Featured

2014 (Page 128)

With Madoka Magica high heels, the choice between good and evil is always a fashionable one

The dark magical girl anime Puella Magi Madoka Magica has a release history as complicated as its title. Originating as a 12-episode TV series in 2011, the show became so popular that it was released as two compilation movies in theatres during 2012. Most recently, there was a third theatrical feature that premiered in 2013, featuring the original cast with evolved or corrupted powers and personalities.

So it’s only fitting that the fashion designer 2 PM Works’ Madoka Magica shoes, which sold out during their initial production run, are back again, this time with two new, upgraded pairs of pumps.

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Brazilian man spends over $3,000 on plastic surgery to look ‘Korean’

We’ve looked at plastic surgery in South Korea from pretty much every angle there is, but this is the first time we’ve come across something quite like this!

The Korean Wave (Hallyu) of pop culture has been steadily gaining strength around the world over the last few years as more and more people discover the infectious sounds of K-Pop and the addictive plot lines of K-dramas (seriously, I double dare you to watch only one episode before going to bed). South America is no exception to the trend, with starstruck female fans swooning over the dreamy Korean men and soaking up the trademark dances that go with each song. Which is perhaps why one 25-year-old Brazilian man decided to undergo a series of cosmetic surgeries to make himself look more Korean.

We’ve heard of Korean citizens getting work done to look more like Western models and stars, but this is a first for us. Join us after the jump for a slew of photos from this man’s amazing transformation.

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Chinese granny and her adopted mixed-race son finally recognized as family after 15 years of care

How far are you willing to go to save a life? While some people think twice about helping a shabbily dressed man lying in the street, an elderly woman in Shanghai didn’t hesitate to bring home a baby she found abandoned in the bushes, nurse him back to health, and eventually adopt him into the family despite racial differences.

Join us after the jump to read the story of this Chinese granny’s incredible selflessness and compassion.

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You beautiful fatty! — Doraemon character teaches us to speak nicely with new smartphone app

There are days you wake up and just want to table-flip the entire world. You want to scream at the top of a mountain about how people are such dumbasses! You’re just so irritated with everything that the next person you come in contact with will feel your wrath. Your conscience kicks in (usually before anything terrible happens) and whispers that Golden Rule in your ear: “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” However, sometimes the lack of face to face contact during text message conversations allows us to forget that there is a real person on the other side. Just because you can’t see the reaction of the other person, it doesn’t mean you can say whatever you want.

For Japanese speakers, the solution is here. And it comes in the form of Shizuka-chan, our favorite character from Doraemon, and a smartphone app.

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Someone in Japan just paid $150 for these Coke bottles with celebrity names on their labels

The award-winning “Share a Coke” campaign launched in Japan last year with bottles that invited consumers to share a memorable song, connected with a particular year, with a friend. Now, name-printed bottles – a part of the campaign that’s already launched in different countries around the world – have made their way to Japan. In grocery stores around the country, you can happily root to the back of the chiller cabinet looking for a Coke with you or your friend’s name on it (if you have a Japanese name, that is!).

And it seems some bright sparks have hit on a brilliant money-spinning idea off the back of this: collect the names of all the members of a pop group, and sell them on online auctions. A set of Coke bottles with the names of all five girls from idol group Momoiro Clover Z, printed complete with -Z suffixes, has sold on Yahoo Auctions for 15,000 yen (US $150).

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Remember your manners or these hip-hop cleaning ladies will bust your ass

Few would ever imagine that a pair of cleaning ladies from Japan should be something to be afraid of, but like a childhood friend’s terrifying mother busting a game of spin-the-bottle, a recent series of videos featuring two such individuals has put the fear of God into us today as well as reminding us that we’re never too big for a smack.

Going by the name Caddie Golu Golu, these middle-aged cleaning ladies are part of a campaign by entertainment company Sega Sammy ahead of its golf tournament, the Sega Sammy Cup 2014, which will be held next month. Wearing pink-and-white cleaner’s outfits and giant sun visors, these rapping ladies get up in the faces of rude and inconsiderate golfers, and have also featured in a series of videos meant for the general public, attacking people on the streets of Tokyo who smoke where they shouldn’t, fail to pick up their dog’s poop, or who walk while looking at their smartphones.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

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Taipei subway on high alert after police mistake an autistic man for a murderer【TomoNews Video】

An autistic man playing on a calculator was mistaken as a murderer by incompetent Taipei city straphangers who called police.

