Tokyo - "Welcome - would you like a hot drink today?," a soft female voice purrs in the cold winter air.

Confused, the first-time visitor to Japan makes his way over to the vending machine where he chooses from a dozen boiling hot cups of coffee with flavours ranging from sticky sweet and milky to night black. This machine talks?

"Thank you. Have a nice day," the artificial voice says, catching perfectly the correct intonation of politeness to make the Japanese customer feel appreciated.

Welcome to Japan, where people might be forced to live in the most cramped quarters of any industrialized nation, but, with the aid of a unique plethora of high-tech gadgets, lead more pampered lives than anybody else on the planet.

After all, it is Japan that has developed robots designed to serve as partners for their human flatmates, helping and supporting them as well as taking care of the elderly or washing the dishes.

Other Japanese strokes of inventive genius are much simpler, but nonetheless no less practical - the talking toilet being a case in point.

The toilets, with controls reminiscent of spaceship consoles, have more to offer than just the heated seat and the warm-water cleaning function.

"Toilets are the only place in Japan where one can be alone," said a receptionist at a Tokyo toilet showroom. "Many want to relax there."

Lids open automatically upon approach, and for the male members of the household, the toilet seat can be lifted by remote control. Echoing to peaceful birdsong, one toilet emits the sweet smell of wild roses while another accompanies one's daily motions with the dulcet tones of Mozart.

Japanese companies boast unparalleled inventiveness in making the most of the cramped living conditions in small, basement-less Japanese homes.

Every nook and cranny must be used - with inflatable hot-air chambers for drying laundry, plastic bags in which voluminous duvets can be compressed to a fraction of their size for summer storage with the aid of a vacuum cleaner or tubes pumping warm water from the bathtub into washing machines that are still designed to use only cold water.

Outside the apartment, high-tech "facilitators" accompany Japanese life 24 hours a day, seven days a week. All-hour convenience stores sell everything a customer may need at 4 am - from hot food to porn comics while there are vending machines for everything from buying concert tickets to recharging a mobile phone.

Mobile phones are a case in point - not for them the simple text-messaging functions and cameras, no. It is as easy to read a novel, pay for a taxi or book a vacation with a mobile phone in Japan.

At the same time, taped messages also seem to relieve the Japanese of the burden of thinking for themselves. "Please make sure that you did not leave any of your belongings," loudspeakers at train stations all over Japan repeat endlessly. "Leave the carriage after the person in front of you and take care not to stumble."

Trucks are equally worried about pedestrian welfare: "Attention please, I am turning left now," the looped recording says while millions of escalators warn everyone over and over to please mind their step. (dpa)