The Japanese robots at the Kennedy Center’s “Robotopia Rising” exhibit are cute, cuddly ambassadors from a future packed with smiling, happy plastic slaves. Japan’s massive aging population is creating a need for robotic elder-care assistants, machines that can remind the aged to take medicine, turn them in bed, or alert working adult children to problems at home.

This makes perfect sense for a culture that worships its ancestors, loves technology and has evolved economically to the point where family can no longer afford to care for family personally. “Robotopia Rising” asserts that Japanese robots are made to emulate their pop culture, equal parts Astro Boy and Hello Kitty. Here in America, we just chuck our old folks into crooked homes and get back to making actual Terminators as quickly as possible.

“Robotopia Rising” is part of a larger exhibit at the Kennedy Center, “Japan: Culture + Hyperculture,” and it’s easily the most magnetic part. I didn’t see a lot of wide-eyed toddlers and balding geeks like me lingering breathlessly over the admittedly gorgeous lacquer sculptures in the hallway, or straining to touch the gorgeous textile artwork with trembling, sweaty fingers.

I’ve created a photo gallery from the show here … and as usual, there’s much, much more after the jump …

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This is Rachel, my girlfriend. She’s beautiful, sweet, loving, and endlessly patient with my constant mood swings. She’s also sort of bionic.

When she was a little girl, she started developing scoliosis pretty badly. Doctors eventually opened her back right up and fused two titanium rods to her increasingly unruly spine.

“That oughta teach it a thing or two,” everyone thought. Rachel healed up, and life proceeded normally, with flawless posture.

Now, though, there are some new problems. See that bump right beside the scar there? That’s not her shoulder blade — that’s the ends of her titanium rods, bending away from the spine and sticking out. It’s causing some problems. Her back is sore, there’s some numbness.

Tomorrow afternoon, Rachel’s going under the knife again. This time the surgeons are going to go in and saw off the ends of those rods, get ‘em to lay down a little bit. For some reason I envision her doctor using bolt cutters, those big clippers people use in the city to steal bikes. I doubt those are in the toolbox, though.

They say it’s no big deal, she’s only going to be in the hospital for two days and will be up and around in a week. If you ask me, two days is an eternity in an age when heart attack victims are all but shoved out the door in a shopping cart after their surgery.

I know this is no big deal, and that everything’s going to be just fine. But man, I’m worried all the same. Say a little prayer for us, please?

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