Featured

June, 2015

People travel to Japan for all sorts of different reasons. Many are seeking a taste of tradition and history, and plan visits to the country’s most important shrines and castles. Some are drawn by Japan’s natural beauty, heading for its mountains and forests, while still others come to throw themselves into its neon-soaked urban entertainment centers.

But no matter what’s on your itinerary, at some point you’re going to need to get something to eat, and when your stomach starts growling, you can rely on the experience of those who made the trip before you with TripAdvisor’s list of the 10 best restaurants in Japan.

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Nintendo’s Splatoon (sort of) comes to PC – Get your squid on in Splat Fortress mod

Nintendo’s Splatoon, a new IP for Wii U, was released in May to wide critical and user acclaim. Apparently the combo of squid and kid is a winner; who’d have thought it?

However, while the title being exclusive to the Wii U has been helping to boost hardware sales for Nintendo, PC gamers who are unwilling or unable to shell out for a new console have been left out of the loop. But for those desperate for some inky multiplayer action, there’s a free option coming to PC soon: Splat Fortress.

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Upcoming announcement for a Moomin theme park has fans clamoring for info 【Update: Confirmed!】

Over two years ago, the Finnish Ambassador to Japan announced that a Moomin theme park was being developed in Japan with the expected opening date in 2015. Some of our readers might be asking, “What the heck is a Moomin?” but these hippo-like fairies who originated in Finland have a very strong following and fan base in Japan. You might not be familiar with Moomin before you come to Japan, but once you get here, you grow to welcome them at your dining table.

Well, it’s already halfway through 2015, and there is still no Moomin theme park ready to take our money. Or is there? There might be a forthcoming announcement that has us all in a tizzy.

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Two die after man sets himself alight on bullet train in Kanagawa Prefecture

Japan Railways’ high-speed Shinkansen bullet trains have, since their inception, been famous for their timely arrivals and paramount safety. But that record was marred today by a self-immolation suicide that claimed the lives of two people on board a train travelling between Tokyo and Osaka.

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Japan is full of ghosts: Visiting the grave of Taira no Masakado’s head

Summer in Japan means heat and humidity — enough such that people will try to cool down by any means necessary, including enjoying a few hair-raising ghost stories. From haunted houses to horror films, there are plenty of ways to get goosebumps in Japan, but today we’ll be taking you to the location of one of Tokyo’s most famous angry spirit!

Though it’s not exactly a shinrei spot (a place where ghosts have allegedly appeared), Taira no Masakada Kubizuka is one of the most famous “ghost” spots in Japan. It’s where Taira no Masakada’s head was enshrined in order to quell his spirit…because people believed it was wrecking havoc on the capital!

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  • Jun 30, 2015

Going, going … gone! Starbucks x Alice+Olivia mugs sell out across most of Japan in a single day!

If you’re into fashion, coffee, or both, you may remember the collaborative items that Starbucks and New York-based fashion brand Alice + Olivia came up with, the first of which were released in North America about a year and a half ago. Not surprisingly, the items apparently caused a bit of a craze among fashionistas at the time (seriously, who thinks of something like a tumbler dressed up with a tutu?), with everyone clamoring to get their hands on the limited edition goods.

Well, it turns out the collaboration recently made its way to Japan, but one of the reporters from our Japanese sister site Pouch ended up finding out the hard way that the goods were in just as much demand here in Japan as they were in the U.S.!

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Plum crazy Wakayama’s local take on Tabasco sauce is made with Japanese plums

There’s a pretty lengthy list of traditional seasonings Japan uses for its indigenous cuisine, including soy sauce, wasabi, and the sweet rice wine called mirin. But one condiment from overseas that the country has warmly embraced is Tabasco sauce, a dash of which is often added to pasta and pizza in casual dining.

But foodies in Japan love taking foreign foodstuffs and mixing them with a domestic element, which is why one company in Japan is now selling a Tabasco-like hot sauce you won’t find anywhere else, since it’s made with tangy plums.

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We tried the expensive but delicious curry at Ishikawa’s Go! Go! Curry! But is it worth the trip?

