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Casey Baseel

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Casey Baseel spent his formative years staring in frustration at un-subtitled Japanese TV programming shown on Southern California’s international channel. Taking matters into his own hands, he moved to Tokyo to study the language, then found work in Yokohama a decade ago teaching, translating, and marketing hotels he can’t afford to stay in. When not participating in the eternal cycle of exercising to burn the calories form his love of Japanese food, Casey scours used comic and game shops for forgotten classics, drags his wife around the country in a quest to visit all its castles, sings karaoke not nearly as well as he thinks he does, and counts the days until the summertime bars open on Enoshima Beach.

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Posted by Casey Baseel (Page 446)

Idol singers exist in an extremely specialized, and often contradictory, corner of the already specialized Japanese pop music industry. Successful idols are expected to walk the fine line between having a polished, attractive appearance and an approachable, unassuming aura. Even more ironic is that while their songs’ lyrics are often focused on love and devotion, it’s practically unheard of for an active idol to openly be in a romantic relationship.

Every now and again, though, word gets out that an idol secretly has a boyfriend, or had an illicit liaison with a guy. The revelation is usually followed by a solemn apology to fans, and often the offending member being removed from the group. But this time the story of an idol’s amorous activities coming to light has something we’ve never heard about before: a court-ordered fine equivalent to several thousand dollars for breach of contract.

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Kitty high-rise condos now being sold by Japanese pet supply company

Space is scarce In Japan, so it’s becoming more and more common for people to settle down in a condominium tower. Even for those homeowners who can afford a detached house, the price of real estate means that more than a few decide on a three-story design.

So perhaps it’s was inevitable that this shift towards vertical living spaces would eventually apply to pets as well, which is why one company in Japan is selling this multi-level high-rise for cats.

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Use of selfie sticks now banned at 1,195 stations in Japan

With Japanese society’s overlapping loves of photography, smartphones, and social media, it was only a matter of time until selfie sticks took the country by storm. They’re an especially common site at tourist destinations in the country, since no proper Japanese journey is complete without commemorative photos taken of the group posing with the most famous local attraction, Shinkansen, and possibly whatever the local culinary delicacy is.

But as of this weekend, there are 1,195 places where you’ll see plenty of travelers but not a single selfie stick: the train stations of western Japan, which have prohibited their use.

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Sailors Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto join Sailor Moon in getting cool new anime pens

It’s easy to forget, but Sailor Moon and her fellow Sailor Senshi actually spend most of their day as students. When there aren’t any monsters around, the anime’s cast should ostensibly have notes to take, worksheets to fill out, and reports to write, and when it’s time to stop fighting and start studying, maybe they reach for one of these pens modeled after the magical equipment of Sailors Moon, Chibimoon, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto.

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Capcom announces another female character for Street Fighter V, Japanese Internet calls her ugly

Video game developer Capcom seems to have settled into a pretty comfortable pattern regarding the marketing of its upcoming Street Fighter V. About once a month, the company releases a new video highlighting another addition to the game’s cast. Fans watch the video over and over, looking for clues as to what they can expect in the game ahead of its release next spring.

And then come the complaints about the female characters being ugly.

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When you get to be really famous, sometimes people will ask you some strange questions. If you’ve got even a passing interest in the Japanese entertainment or music industries, you’ve probably heard of evergreen male idol group SMAP and Takuya Kimura, its most popular member. Kimura hosts a weekly radio program, and in the most recent broadcast, he was asked by a listener for his thoughts on women’s panties that tie up on the sides with strings.

Rather than comment on their fashionableness, the star responded with his idea for the best way to remove said underwear, which got his many fans all in a flutter. Here at RocketNews24, though, we don’t have time for abstract panty theory. We’re all about practical life hacks, so today we’re testing Japan’s most-talked about way to remove lingerie.

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Look, arcade owners, UFO catchers are difficult enough already, okay? We’ve already worked out a precarious balance where you tempt us with stuffed animals, anime figures, and boxes of candy placed tantalizingly close to the drop slot, and we accept that almost always said item will slip out of the claw’s pitifully weak grip, leaving us empty-handed and the surrounding air resounding with frustrated cursing.

