Japan was delivered to ashes by technology and rose from them by the same means, so it’s unsurprising the country arguably has the most complicated relationship with these modern tools–even more than the hyper-wired South Korea. In a world of technophobia, Japan has learned to stop worrying and love the bomb because, you know, keep your friends close and your enemies closer. From a RT piece about a Japanese pro-robot initiative:

Japan is, by popular opinion, the most robot-savvy nation, and it’s no surprise. Since the 1950s, love for machines has engulfed the nation and embedded itself firmly in the Japanese psyche.

And it wasn’t just vacuum cleaners either. Robots were beginning to be imagined as companions as well.

According to the IO9 website, a survey conducted in 2007 revealed that 40 percent of the nation’s women in their 20s and 30s actually talk to their computers. Another 10 percent give them names.

The nation is already crazy about robotic domestic pets, and one Australia-based researcher predicts we’re going to get anything from mechanical dogs to baby seals popping up within the next 10-15 years.

“Pet robotics has come a long way from the Tamagotchi craze of the mid-90s. In Japan, people are becoming so attached to their robot dogs they hold funerals for them when the circuits die,” Dr Jean-Loup Rault of the University of Melbourne wrote in a paper published in the Frontiers in Veterinary Science journal.•