Mospeng-kun is a tissue-dispensing robot created by InterRobot Inc., a robot development and rental company based in western Japan.
When the friendly Mospeng-kun detects a person nearby, it utters a high-pitched onegai shimasu and offers up a pack of tissues. When the tissues are taken from the robot's hand, it thanks the customer with an arigato gozaimashita and grabs another tissue pack from the cartridge for the next person.
InterRobot's rental fees start at 100,000 yen ($835) for 5 days, which is quite a bit more than the going rate for a human tissue distributor. But Mospeng-kun looks to be a cheerful worker, constantly maintaining a smile on its face monitor. In addition, according to the company website, Mospeng-kun is capable of gathering information about the people it encounters on the job. Unfortunately, though, the robot really needs to learn to work faster before it is ready for the sidewalks of Shibuya. Watch the video.
Tim
Absurd! Yet strangely compelling!
[]dafuzz
People unfamiliar with Japan might not understand the concept of "tissue kubari", a kind of street marketing where kids hand out free tissues to passersby near train stations. The free tissues usually come with a printed card inside that's like an advertisement. Mospeng-kun looks like it's made for tissue kubari work, but maybe a little slow...
[]Eeyore
I've never been to Japan, but I'm told that those aren't "facial tissues", that's "bathroom tissue". Reportedly, public bathrooms don't often have supplies of "toilet paper" in them. People on the street hand out packages of TP that are covered in advertising for local businesses. So, when you need to use a facility, first you grab some TP from a person on the street, then you head to the facility for your business, and they hope you read the advertising while you're in there. One problem with this system is that the advertisers don't want to give tissue to foreigners who probably don't read Japanese and probably won't visit the advertised business.
[]akagisan
Oh no, the already annoying tissue distributor people now also get backup by robots! I remember strolling in Shibuya and every 5m there where this tissue dispender people which you had to avoid...
[]Nicodraxus T
Well Eeyore, they're just tissues. I've been living in Tokyo for almost 10 years, and received more than a few of these little bundles (though never from a robot). True that many public washrooms don't have toilet paper (we're talking the public-toilets-in-parks kind of toilet here, not in the convenience store or in departments stores of course, which are plentiful. I can't remember the last time I had to use one of those no-toilet-paper outhouse-like places.) But you can really use them any way you like. They're just fine for blowing the old nose too.
Oh, and they give 'em to foreigners all right. Believe me. After you've been here long enough, you go out of your way to avoid them. But whether you get offered basically just depends on the person handing them out. There are no real instructions to these university kids that are handing them out. A few non-Japanese here feel like they're being left out on purpose, when it's far more likely that the person handing them out is thinking, "Oh no... I don't know how to say 'Yoroshiku onegaishimasu' in English! I'll just let him walk by..."
I'm a guy. I've been given ads for everything from manga coffee shops, to eyewear shops, to hostess bars, to make-up ads and beauty salons. It doesn't really seem to matter who gets them. Most of the dispensing people really don't care. They just have to unload x-many boxes per day. Any perceived affront is usually on the part of the paranoid foreigner.
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