Featured

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.

Twitter RSS

Posted by Casey Baseel (Page 456)

Director of Ghost in the Shell shares his favorite Hayao Miyazaki movie and scene

Hayao Miyazaki and Mamoru Oshii are two of the most successful and influential anime directors in the history of the medium, but their films couldn’t be more different in tone and appearance. The soft-edged natural environments of Miyazaki’s anime are bathed in a nostalgic glow, while Oshii’s animation, such as Ghost in the Shell and The Sky Crawlers, is filled with shadowy ruinscapes and turns its sharpest focus inwards to the human mind and consciousness.

Miyazaki and Oshii are such fundamentally different people that they even communicate with their production teams in completely opposite styles. But that’s not to say that one can’t find things to admire in the works of the other, as Oshii has shared his favorite film and even scene in a Miyazaki anime.

Read More

How do people in Japan feel about eating whale? We asked five people for their opinions

If you hail from one of the many developed nations that comprehensively frowns on the practice of whaling, you may have the image that an appalling number of people in Japan eat whale meat. And while that may be true in relative terms compared to extremely low number of people who regularly eat whale meat in several parts of North America and Europe, whaling can be a divisive topic even within Japan. Some Japanese have no problem with dining on whale from time to time, treating it like just a meatier, gamier fish. Others think eating whale is a custom that’s long past its time and needs to be rethought.

To get a preliminary understanding of some of the many different opinions on the issue that exist in the country, we interviewed a number of Japanese people and asked them whether they were in favor of or opposed to whaling and eating whale meat.

Read More

There’s nothing that says a good-looking woman can’t be a successful politician or accomplished shogi player. However, there’s no reason to expect a greater-than-average ratio of beauties in those walks of life either, so when a particularly pretty individual makes an appearance, she tends to get a lot of attention.

On the other hand, it seems like there should be a lot of overlap between the demographics of “professional athlete” and “attractive person.” Being among the best at the sport you play requires plenty of practice, and all that exercise generally results in a toned body and bright aura of healthy vitality. Still, it’s not like there’s any concrete corollary between athletic prowess and practically perfectly balanced facial features or luxuriously flowing, seemingly never out-of-place hair. That’s why this recent addition to a Japanese professional team is being called “the most beautiful volleyball player in the world.”

Read More

“My son didn’t look back when I waved.” Toyota ad will leave you choked up, wanting to call home

You might think that Japanese advertisements are all Hollywood celebrity endorsements or surreal tales of busty schoolgirls with nose rings, but when it wants to, Japan can make commercials that yank on the heartstrings as strongly as anywhere else in Asia. Getting the waterworks flowing today is Toyota, asking the question, “Do you care about your parents as much as they love you?”, and while the video is short on cars, it makes up for that with plenty of tears.

Read More

Samurai Studio: Tokyo’s new photo studio where you can get your picture taken in samurai armor

Even in the modern era, you’ll find plenty of occasions in Japan to dress up in kimono, such as for festivals, fireworks exhibitions, or other special events (and considering how relatively easy it is to do, it’s something you really should try at least once). But as much as Japan may love its traditions and history, there aren’t too many occasions when you get to strap on a set of samurai armor, so when life gives you the opportunity to do so, like at this new photo studio in Tokyo, you won’t want to let it pass you by.

Read More

Nintendo has a squeaky clean image. Its titles are family-friendly, and no other company does more to make quality video games accessible and enjoyable to inexperienced or casual players. The company managed to create a hit team-based shooter that’s completely devoid of the sort of violence that’s so commonly a selling point for the genre, and even its two most committed rivals, Mario and Bowser, regularly take time out from fighting to play golf or tennis together.

So you might expect Nintendo to have nothing but friendly affection for anyone and everyone, but its official Line account shows that rival Sony’s PlayStation is strictly excluded from the circle of good vibes.

Read More

Compared to some of the cooler or more elegant-sounding parts of Tokyo, like Jiyugaoka (“Freedom Hill”) or Akihabara (“Field of Autumn Leaves”), the Shinagawa neighborhood has a pretty dull name, meaning essentially “Merchandise River.” Still, you have to admit it’s appropriate. Located near the mouth of the Sumidagawa river, for generations Shinagawa has seen plenty of cargo ships sail past as they ferry goods in and out of Tokyo’s ports.

The name even works in a figurative economic sense, as Shinagawa Station is a major rail hub that thousands of workers pass through every day on their way from their homes in the suburbs to their offices downtown. The facility is designed to keep passengers efficiently flowing in and out, but this morning the “river” got blocked due to a problem with the trains, resulting in perhaps the most crowded scene of rush hour in Japan that we’ve ever seen.

Read More

This is what a Tokyo crepe with every dessert topping they’d let us order looks like 【Photos】

Tokyo’s Harajuku neighborhood means different things to different people. The beautiful people living the Japanese high life are drawn by the brand-name jewelers on the tree-lined Omotesando boulevard. Teens, meanwhile, flock to the narrow Takeshitadori shopping street to score up-to-date fashions that leave their parents scratching their heads in bewilderment.

