On this episode of Hello World, Bloomberg Businessweek’s Ashlee Vance heads to Japan to find people who are trying to wake the country up from its technological slumber. His journey goes from Tokyo to Kyoto and Osaka. Along the way, he meets with Japan’s top roboticists making lifelike androids.

He heads to Hitachi’s vaunted research labs to see the machines – robot helpers and autonomous vehicles - that the company thinks will take care of Japan’s senior citizens in the years to come. And he hangs out with a host of eccentric characters from robotics hobbyists to the world’s most prolific inventor–an 88-year-old man who claims to have invented both the floppy disk and the most stimulating sex potion known to man.