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 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]

If you thought that recycling garbage, paper, plastics and electronics covers about everything – well, prepared to be surprised.

The Fukuoka municipal government in Japan decided to recycle used dentures (false teeth) . Around the city will be designated boxes where people can throw away their old dentures. If you think that with this new recycling effort you will be able to get dentures for cheap – you are out of luck. The teeth will be send to recycling factories where precious metals can be extracted from the used teeth. You can find metals like gold and platinum in false teeth and dentures and that’s mean money.

The project administration estimates that each set of teeth can be worth $30 of precious metals. Consider the natural habit of the Japanese to recycle, and you’ve got a gold mine in your hands. But this time it’s for a good cause: The money collected from recycling the teeth will be donated to UNICEF.

What’s next on Japan weird recycling list? Let us know if you’ve got any ideas.

More in [Mainichi]