"Unboxing Mirumi is like traveling back in time. It's late 2025 when it arrives on my doorstep in a box that looks like a shopping bag. Inside sits a fluffy pink robot with an owlish face and surprisingly strong slothlike arms. It's soft to the touch, and then suddenly, I'm transported back to Tokyo, Japan, in 2011. I'm a lowly editorial assistant at an English-language trade magazine for the American Chamber of Commerce, sitting in a cramped office near Roppongi Hills."
"Japan is often perceived to be a mecca of advanced robotics, but for this dangerous operation, the government opted to use the PackBot - made by iRobot, the American company famous for Roombas - to venture where humans could not. The reasons were myriad, but it boiled down to the fact that in Japan, robots are envisioned more as friends than faceless workers built for grunt work."
Mirumi arrived in late 2025 as a fluffy pink, owlish-faced robot with strong slothlike arms and a soft exterior. The unboxing evoked memories of Tokyo in 2011 and work on robotics culture, including contrasts between American and Japanese approaches. The Great East Japan Earthquake prompted use of American PackBot machines at Fukushima, highlighting a gap between industrial utility and Japan's friendlier robotic designs. Japan's robots are often envisioned as companions, exemplified by seal-shaped Paro and Honda's Asimo, whose technology shifted toward practical nursing and transport. Mirumi is a kawaii social companion robot from Yukai Engineering and was owned for about a month and a half by early 2026.
Read at The Verge
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