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  • Jun 4, 2014

This amazing water cake just may be the most delicate sweet ever created!

Readers of our site may be well aware that we’re very much fond of tasty sweets, and luckily for us, desserts come in all shapes and sizes. But we honestly have to say the beautiful cake in the picture above is like nothing we’ve ever seen before! This unique piece of cake is actually so fleeting that it will literally cease to exist in its intended form within 30 minutes of being presented, so this is clearly a case where you won’t want to leave the best for last. But what exactly is this cake that looks like a transparent version of Dragon Quest’s slime?

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Island-hopping by rental bike on Japan’s awesome Shimanami Kaido cycling road

The Setonaikai Inland Sea is wedged between the north coast of the island of Shikoku and the southern edge of Japan’s main island of Honshu. Particularly in the island-dotted strait that separates Ehime and Hiroshima Prefectures, you’ll find some of the country’s most beautiful views and delicious seafood.

Unfortunately, there’s no train line that runs through the area, and bus service is infrequent. Ideally, you’d get around by boat, just like the merchants and pirates who used to sail the Setonaikai did, but sadly, the RocketNews24 company schooner is currently having its hull patched.

Fortunately, there’s one more way to get around the Inland Sea: the island-hopping 70-kilometer (43.5-mile) cycling road called the Shimanami Kaido.

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Mr. Sato goes post-apocalyptic at Fist of the North Star event

Although now a man in his 40s, Mr. Sato has long held a special place in his heart for the Fist of the North Star series. He recalls picking up a copy of the manga 20 years ago and heading straight out to the gym for two sets of 18kg (40lbs) bench presses.

After two weeks of that, he felt he had reached his full potential, but was still nowhere near as cool as the series’ protagonist Kenshiro. Decades later came word of the Fist of North Star bi-weekly DVD collection beginning at Kinokuniya in Shinjuku. The first day of sale was to be rung in by a gathering of cosplay characters from the series. Mr. Sato’s mind raced at the possibility of truly becoming his long-time hero Kenshiro.

Just then Mr. Sato’s editor approached him saying, “Hey, you like North Star don’t you? How’d you like to go down there and cosplay as…”

“You’ve stood in my way long enough! I’m going to Shinjuku to become as awesome as Kenshiro is whether you like it or not!” shouted Mr. Sato snapping out of his daydream and crushing a paper cup in his mighty fist.

“Yeah, that’s what I was going to sa…”

Mr. Sato interjected, “You’re already dead.” He then flicked the paper cup at the editor’s forehead and walked determinedly out of the office without looking back.

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Schoolgirls’ “Frozen” lip-sync is hilarious, terrifying

Most countries in the West are finally coming to the end of their own “Let it Go” boom, with the song from Disney’s hit animation now only being played, sung, and hummed about as often as other songs at the top of the charts as opposed to on loop every single minute of the day. But due to the animated film’s late release in Japan, the craze is still going strong over here, and Frozen is still pretty much everywhere.

Thankfully, some Japanese fans are giving our ears a break by opting to sing some other songs from the film, and couples lip-syncing to “Love is an Open Door” have become an increasingly common sight on YouTube. The pair pictured above, though, took a slightly different approach and opted not for sickly-sweet smiles and acting like prim and proper princesses, but for manic hair-whipping, giant flared nostrils, rolled eyeballs and enormous mouths.

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Bluebeard!?!? Oh, blue BEER? Yeah, that’s still weird…

Green beer is a staple of St. Patrick’s Day, much to the chagrin of the Irish. White beers, amber beers and dark beers are all pretty common, but blue beer? Thought that was just a one-off kind of thing. We’ve got blueberries, blue fins, bluegills, bluegrass, blue balls, blueprints and blue men. Blue beer is not all that common, and unless you live in Hokkaido (or are a curious internet shopper) you probably haven’t tried it either. Fear not! While the Ryuhyo Draft reviews were not all that positive, a Kirin beer garden in Tokyo wants you to sample their blue beer until the end of July!

