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August, 2014

Chinese parenting posters from 1952 gave insightful advice that still makes plenty of sense today

When the word “education” pops up, most of the time, the first thing that comes to mind is education for children. While parents and adults in general are often concerned about educating our future leaders, we tend to forget that parents need education too because, unfortunately, parenting skills do not come as a bonus with the birth of a baby.

A set of parenting posters produced in Shanghai in 1952 reveals some golden words that were given to parents of that time. Time and technology may have changed the way parents and children interact these days, but these 62-year-old parenting tips are surprisingly relevant even today.

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GMO’s pretty employees rival AKB48 with big smiles and short skirts

 

Submissions for AKB48’s Kokoro no Placard Video Awards are open, and the first company to submit their entry is GMO Internet Group, who reveals a startling high number of pretty ladies working for them. Just look at those fresh smiling faces! Will we be seeing a GMO idol group sometime in the future?

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Pay Japan’s apology agencies to say “I’m sorry” when it’s just too hard to do it yourself

It’s a problem we all have to deal with at various points in our lives. We like to think we’re perfect and have it all figured out, but in reality no one is above making mistakes in their personal or professional lives. But it’s in these mistakes that through the humiliation of making amends to those we wronged we grow a little and become a better person as a result.

However, now thanks to a new line of business in Japan you don’t have to! Why go through all that painful guilt and general ickiness of facing up to the fact you’ve wronged someone when you can just pay someone else to do it for you? This way you can get back to the important things in life, like your golf swing or finally finishing that watercolor you were working on.

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Why panty liners for men are (probably) here to stay

At first glance, the sleek packaging of these pantie liners for men looks like a mocked-up image that could have been made as a joke. It looks almost identical to the packaging of some (women’s) liners, except that the branding is silver and dark navy. The product is real and can be purchased in Japan. And unlike bras and panties for men, the market it’s targeting isn’t niche.

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Real-life Fruit Ninja! Watch Isao Machii slice up flying fruit like a boss 【Video】

They call him ‘The Modern-Day Samurai’. Master swordsman Isao Machii can slice a BB gun pellet in mid-air. He holds four World Records for swordsmanship – so what’s he doing slicing up fruit in this ad for Toaster Strudels?

It’s still a cool video, though, as he slices his way through watermelons and pineapples at lightning speed. Join us after the jump for a look at this “live action fruit ninja” vid. What would Gretchen Weiners’s father think?

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6-year-old boy vowed to marry his childhood sweetheart, really marries her 18 years later

Did you have a childhood sweetheart? In many cases, a childhood sweetheart tends to be a neighbor or schoolmate whom we spend many hours of our glorious juvenile years playing with and, more often than not, drifting apart as we grow up and life takes us to different places.

However, fate is a mysterious thing. If you’re destined for each other, fate will lead you back to each other, even after spending 18 years apart, like this pair of lovebirds!

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Policeman throws up after questioning a suspect who hadn’t brushed his teeth in a year

There is a Chinese idiom based on the ancient military strategies of China: “Of the thirty-six stratagems, the best is to flee”. However, if you can’t flee, and have your hands held down, what would you do? If you haven’t been brushing your teeth for a year, you might have a chance at distracting your enemy with your breath.

We don’t really want to know how bad that smells, but apparently, a man who was recently arrested in Hebei, China, managed to make a police officer throw up because of his foul breath.

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Toyota’s dance craze contest invites you to Wakudoki your way to Tokyo【Video】

Japan is famous for its quirky and original commercials, and Toyota is a strong player in the constant provision of video-based weird Japanese ad-tertainment. This summer’s offering is the wakudoki, a song and dance routine performed by techno-pop outfit World Order. With some tribespeople. Oh yes, and a dancing gorilla.

It’s weird, wonderful, and we can’t stop watching!

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Cute puppy goes to grandmother’s house and finds dentures for toothy grin, hilarious photo op

Here’s a small but concentrated dose of silliness for those of you who need an afternoon (or morning, or evening) pick-me-up. And it’s a good opportunity to prove that canines can be monarchs of the World Wide Web too!

Did it take a moment for you to realize what’s going on in the photo on the right? No, it’s not another before/after photo of plastic surgery or a sad tale of a dog that auditioned for a Dentastix commercial and failed; it’s what happened when a Japanese Twitterer visited her grandmother’s house with her Pomeranian pup. Reactions ranged from “Cute!” to “Ew!” to “Scary!”, but as a beloved villain with the wicked grin put it, “Let’s put a smile on that face!”

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Over 3 decades, North Korea paid for full-page propaganda ads in western newspapers

From 1969 to 1997, the North Korean leadership purchased expensive full-page ad space in the most prominent western newspapers, Benjamin R. Young reports for NK News. The ads, which cost anywhere from $3,000 to $10,000, were placed in high-profile publications like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Guardian.

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More than meets the eye, sushi in disguise! Check out these transforming sushi toys!

Your mother probably scolded you for playing with your food at the dinner table, but here’s one of the few times you’ll be able to get away with it! Introducing transforming sushi toys from Takara Tomy. Now, instead of playing with a floppy piece of asparagus (how’s that supposed to stand up to the forces of evil anyway?), you can play with these pieces of super robot fighting sushi. Just don’t try to take a bite out of them!