Curry in Japan is not usually a fancy affair. It’s mostly found in places that are closer to a fast food level than a top-tier restaurant in Ginza — and that’s fine! Who can argue with inexpensive but delicious?

But not every curry restaurant is merely “cheap ‘n’ tasty.” Take, for example, Ishikawa Prefecture’s Go! Go! Curry, where you can get both regular curry and high-class 5,500-yen-a-plate curry! But is this US$45-curry worth the trip from Tokyo? We sent our Japanese writer Meg to find out!

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50 things our Japanese reporter learned while driving in the U.S.

Our Japanese-language reporter Go recently returned from a trip to the U.S. While there, he hunted for aliens and sampled the local cuisine, but mostly what he did was drive.

While Japan is filled with winding mountain passes that make for enjoyable drives, the wide-open American road has an appeal all its own. After days of barreling down the highways of the southwest, Go came back to Japan with these 50 experiences he had driving in the U.S.

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Does how you dress affect what a sushi restaurant serves you? We experiment in Ginza

Take a stroll down the streets of Ginza and you’ll have no trouble realizing it’s Tokyo’s epicenter of everything posh and luxurious. The neighborhood is packed with shop after shop boasting high-end fashion, jewelry, and dining, so it’s only natural to think that any sushi restaurants in the area cater to an upscale clientele.

That being said, three reporters from our Japanese-language sister site began to wonder what would happen if they went to a Ginza sushi restaurant dressed to varying degrees of formality and ordered a special o-makase (“leave it to the chef”) course.

Would they each be offered different menu items depending on how they were dressed? Would their bills come out to be significantly different? With these burning questions in mind (and the prospect of eating sushi in the guise of journalism), they decided to conduct a little experiment to find out for themselves!

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What sorcery is this?! New toy aquarium is populated with your own hand-drawn fish 【Video】

Certainly, it is the dream of every kid and a not-insignificant number of adults for their crude doodles of space monsters, stick figures and whatnot to suddenly spring to life. Imagine how much fun you would have if you could actually hang out with that stick figure you drew in third grade!

Let’s ignore the reality that said stick figure would probably just stare at you, handless arm extended towards you in silent accusation at how you gave it such terrible, unholy life. It would be pretty cool to just draw up a new friend to hang out with, or triceratops to ride or something just whenever, right?

Well, Takara Tomy Arts has kind of, sort of figured out a way to make dreams of bringing your drawings to life a reality, with Picturerium, an aquarium that you populate with your own doodles!

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Never-before-seen Miyazaki sketches to go on show at Tokyo exhibition this summer

Illustrations by legendary anime director Hayao Miyazaki are among the 130 artworks going on display in Ikebukuro, Tokyo, next month.

The exhibition of background illustrations and character sketches, which have never been on public display before, celebrates the 40th anniversary of Nippon Animation’s World Animation Theatre, the weekly TV anime showcase which Miyazaki and Isao Takahata both worked on before founding Studio Ghibli together in 1985.

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Ready for the Fury Road: Our customized Mad Max Yamaha Tricity motorcycle 【Video】

Depending on the genre, a well-made movie can have you howling with laughter, thrilled by the on-screen action, or feeling cleansed after a cathartic cry. But while those are all enjoyable enough, every now and again you run into a film that affects you on a deeper level by helping to teach you some inevitable facet of life itself.

We recently made a trip to the theater to watch Mad Max: Fury Road, and since then every time we look up at the night sky, we’ve been reminded of the certainty that one day we’ll all be living in a dystopian wasteland. In preparation, we’ve already started stockpiling water and canned goods, and now we’ll be able to tour the wastelands in style with our customized Mad Max-style Yamaha three-wheeled motorcycle.

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Hong Kong supermarket’s new offering may take crown as “murderer of sushi”

Hong Kong is famous for lots of great food, but it’s also famous for its avant-garde culinary creations like you might find at Akimasa Sushi (Japanese pronunciation). Last year we reported on their menu which included gunkan sushi topped with sweet beans and mayonnaise as well as fruit jelly and wasabi nigiri sushi.

