The name for the tower will be “Tokyo Sky Tree”, or Tōkyō Sukai Tsurii ,and it will be finished in 2011. 610 meters of concrete and steel, in the heart of Tokyo. If you also want a tower like this in your back yard, you should prepare some money. The cost of the tower is estimated in 60 billion yen or 555 million dollars (if you still believe in the dollar).

For those of you that are concerned what will happen to the tower during earthquakes, you should know that in the bottom of the tower you will find a five tier concrete “pagodas” that are supposes to withstand very strong earthquakes.

The tower will have some restaurants in the top, and a TV station – Nothing crazy or weird. What brings us to believe that until the tower will be completed there will be more weird news about robots that will live in the upper floor. We expect no less from the Japanese.

In the mean time you can enjoy more images (click to enlarge):

And a view from the top of the Tokyo Sky Tree

Here is a video of the name unveiling ceremony:

A maid café’ is opened recently is the Royal/T in Culver City near Los Angeles. The café will serve dishes like miso sandwiches and Japanese chicken curry rice. In The deserts section you will find Kyoto sunset parfait and a variety of Japanese teas.

The 10,000 ft. Royal/T will also serve as an art gallery and a shop that will offer Japanese art, books, toys and more. It’s seems the aim of the space is to expose the huge Japanese art collection Susan Hancock, an art collector.

The last attempt to export the idea of custom play restaurants (or “cosplay café” as it called in Japan) wasn’t so successful. The “I Maid Café” was opened in Toronto in October 2006 and was closed two years after. That’s although the Canadian maid café, got covered in national newspaper and a TV show. The video below shows an interview with the Canadian maid café owner.

It seems that the café was copying the exact cafe’s in Tokyo:

What do you think: Are maid cafés will become a Japanese export around the world, or will stay with the sushi for the mean time? Tell us in the comments below.

We all know that Japanese loves robots and that the robots can do all kind of thing for them. They can be our best friends, decide what we watch on TV, or just be stupid and useless. But now they can also play for them in a concert.

Toyota showed a performance by introducing its line of robots in Aichi in Japan. The robots playing are the “DJ Robot” and the “Partner Robot” (standing). Partner robots are promised to be available to the general public in 2010, to help daily chores around the house and in hospitals.

The robots played some popular jazz songs like “Moonlight serenade” by Glenn Miller, “Stompin ‘at the Savoy” by Edgar Simpson, and “Take the ‘A’ Train” which is written by Billy Strayhorn from the Duke Ellington Orchestra.

In the mean time you can watch the complete video from the show after the break.

Well it’s certainly an advance from cleaning the toilet for us. But the robots seem just programmable and we would love to see a robot doing a free jam session. Next time you visit Tokyo, be sure to throw in spare change for that poor and lonely robot playing at the street corner.

More (Japanese translated): [Robot Impress]

A new robot is supposed to clean urinals. The engineers at Mertec Engineering, the company that brought us this life-changing invention, claim that the robot can save eight liters of water while cleaning urinals. And it does this in only 10 seconds. If you happen to be in Kobe airport, you can watch the invention in action.

The robot is called “DASUBEE” that after the letters DCBA, which are ACBC backwards. The origin for that name is the reverse process which help the robot clean the urinals. No points on copywriting here.

Anyway, If you want it to help you with your cleaning chores, you should prepare to cough up 1,000,000 Yen, which are like $9,600. Let us save you the calculation, you can buy lot’s of brushes and detergent with this kind of money. In the mean time you can relax with a bunch of robots killing each other or some useless robots.

More: [3yen]

Source (Japanese): [Robot Watch]