The X account of a 55-year-old mother from Matsuyama, Japan features a variety of shinkai seibutsu (deep sea creatures) of a different kind.
Sayuri Mori’s giant oarfish, for example, has a transparent body that shows cogwheels and other appliance components as internal organs. Other similar creations of Mori increased her X followers to 10,000.
Mori started her art hobby by making crepe paper crafts before she was inspired to create her shinkai seibutsu models by her interest in schematics of the internal structure of robots and fish that she fillets and cooks. She uses materials sourced from plastic model shops, home improvement centers and 100-yen shops, The Asahi Shimbun reports.
Meanwhile, reporters got a glimpse of a new monk presented by Professor Seiji Kumagai of the University of Kyoto’s Institute for the Future of Human Society at a Buddhist temple on 24 February.
A journalist from national broadcaster NHK confessed to the sitting monk with gloved hands held together in prayer form that he worries too much.
“Buddhism teaches that it is important not to blindly follow one’s thoughts or rush headlong into things. One approach is to calm your mind and let go of the thought itself,” the monk told the reporter, the Straits Times (ST) reports.
The monk dubbed “Buddharoid” is a diminutive two-legged, Chinese-made “Unitree G1” humanoid robot developed by Unitree and programmed by Kumagai’s team to dispense spiritual advice using artificial intelligence (AI).
The robo-monk brings AI and robotics together, offering spiritual advice and holding religious conversations while also performing human-like physical motions.
“In the future, it is conceivable that they may assist with or replace some of the religious rituals traditionally performed by human monks,” ST quotes the university as saying.