Their creations have only gotten weirder since, and Akimasa Sushi has earned the nicknames “murderer of sushi” and “sushi hell” from locals. However, now the internet in Hong Kong is buzzing over a new sushi variant that some believe might strip Akimasa Sushi of those titles with its own uniqueness.

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We substitute mirin for sugar in pudding and then taste it ourselves 【Rocket Kitchen】

If you’re in the mood to cook but running short on ingredients, there’s always the old tactic of asking your neighbor for a cup of sugar. If you are in Japan though, why don’t you ask your neighbor for a cup of mirin, or sweet sake used for cooking, instead?

The Sanshu Mikawa Mirin Distillery has recently been promoting sweets made with mirin. This notion is bound to turn some heads as there doesn’t seem to be a correlation between mirin and sweets in Japanese cooking, where it’s instead often used to add a flavorful touch to grilled fish or sushi. So how is it that this seemingly savory flavor can be substituted for the sweetness of sugar? The RocketKitchen is going to get to the bottom of this and eat some pudding too!

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Japanese people share 11 amusing tales relating to pregnancy and childbirth

Ah, childbirth. That lovely moment when the child you’ve been waiting to meet for months finally comes into the world and brings with it all the joys that come with parenthood. If you’re a woman, that moment also equates to the feeling of your body being ripped into bits as you forcefully expel a new human being from your body. (Sorry if you’re drinking your morning tea as you read this!)

Like the rest of the female population around the world, Japanese women are no strangers to the pains of birthing a child. Below, we have gathered eleven of amusing anecdotes that have been shared over social media relating to their pregnancies, the hysterical states they were in during childbirth, and the time after their child’s birth. And don’t miss the one story at the end that will positively melt your heart.

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Government begins study into tattoo bans in public baths

On 23 June the Japan Tourism Agency (JTA) announced that it would be conducting a first-of-its-kind study into public bathing facilities such as onsen (hot springs) and sento (bath houses), and their rules regarding tattoos.

Visitors to Japan are often warned that if they want to visit one of Japan’s hundreds of natural springs or meticulously designed baths they can’t be inked up. But how widespread is this rule in Japan really, and is it doing more harm than good in this day and age? These are the things the JTA hopes to learn more about in the weeks to come.

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Four areas in which Japan needs to improve if it wants to attract more overseas travelers

Japan’s National Tourist Organization recently released its statistics on the number of overseas travelers who visited in the country in 2014, and we’re proud to say that 13,413,467 of you came to visit (though we’re also a little hurt that so few of you called us up to get ramen while you were here). That number represents almost a 30-percent increase from the number of foreign tourists Japan received in 2013, and a whopping 60-percent jump compared to 2012.

Still, Japan only ranks 27th globally in its ability to draw travelers from abroad, making it eighth in Asia, behind world-number 22 Korea and number four China.

So what’s holding Japan back from becoming an even more popular international travel destination? RocketNews24’s non-Japanese staff put our heads together, and after getting over the initial pain from our foreheads violently colliding, came up with the following list of areas Japan could do better in that foreign travelers would definitely appreciate.

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Giant Attack on Titan coin bank will help you save up a colossal pile of change

As you may have noticed, there’s a lot of Attack on Titan stuff to spend your money on. Add in the fact that not one, but two theatrical features are coming this summer for the phenomenally popular franchise, and fans are probably feeling the need to economize and cut back on their discretionary expenditures to make room in their budget for more Titan-related ones.

And if you’re pinching your pennies, what better place to store them than in a gigantic 1:100 scale Colossal Titan coin bank?

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Super Mega Important Debate: Are Japan’s futons awesome or simply awful? 【Poll closed】

Happy weekend, everyone! Congratulations on surviving another week!

But before you run off to smother yourself with butter and startle donkeys by shouting the names of under-appreciated actors from the 1980s (hey, we don’t know what you do with your spare time), we have one little question to ask you: are Japanese futons awesome, or are they awful?

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