YouTube isn’t all cat videos and aspiring singers, you know; it’s actually filled with genuinely creative and talented folks. As proof, we present to you a Japanese guy’s channel dedicated to brushing his teeth with guns.
May, 2014 (Page 19)
In today’s fast-moving world of entertainment television and movies, many productions have been made possible with the advent of computer-generated images (CGI). A lot of movies and TV shows wouldn’t be conceivable without a little help from the green screen. That’s why it’s so rare today to see some production crews go back and do it “old-school”.
A small production in Taiwan has shared the secrets behind their “movie magic” in a short video, and it’s something that you really have to see, if only because it’s sure to put a big smile on your face.
Three-dimensional printers are the wave of the future. They are already changing the way some products are manufactured and what can be printed is now only limited to our imagination. Most people are thinking small, but a company in China is thinking big, as big as a house…actually, literally a house! Once these houses pass the requisite safety checks, a massive number of people could be living in 3-D printed houses in only a few short years!
Almost all of the nice tableware in my apartment are pieces that my wife brought with her when we moved in together. As a bachelor, most of what was in my cupboards came from the 100-yen shop, with the exception of one pricy whiskey glass I bought when I decided that even if there was no one around to see me do it, I really shouldn’t be drinking straight from the bottle.
Of course, this scrimping on cutlery and dishes meant more money to throw into buying video games. I may have considered upping my eager budgets for such things if I’d seen these awesome plates and cups from fabled game publisher Square Enix.
That is, until I saw their astronomical price tags.
While some of us get to spend our days taking selfies, slurping on Starbucks and shopping at designer stores, others are not quite so lucky.
In a crushing reminder of the disparities and injustice that exist in our world, a woman shopping at luxury New York department store Saks Fifth Avenue has discovered a note at the bottom of her bag written by a man imprisoned in a forced labour camp in China, pleading for help contacting his family and the United Nations.
When most people hear “Japanese female musician,” the image that springs to mind is an idol singer, covered in frills and girl-next-door sweetness. You’ll get no arguments from us against the theory that Japan produces more bubblegum pop princesses than anywhere else, and the county’s not likely to lose the top spot on that list anytime soon.
But not every female vocalist to achieve success in Japan did so by hitching her wagon to the idol system star. While its popularity has ebbed and flowed multiple times, the history of girls’ rock stretches back at least three decades in Japan, and today we take a look at, and a listen to, some of its stars.
As well as being the start of the new business and academic year, April in Japan also marks the time when new graduates make their first forays into the world of full-time employment and many companies rotate their staff both to keep them on their toes and help them acquire new skills. It’s a fun, frenetic time of year, and everyone from kids in their new school uniforms to fresh-faced employees wearing crisp, black suits looks tremendously smart and presentable as they hurry to their place of education or employment, eager to make the most of their day.
In May, however, it all comes crashing down. Reality sets in and people start to realise that everything is just as awful as it was before, albeit with a few quirks and a shiny new name badge or lunchbox. The fire in kids’ bellies goes out, the twinkle disappears from new employees’ eyes, and they start to approach their work with all the enthusiasm of a pot-smoking snail going through a serious emo phase.
This, dear reader, is gogatsu-byou; the phenomenon that occurs every May and affects millions of Japanese to some degree or other.
A friend of mine has a theory about Japanese pop idol performances. In his opinion, the real show isn’t the performers on stage, but the fans in the audience putting their unabashed passion on display as they cover themselves from head to toe in clothing bearing the likeness of their favorite singer.
You can make a similar argument about Tokyo’s anime shopping mecca of Akihabara. Sure, the neighborhood is packed with specialty stores, each of which is in turn packed with the rarest and/or latest merchandise. As interesting as the inventories of professional products may be, though, they’re often upstaged by the creations of fans who flock to the district to show them off, such as the anime-decaled cars of Japan’s itasha capital, the Akihabara UDX parking garage.
Rakuten Research has released the results of an online poll about the kinds of men women in Japan do not want to marry, and as a result the heads of lonely trolls are exploding all over Japan.
Collating results from 100 female secretaries between the ages of 30 and 49, the survey had three possible answers for each prompt: “I’d be OK with marrying him,” “I’d be hesitant to marry him,” and “I absolutely would not marry him.” Only the 10 list of undesirable traits in potential husbands were published, and only three qualify as being so bad that the respondents said there’s no way they’d marry them.
A Sunday newspaper in my native England used to run a column called “Can you get a table?” in which reporters would call fully-booked high-end restaurants claiming to be representing various celebrities of differing degrees of fame, and see whether they could wrangle a table for that night. A-listers tended to garner responses along the lines of “yes, I think that can be arranged”, while talent show contestants were more likely to be met with apologies and mumbling. Thus, order in celeb-land was successfully maintained.