But still, it’s all worth it for the rare time everything goes just right. Once the player hits the button to drop the claw, the rest of the game is automatic. That means if you do manage to get a solid grip on the prize, you can sit back and savor your impending victory as the arm swings back into position over the slot and drops the prize in for you to claim.

Unless you’re at this heartless, diabolical Japanese arcade.

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No matter how much you love your kids, no matter how strongly you want to protect them and guide towards what you believe are the best decisions, at some point they’re going to grow up and lead their own lives. Past a certain age, you just have to face the reality that your while they’ll always be your children, they’re also now adults, and you have to accept them as the people they’ve chosen to become.

Or, alternatively, you could harbor resentment towards them, like the men polled for this survey of the top 10 ways Japanese fathers are disappointed in their daughters.

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Tired of cat cafes? It turns out Japan has reptile cafes too!

With cat, rabbit, and owl cafes, Japan has you pretty well-covered as far as furry, fluffy, or feathered companionship goes. But what if you prefer your animals with scales?

Then you’ll want to stop by the reptile cafe, where you can sip tea and nibble on sweets in the company of iguanas, snakes, and tortoises.

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Official Sailor Jupiter bento boxed lunches being served now at Tokyo anime-themed cafe 【Photos】

Maybe we’re just predisposed to thinking with our stomachs, but even with all the brightly colored pleated skirts and magical monster battles in Sailor Moon, we always find our attention drawn to the food that shows up in the hit anime series. So when we heard that the official Sailor Jupiter bento boxed lunch is now being offered by a Tokyo cafe, took a break from marathoning episodes of the magical girl saga to go and try it for ourselves.

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Anime figure with straw-holding cleavage is the perfect way to enjoy a nice glass of milk

Even among animation aficionados, it can sometimes be hard to justify spending the equivalent of a hundred dollars or more on an anime character figure. No matter how high the quality of the product is, that’s a lot of cash to shell out for something that’s going to just sit there gathering dust on your shelf, even if it looks pretty doing it.

But perhaps it’ll be easier for shoppers to pull the trigger on this particular figure. True, the subject being a busty and bikini-clad anime heroine isn’t anything we haven’t seen before, but what makes this figure special is that it’s designed to let otaku cram a straw between its breasts to suck on as they enjoy a refreshing glass of milk.

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Is Disney ripping off Nintendo’s Splatoon with its new Squid Wars minigame? Fans say “It sure is”

I’m pretty sure that by this point Nintendo is used to being one of the giants on whose shoulders many other video game developers stand. After all, just about every platformer or action RPG owes a debt to the company’s Mario and Zelda franchises, and its Metroid series was so influential in the design of similar exploration-heavy titles that gamers just threw their hands up and decided to call the genre “Metroidvania” (somewhat unfairly giving half the credit to Konami’s Castlevania, which wasn’t nearly as groundbreaking in establishing the category).

Still, it’s one thing when some third-tier software publisher or homebrew video game outfit toes the line between being inspired by your creation and outright copying it, and another when it’s world-famous Disney.

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Tokyo’s labyrinthine Shibuya Station becomes a literal RPG dungeon in free smartphone game

Sometimes when I’m in Tokyo, I find myself wandering through seemingly endless subterranean passages that twist and turn back on themselves in a disorienting serpentine labyrinth. As I trudge forward I can feel my stamina fading, as well as my spirit. Still, though, I press on, delving deeper and deeper into the bowls of the earth, knowing that only at the very bottom level will I find what I seek: the platform for the subway line that takes me home from Shibuya Station.

And apparently I’m not the only one who feels that Shibuya Station feels more like an RPG dungeon than a rail hub, since there’s a new smartphone game that uses the map of the station as the layout for its fantasy adventure.

