Japan is one of the most flourishing places in the world for robotics. As I am writing this, I am heading back home after an amazing week at IREX 2013 (International Robotic Exhibition), which took place at Tokyo Big Sight. This exhibition mainly focuses on industrial robotics, but this year was special because IROS 2013 (International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems), which is one of the main academic conferences dedicated to robotics, was presented at the same time. Even if a lot of researchers and academic exhibitors were complaining about the overlapping dates for both events and about the large distance (a 10 minute walk) between the exhibition hall and the IROS talks, it was really great to have many types of commercialized and research robots at the same location. But most of all, it was impressive to see more than 100,000 people attending this show in only four days.