Towering inf-urn-o (sorry)

We've written before about the appearance in Tokyo of budget, high-rise repositories for your loved ones' remains, but here comes the most up-to-date and, we must say, creepiest version yet. Tops' "automatic remains management audiovisual system" envisages multistorey car parks full of urns of ashes, stored for recall at the swipe of an IC-chipped card over a sensor. Urns are conveyed to a chapel where a video message from the departed and the appropriate sutras can be played back, having first been edited according to the family's wishes if needed (see Tops' website for a Flash animation of the system in action). All of which suits a space-strapped city like Tokyo, though it creates the problem that since holidays in Japan tend to be rare and universal (i.e., everyone heads for the same places at exactly the same time), a visit to a communal burial site could leave you stepping over bodies in more than one sense if you want to spend some quality time with a video of the deceased.

[Via Slashdot Japan (Japanese)]