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Should you put your kid on a leash? Japanese mothers weigh in

We’re not entirely sure who invented child leashes, but they have found their way to Japan and the controversy that surrounds them has been imported right alongside. Discussed widely on Japanese online parenting forums, the disputed child gear are dubbed maigo himo (literally, “lost child cord”) and have become increasingly available at online shopping sites such as Rakuten.

But no matter what you call it – be it lost child cord, leash, harness, tether, or reins – one thing’s for sure: No one can agree if they are an embarrassment or proper parenting tool.

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Super Mario Bros. theme gets an amazing jazz cover

While thoughts of the Roaring 20s typically conjure images of flappers and raucous parties, now it can also remind you of Super Mario Bros. Los Angeles jazz musicians, The Handy Dandy Boys, recently recorded a mean, jazzy version of the “Overworld BGM” theme from Super Mario Bros., complete with banjo plucking, a brass section, and a silent film-inspired, mustachioed music videothat will put a pep in your step.

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The top 20 most eagerly anticipated anime of summer 2014, as chosen by fans!

Summer is almost here! In Japan, that means it’s almost time for fun summer festivals, wearing cute cotton yukata, chowing down on kakigōri until inducing brain freeze, smashing watermelons on the beach, and just generally lazing about the house with fans on full blast and complaining about the insufferable heat.

In the anime world, summer means a whole new season of shows to look forward to (and the obligatory “boobikinis-at-the-beach-swimsuit-episode”). In fact, popular anime informational website Charapedia asked 10,000 fans to pick their most anticipated anime show of summer 2014, and we’ve got the results.

Which series do you think made the No. 1 spot?

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New Face Grand Prix lets the public vote for the cutest freshman in Japan

With a new school year comes new students, new possibilities, and a new round of beauty competitions.

“Wait,” you’re asking, “Beauty competitions? Shouldn’t that be ‘roommates’ or ‘textbooks’ or ‘professors?'” And, yes, those are just a few of the new experiences that come with starting college, but thanks to New Face Grand Prix, new Japanese female college students can also “compete” to be the cutest freshman in Japan.

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North Korea “invents” performance-enhancing drink from mushrooms, Nintendo lawyers remain silent

In North Korea‘s latest desperate attempt for attention from the rest of the civilized world, the dictatorship – perhaps tired of tossing missiles around for now – bragged through state media that its scientists have discovered a way to extract enzymes from a certain mushroom grown in the region to create a miracle super drink that makes athletes better, faster and stronger.

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Tokyo Tower celebrates Tanabata with a beautiful case of the summertime blues

Since the opening of the Tokyo Skytree in 2012, Tokyo Tower is no longer the tallest or most fashionable structure in Tokyo. Still, the 56-year-old steel giant has managed to hang onto its reputation as one of the city’s most romantic locales, thanks in part to its location in quiet, sophisticated Shiba-koen as opposed to the boisterous Shitamachi district where the Skytree stands.

This month, Tokyo Tower is doing a little more to set the mood, with a beautiful light display that ties in with Japan’s Tanabata star festival.

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Surreal samurai art exhibition mixes the historical with the bizarre

The Asahi Beer Oyamazaki Villa Museum of Art is located in Yamazaki, a place of historical significance in Japan since medieval times when it served as a field of battle for Toyotomi Hideyoshi to avenge the betrayal and murder of his lord Oda Nobuaga. The museum is currently hosting an exhibition that pays homage to the samurai of those ancient times, in a very modern and surreal fashion.

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16 facts about China that will blow your mind

The vast scale of China’s landmass and its population means that China produces and consumes copious amounts of natural resources and food. It also means that China houses a large chunk of the world’s billionaires. We dug around to find some interesting statistics. Did you know that China’s railway lines could loop around earth twice? Here are some interesting facts about the world’s second-largest economy, which could soon eclipse the U.S. to become the world’s largest this year.

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