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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. I’m on the phone with a professor of robotics, speaking in a pidgin of Japanese and English about technological culture — specifically the difference between American and Japanese robots.
The Great East Japan Earthquake happened a few months earlier and I’m working on a feature about why there is a distinct lack of Japanese-made robots at the site of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. 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. Furry, seal-shaped robots like Paro, for instance, to help soothe loneliness among the elderly and dementia patients. Or Honda’s now-defunct Asimo, an adorable humanoid robot that was retired so its tech could be applied to more practical uses in nursing and road transport.
It’s now 2026. I’ve had Mirumi for about a month and a half now. It’s another kawaii social companion robot from Yukai Engineering, a Japanese startup, and is made to help ease loneliness. It’s meant to imitate a shy infant. It’s designed to hang on a purse or bag strap. When its sensors detect humans, it’ll move its tiny robotic head so it can peer curiously at you with its googly eyes. But when you approach or touch it, it’ll duck its head away, because, well, it’s shy.
As I stick Mirumi onto my backpack, I think to myself, Nothing has changed in a decade. This is the latest consumer bot, the inheritor of a long history of Japanese robots whose purpose is to improve mental health and well-being by combating loneliness.
However, I, Mirumi, and Japanese robot philosophy were not prepared for my deranged cat.
I was sent a gray Mirumi as well.
There is evidence that social robots like Mirumi could help fight the loneliness epidemic, particularly in elderly populations. One study found that during the covid-19 pandemic, interacting with robotic pets “enhanced well-being and quality of life” during lockdowns and stringent social distancing among older patients suffering from dementia. In medical and public health sectors, chronic loneliness is widely acknowledged as being linked to worse physical and mental health outcomes. When you take that into consideration, it makes sense that Japan and other Asian countries — cultures experiencing an aging population paired with increasingly declining birth rates — are perhaps more invested in the concept of cute, friendly social robots than here in the West.
In reality, Mirumi is adorably boring.
On my packed commute to the office, Mirumi swiveled its head and engaged no one. Perhaps New Yorkers are a cynical bunch and saw this as yet another insufferable Labubu. I was probably too busy answering emails and Slacks on my phone to notice their reactions, or Mirumi’s. At the office, Mirumi first garners attention when I pull down the fur on its back to plug a USB-C cable into its butt. The sight is borderline obscene and funny. It gets more notice once my coworkers start hearing the oddly loud mechanical whirr its head makes when it turns to look at people.
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