I was amused and impressed, therefore, to read that there’s a restaurant in Tokyo that can’t even make room for the most powerful man on the planet to have dinner with the Japanese Prime Minister. When Obama met Shinzo Abe last week, Abe took him for world-class sushi at Sukiyabashi Jiro. However, sushi wasn’t Abe’s first choice. He wanted to take Obama-san to Tempura Kondo, but the booked-out restaurant turned them down. “Customers with reservations are more important,” the owner is reported to have said. “Even for the President of the United States, I can’t disappoint my customers who already made bookings.”
Malaysian officials have released a preliminary report about the Flight 370 disappearance that says the official rescue operation didn’t start until four hours after the plane vanished from radar.
CNN reports that Malaysian officials also noted it took 17 minutes for anyone to notice that the plane had gone off the radar.
The gist of the report — officials are still far from finding the missing plane.
When you’re in charge of marketing for an organization with a name as bland as Kitarumoi Fishery Cooperative Association, we can see how you’d come to the conclusion that your employer could use a quick injection of stylishness and visual appeal in the public eye. This being Japan, there are two quick ways to do this.
The first is to hire a popular actress or idol singer, dress her up in a short skirt and/or revealing top, and get her to pose with whatever product you’re promoting, which in the case of the Kitarumoi Fishery Cooperative Association is currently amaebi, or sweet shrimp.
We’re not sure if this was cost prohibitive or if every spokesmodel on the company’s shortlist turned out to have a shellfish allergy, but the marketing team instead went with plan B: turn the shrimp they’re selling into a cute anime girl.
With only about 20,000 residents, the city of Oarai, in Ibaraki Prefecture, isn’t exactly bursting with entertainment options. If you do find yourself with some time to kill there, though, you could stop by the Aqua World aquarium, where aquatic life including sea lions, jellyfish, and dolphins are on hand to greet visitors.
The facility is even home to a number of sharks. Don’t worry, they’re not man-eaters or anything. The sharks might just eat each other, though.
Castle of Cagliostro was the first film anime legend Hayao Miyazaki ever directed, and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind the first he wrote on his own, but Castle in the Sky Laputa was the first motion picture produced by Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli. As the title suggests, Laputa features a floating civilization, as well as airships, incantations, and magical pendants.
While the flying castle and airships are still as fictional as a catbus or bread-delivering witch, this summer, fans will be able to get their hands on a replica of Laputa’s pendant that reacts when they recite one of the anime’s spells.
As a student, I always picked foreign language over art when choosing electives, and when it was time to select an extracurricular activity, I opted for the football team over the painting club. I don’t regret those choices. The language skills have come in handy living and working overseas, and while it’s been a long time since I had the opportunity to use any football techniques, it’s nice to have the knowledge, since you never know when you might suddenly need to tackle a tailback.
However, this means I can’t draw to save my life. Sure, I suppose I could start at the beginning by putting a basket of fruit on my kitchen table and trying to sketch it, but honestly, I could use a little more direction, not to mention a more exciting subject matter that I wouldn’t be tempted to eat before finishing my drawing.
Thankfully, Nintendo is here to help with a new 3DS game that teaches players how to draw pokémon.
In Japan, fashion trends seem to come and go almost before you notice them. With summer rapidly approaching, many people are already planning their summer swimwear. One of this year’s most popular bikinis is a bit of a departure from last year’s styles, and it might just make you do a double-take.
Never has something been the focus of so much simultaneous nerd love and outrage than the venerable flux capacitor from the equally venerable film series that popularized time travel, Back to the Future. After all, it was the defining technology for time travel in the films that made screeching about time travel paradoxes all the rage in geek communities.
And now, it can be yours in all its ’80s glory with this official DeLorean Motors Company-licensed hardware that you can actually install in your real DeLorean – or presumably (and much more likely) – the crappy Pinto you’re currently borrowing from your grandpa.
Tokyo is filled with enough lights, sounds, and odd sights to inspire any artist to create something interesting – and that’s exactly what we found over at Show us your type, an online gallery that showcases GIFs created by artists using the names of cities across the globe. The artists draw inspiration from the famous sites, food, and culture of a particular area and incorporate that area’s name into an animated GIF. In other words, it’s a “creative platform for designers to share their talents and explore cities from a different perspective.” Let’s take a look at 20 different perspectives of Tokyo as seen by artists from around the world.
When you hear the word “piranha,” the image that comes to your mind may be of hordes of vicious fish with razor-sharp teeth stripping you down to your bones in a matter of minutes. But it seems the tables will be turned for a limited time at the Suma Aqualife Park in Kobe, where guests will have the chance to chow down on these predators from the Amazon. And as you can see from the picture, yes, the infamous carnivorous fish look ferocious even when they’ve been turned into a tasty French-style dish!
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You’ve never seen ice cream like this before…that is unless you’re from Nagasaki. The delicate frozen petals of the rose seen above were skillfully set into place one by one to create what’s known as chirin-chirin ice cream. Let’s take a closer look at this popular dessert with a long history and a silly name.
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