Robot antiques roadshow

On the road in rural Japan recently, I spotted this guy amid some old teacups and lamps at a very curious antiques shop in Kurashiki, Okayama Prefecture. Some of these older toy robots from the fifties and sixties can fetch tens of thousands of yen, or a lot more, in Japan.

The shop is called Sanyo-do and it's worth checking out if you're in Kurashiki, famed for its old warehouses along the canal. Not only does Sanyo-do inexplicably have dozens of porcelain HMV dogs on its roof (the terrier listening to the gramophone), its upper floor houses an amazing piggy bank museum -- which happens to include a piggy bank in the shape of a robot welding arm!

Perfect for budding little industrialists.