Atomic toys last all summer long

One of my all-time favorite Japanese robots is Atom, also known as Astro Boy. Created by comic genius Osamu Tezuka in 1951, Atom became enormously popular through a 1960s anime TV series and remains an icon of how Japanese regard robots as friends instead of foes.

Atom is special for several reasons. He has seven amazing powers, such as 100,000 horsepower strength and the ability to fly at Mach 5. He was also the first robot with a soul, a distinction that earned him a spot in the real-life Robot Hall of Fame at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science.

But Atom also longed to become human, and was greatest in his role bridging the gap between humans and robots. Attempting to overcome their mutual prejudice in Tezuka's futuristic tales, he was a heroic ambassador for peace powered by atomic energy. As science fiction author and critic Hideaki Sena writes, part of Atom's huge legacy in Japan was that robot stories became "interfaces between culture and science."

That's why robots remain so popular today here. Nearly sixty years after Tezuka's boundless imagination gave birth to him, Atom can still be found everywhere in Japan as toys, in new animated series and in other forms. The theme for the original 1960s TV show plays every time a train pulls in to bustling Takadanobaba Station on the JR Yamanote line in central Tokyo; in the stories, Takadanobaba is where Atom came to life in a laboratory. Atom also turns up in unexpected places like this noodle shop window in rural Ome, western Tokyo, where a vintage toy (above) offers a warm, nostalgic welcome to patrons intent on tucking into a bowl of stringy soba noodles. Atom, here's slurping at you, kid.