In the same way US science fiction was, for decades, the propaganda arm of space exploration, Japanese SF is as preoccupied with robotics. And in the same way that many US-based rocket scientists and space entrepreneurs are influenced by the science fiction of their youth, so too are Japanese AI specialists and cyberneticists. And Japanese robots just got very strange:

 Meet the Telenoid 1. And it'll be available for only $8000! So if you ever wanted to communicate with a far-off loved one in a bizarre sort of telepresent meatspace facisimile