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A few months ago, we heard about a terrifying haunted house in Honancho, a neighborhood in western Tokyo. Unfortunately, our backlog of terror entertainment was a little jammed up, and we weren’t able to get to it right away, but this week we finally went to check out Obaken.

In addition to the horror movie-inspired creepy sights and sounds you’d expect from any decent haunted house, Obaken also takes a page from video games, with multiple levels, customizable settings, and even a continue system.

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Nintendo unveils new 3DS models with more controls, NFC support

Nintendo announced on Friday during its Nintendo Direct video presentation that new Nintendo3DS models will be available in Japan on October 11. The new 3DS will retail for 16,000 yen (about US$154) and the new 3DS XL will go for 18,800 yen (about US$180). A Western release date was not announced.

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Going thin on top? Here are five prefectures you may not want to live in (and five you might!)

As someone whose locks started thinning when he was about 27 years old, I know how much of a shock it can be to learn that your body has seemingly decided to begin the follicle-retiring process without consulting you first. As nice as it would be to have a thick, flowing mane, though, the fact that pretty much every man on on my mother’s side of the family eventually lost their hair tells me that there’s not much point stressing about it – it’s going to happen, so why lose sleep as well as top turf?

For some, though, going bald can be pretty upsetting. If they’re on the lookout for a partner especially, thinning hair can certainly dent a man’s confidence. And, according to a recent survey, balding men may well be right in thinking that their lack of hair is affecting their chances of finding, or perhaps keeping, a good woman.

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Awesome melon bread with ice cream comes to Shibuya, so we do too!

Last spring, we spent an afternoon drooling over photos from a bakery in the city of Kanazawa that came up with the ingenious idea of combining melon bread with ice cream. Unfortunately, the four-and-a-half hour train journey from Tokyo to Ishikawa kept us from picking up some samples of the tasty-looking treats.

But now our dairy-based prayers have been answered, as the same bakery has opened a new location in Tokyo’s Shibuya ward. Since that’s just three stops away from the RocketNews24 offices in Shinjuku, as soon as we found out about the new branch, we were on the next train.

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As veteran anime producer Toshio Suzuki continues to dance back and forth over the vague linguistic line of whether or not Studio Ghibli is getting out of the movie-making business, some distraught admirers can already see the vultures circling overhead. If this is the end of the line for Japan’s most revered animation house, it’s a sad day, but at least the format of Ghibli’s releases means there aren’t many loose narrative threads left dangling.

With the exception of 1993’s Ocean Waves, Ghibli’s commercial releases have all been theatrical features, most of which have a definite beginning, middle, and end. For the most part, the studio doesn’t really do sequels, since their films’ endings are just conclusive enough to satisfy fans while still leaving enough unanswered for them to comfortably mull over.

There is one big exception to this pattern, though, which is Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. For decades fans have been hoping for a continuation, and recent remarks by Suzuki are adding more credibility to rumors that such a project could be directed by Evangelion’s Hideaki Anno.

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Creator of plastic-bottle girlfriend has new invention: brainwave-activated inflatable muscles

About a month ago, we brought you the story of artist Showta Mori and Lisako, his plastic-bottle girlfriend. Their forbidden love landed Mori in police custody for “suspicious behavior.”

Well, Mori apparently escaped incarceration because he has just released a new video in collaboration with beverage maker Suntory that promotes his latest invention: the brainwave-controlled muscle suit (ver. 3)!

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Japan’s secret garbage problem–and what you can do to help

Japan is one of the cleanest countries you’ll encounter as a traveler. The inside of the bullet train is kept absolutely spotless, taxi drivers can be seen buffing their vehicles of dust and road grit while waiting for the next customer. Graffiti is rare here and men in jumpsuits are employed to scrape off gum and anything else adhered to train station floors. Glamorous and gleaming is the way the Japanese like things. Even diesel trucks are washed down in their terminals after a day on the roads.

So it’s no surprise that the city streets are litter-free, that public trash bins ask you to separate your refuse into burnable and non-burnable bins, or that the Japanese have a reputation for taking their garbage home with them when attending sporting events.

So it may have been a surprise to some of our readers when someone commented on the trashiness of Japanese beaches in response to my previous article on Japanese beach culture, saying: “The number one beach activity in Japan is actually turning it into a giant open dump, full or empty beer cans, cigarette buds, and plastics of all kinds. It’s a big paradox when you see how clean the streets are.”

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Rare Namco robot for sale with all its junk hanging out【Photos】

An interesting auction popped up last week and at first glance it just looked like an old junkie decorative statue. But further investigation revealed it to have a bit of gamer cred. This robot was designed and built by Namco, yeah, that Namco, the one of Pac-man, Tekken and Soulcalibur fame. Unfortunately, this robot isn’t going to do some super duper awesome game playing for you. However, it is a piece of Namco history on the auction block. If you claim to be the biggest Namco fan in the world, then maybe you NEED this robot.

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Guide dog stabbed while walking with owner

Police in Saitama Prefecture are looking for the person who stabbed a guide dog while it was with its 61-year-old visually-impaired owner in Saitama.

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