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Pro-wrestling female Pikachu is ready to go off the top rope and straight into our hearts 【Video】

Even though it came out in July, I still haven’t played Pokkén Tournament, the coin-op video game that sticks Pokémon into a fighting game developed by Tekken publisher Bandai Namco. Don’t get me wrong, like anybody with a soul, I’ve got a soft spot for Pikachu. It’s just that I’m happier to see the beloved Pokémon mascot dancing, not fighting.

But I think I may have to swing by the arcade now that the game has a masked wrestler Pikachu that’s a perfect mix of equal parts adorable and awesome.

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In case you’ve never read any of the Akira manga or seen the landmark 1988 anime movie based on it, here’s a basic rundown of the plot. A powerful organization comes up with what it thinks it a great idea, but before its plan come to fruition, the whole thing blows up in their faces. Years later, though, it tries again, unleashing the danger of potentially even more disastrous results.

In the anime, the “powerful organization” is the military, and the “great idea” is cultivating weaponized psionic children. Some would say this parallels the real-world situation of another powerful organization, Hollywood movie studio Warner Brothers, and its own ambitions to turn Akira into a live-action film, which have faced nothing but roadblocks and angry backlashes from fans of the source material for more than 10 years now.

But just like Akira’s military, Warner Brothers seems convinced that it can still get all the variables just right, and new rumors suggest that the studio might be planning to make not one, but three Akira films, and that it’s courting one of Hollywood’s hottest filmmakers to help.

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Growing up in suburban southern California, my elementary, junior high, and high schools were all single-story structures. As such, my classmates and I went through our K-12 education without knowing the excitement of the romantic rendezvous and bare-knuckle showdowns that so often occur in the stairways of schools in TV shows, movies, and other works of fiction.

Still, we made do, as the student body just had to find alternate locations in which to swap spit or punches. One thing we definitely missed out on, though, was the opportunity to create awesome stairway art, like these students in Japan who decorated their school steps with the cast of Super Mario Bros., Love Live!, and Attack on Titan.

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Japanese student protesters announce “WE WILL STOP!!!!” in English on Twitter, get clowned for it

Over the past few weeks, the Japanese organization SEALDs, which stands for Students Emergency Action for Liberal Democracy, has been staging large-scale protests in opposition of those politicians who’ve proposed expanding the role of the Japan Self-Defense Forces. The gatherings have become regular features on news programs, with footage showing large groups of impassioned youths chanting for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to step down.

So after such a show of conviction, it must have been surprising for followers of SEALDs’ English Twitter account to see a tweet that suddenly announced the group is calling it quits.

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A while back, we talked about how it’s common in Japan for people to place dropped property in a place where it’ll be easy to spot when the owner retraces his steps looking for it. There’s hardly any fear that anyone else will take it, whether the item in question is as cheap as a mitten or something much more valuable.

But such admirable conduct isn’t limited to private citizens’ interactions with one another. A recently tweeted snapshot of a train station ticket gate has been getting laughs in Japan for its unusual design, and while it is kind of funny-looking, it also shows the extremely honest character of Japanese society.

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Star-struck American otaku run into Nicolas Cage while shopping for anime in L.A.

When you stroll into an anime specialty shop in the U.S., there are a couple of demographics you expect to see among the customers. Teenagers with brightly dyed hair. Thirty-somethings digging through discounted single-volume VHS and DVD releases for those elusive remaining episodes of Maison Ikkoku or Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team. Maybe a handful of Japanese expats.

But if you happen to be shopping for anime goodies in Los Angeles, just a stone’s throw away from the world’s leading film studios, you also might spot a famous Hollywood actor, like these Californian otaku who ran into Nicolas Cage.

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Japanese kids becoming less skilled at starting fires, not getting covered with mud, survey shows

Just like they do in many other countries, adults in Japan like to periodically grumble about “kids today” and the simple things they can’t do that previous generations could. Sometimes we can sympathize with the exasperated grown-ups. After all, who doesn’t get frustrated when faced with one of these modern kids who can’t put in a full day’s work without whining, show his elders the respect they deserve, or start a fire by himself?

Wait, what was that last one again?

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