emotional baggage. Perhaps one of the reasons Young-goon decided she was a cyborg was because she stopped feeling things — or she felt too much and inadvertently turned it all off. We get glimpses of her past, which include a grandmother who was convinced her offspring were all mice and a mother who avoided her child's existential questions by turning to radish. Later, when she finds the secret cyborg manifesto while staying at the hospital, it stipulates that the seven deadly sins for cyborgs are sympathy, thankfulness, hesitation, daydreaming, being sad, restlessness, and feeling guilty. In one of my favorite scenes in the movie, Il-sun performs a virtual operation on Young-goon, taking away her sympathy and allowing her to attain a full charge and become the killing machine that she was destined to be. It's interesting that this seemingly heartless act is really driven by a very human emotion, vengeance. Meanwhile, Il-sun takes pride in his stealing skills — his parents ignored him so much when he was a kid that he believes he is sometimes invisible.

Seeking comfort in machinery:
Since Young-goon can't relate to other humans, she seeks solace in her conversations with the vending machine and the pay phone, and she takes orders from the mysterious voice coming out of her radio. The nurses can't get her to eat, so at one point in the film, they decide to give her shock therapy. Lying there with hundreds of wires sticking out of the treatment cell they put her in, Young-goon feels right at home. She reveals that she was raised by electrical wires in an incubator. "I feel like I've been born again," she says as the session ends and her toes light up. She walks off her wheelchair, goes upstairs, loads up her ammo, and goes on a full-scale massacre of the evil white coats, storing cartridges in her mouth and dispatching bullets machine gun-style from her dainty fingers.

Here's the totally pop-y trailer:

More importantly, though, watch the videos and listen to the sounds. They're done with an amazing attention to detail that's inherent in Japanese culture. It's a key to understanding why the country spawns multi-tasking robots and cell phone handsets that look like they were made in 2050. "The idea of spirits residing in small things is very Japanese," Cornelius says.

I've been a fan of Cornelius since the late 90s, when Fantasma — a first album chock full of happy music that reminded me of a night at the circus or a sunny day on the beach — first came out. Back then, he took SXSW by a storm when he debuted live in the US with his mash-up video projections perfectly synced with the beats in his music.

Like A Rolling Stone:

Cornelius: For this video, we created a world that nobody has ever seen before. No matter how hard you try to decipher it, you can't really tell what's going on. Where is this world behind the doorways leading to? Here's a cow... this might be a washing machine...

We used mirrors to create this world. We lined up the figurines against a mirror about the size of a large coffee table, took one picture with a steel camera, moved them a tiny bit, took another picture, and continued to move them a little bit at a time and taking lots of pictures. We used this as material to edit with CG and created this stop motion animation-like effect. We erased the mirror lines and combined certain elements, making it into a completely indecipherable world. It gives the impression of watching humanity from afar.

(Video director Koichiro) Tsujikawa and I came up with this together. It didn't take that long to make — each video usually takes a month. Taping it actually just took 2-3 days, but the process of coming up with a concept and then materializing it takes a lot longer.

Fit Song:

Cornelius: Everything that's moving is CGI. That's not real sugar, even though it really looks like it, right? The biscuits are CGI, too. There's an old movie (from the 1980s) called The Way Things Go. It basically documents a long chain of events — something bumps into something else, and then that thing opens up, and then something comes out of that — one action leading to another action in continuous succession. We made something very similar by using stop motion animation and CGI to create movement that isn't ordinarily possible.

The set is actually my middle school friend's vacation home. We didn't want to do it in too big a space because it would make creating this scenario much more complicated. We also didn't have such a huge budget.

The guy who did the CGI is a top level CGI artist in Japan (named Munechika Inudo). He'd been working with the director, Mr. Tsujikawa, on some TV commercials, so he did this for us at a very reasonable price.

Mr. Inudo is pretty amazing. He graduated from Tokyo University with a degree in physics. He's a drummer, and he also won his company's marathon, and on top of that, he's super good looking. He reads math books before going to bed. This video was the last thing he did before he left his company to become a freelancer. It was a good opportunity for him to present his CGI skills—it encompasses everything he can do in one package. Since leaving his full-time job, he's had immense success as a freelance CGI artist.

In retrospect, if I hadn't been such a Tetris freak as a kid, I would probably be a completely different person today. Here's how a simple video game taught me things that neither my parents, teachers, nor any religion could have ever ingrained in my stubborn-ass pre-pubescent head. I'll go through the lessons step by step.

Take calculated risks.
In the beginning, when you still have a lot of physical and emotional space to work with, you have to go for the Tetris score, even if it means cranking out the first few minutes with no instant gratification. Patience, confidence in the future, and comfortableness with the unknown are a must. Don't worry—the long orange stick will come.

Keep things simple.
Don't try to get fancy and open up the board to two Tetris opps or create pockets for hard-to-place blocks unnecessarily.

Whatever you do, do it with dignity.
Dignity could mean several things. It could mean not leaving holes in work that has potential to be flawless. It could also signify the need to stay even-tempered despite the chaos taking place on-screen.

The nail that sticks out should be hammered down.
Try not to create bumps in the surface of your palate unless you're anticipating a green or blue block that requires a hook to rest on. Smoother surfaces are easier to deal with, and you don't want to be the one that's causing the entire board trouble.

Get perspective.
Your blocks are stacking up and your anxiety is snowballing. Don't let it kill you—take what comes and spread it out so that it doesn't hurt too much in one place.

When faced with adversity, practice humility.
So you screwed up, and your board is totally out of sync. This is where you practice moderation. You can't expect to recover by executing some flashy move that's going to blow out the holes and miraculously smooth things out. You'll probably die trying. Take things one line at a time, and repeat to yourself: This, too, shall pass. Before you know it, you'll be back in the groove.