And for those with a sweet tooth, Harajuku is all about the crepes.

Our intrepid Japanese-language correspondent P.K. recently took a break from seeing how many slices of roast pork or boiled eggs he could cram in his stomach and instead decided to see how much dessert he could consume in a single serving, as he decided to max out a Tokyo crepe by ordering one with every available dessert topping.

Read More

Everyone could use a little extra money in their pocket as we head towards the end of the year. Maybe you’ve got a long Christmas shopping list, made fancy New Year’s Eve plans, or just want to take a trip back home to visit family and friends during winter vacation.

As such, you might find yourself looking for a part-time job to help fill your coffers, and while you could go with such traditional choices as picking up a shift working in a restaurant or a shop at the mall, your options now also include a micro-stint as an editor for two of Japan’s most popular manga anthologies.

Read More

Japan’s urban landscape is dotted with giant TV monitors mounted on the sides of skyscrapers. Despite what you might expect, though, from watching science fiction anime or young adult-literature-sourced movies depicting dystopian futures, they aren’t constantly broadcasting information about where citizens should evacuate to during the current alien invasion or directives from the Office of the Supreme Leader.

No, usually they’re just devoted to ad loops. But this weekend, public big screens across Japan will be showing something a little more exciting: The entire first episode of anime hit Evangelion.

Read More

Even if you’re not ordinarily a very artistic person, we bet you get a spark of inspiration when you’ve got a pancake on your plate. Who hasn’t drawn a doodle or sketched a smiley face in maple syrup, or at least initialed their flapjacks with the sticky, tasty condiment?

After all, tasty as they may be, pancakes look pretty dull if you don’t add any decoration…unless you’re dining at this restaurant in Japan where the pancakes come pre-decorated with images of Pikachu, Mario, and dozens of other anime and video game characters.

Read More

Sports car or fighter plane? American tuner’s Nissan GT-R looks like World War II’s Zero

Somewhere along the way, people started calling Nissan’s GT-R, the company’s flagship sports car, “Godzilla.” It’s a fitting nickname, since the GT-R is intimidatingly powerful, and also because with a curb weight of 1,740 kilograms (3,836 pounds), it’s not exactly svelte.

Still, one American turning shop thinks there’s an even more apt comparison to be made that to the King of the Monsters, and has created a customized GT-R with its appearance based on the Imperial Japanese military’s World War II Zero fighter plane.

Read More

Fullmetal Alchemist shoes are here to complete fashionable anime fans’ footwear collections

When making her professional debut, manga creator Hiromi Arakawa decided to work under the masculine-sounding pen name Hiromu Arakawa. The choice was probably made under the logic that a male author would be more easily accepted by the predicted male fanbase of the action-adventure stories Arakawa was crafting.

In the end, though, all of that worrying was probably unnecessary. Male readers have no issue with Arakawa’s gender because she can produce awesome adventure stories, and her series have enjoyed broad crossover appeal with female manga readers as well. As a matter of fact, so many of Arakawa’s fans are women that there are now two pairs of pumps inspired by her most successful series, Fullmetal Alchemist.

Read More

Imagine you’re out and about, strolling around town, when suddenly you come upon one of your fellow citizens sprawled out on the sidewalk. Granted, the fact that it’s not a human, but a cat, would make the situation a little less alarming, but still, you’d be worried right?

That’s how one Japanese Twitter user felt, but it turned out the kitty wasn’t just OK, but adorable too.

Read More

Odds are at some point you’ve been part of an after-school study group with your classmates, either to help each other power through a difficult course or cram for an important exam. Maybe you got together at a friend’s place or took over a corner of your local coffee house, but in Japan, neither of those of those is really a viable choice of location.

Japanese homes are generally too small to host a large group of visitors. Meanwhile, the coffee break-loving country’s cafes tend to be packed when schools let out in the afternoon, so it’s often a serious challenge to find even a single empty seat in a Tokyo Starbucks, let alone adjacent ones for all your study buddies. So in response, clever Japanese students thought outside the box and discovered a trendy new venue for group study sessions: karaoke boxes.

Read More

Paints Without Names: Japanese set of nameless watercolors seeks to free young artistic minds

While visual arts and linguistics are both creative fields, skill with one isn’t necessarily a prerequisite for the other. After all, as long as you can look at three hues and pick the one best suited for the picture you’re painting, it doesn’t really matter if you know whether to call it fuchsia or periwinkle.

As a matter of fact, some would argue that coupling names and colors limits the imaginations of budding young artists, which is why these two Japanese designers have produced a set of paints for children that have no names on their labels, only splotches of their base component colors.

Read More

Four things to hate about looking for an apartment in Japan as a foreigner

Seeing as how the entire English-language RocketNews24 team is composed of people who at some point moved to Japan, we’re pretty big proponents of living here. One unpleasant part of the package, though, it that since you can’t claim the whole country as your residence, living in Japan means finding an apartment in Japan, which is generally agreed upon as one of the least enjoyable parts of the expat experience.

Why? For the following four reasons.

Read More

Japanese gamer beats insanely hard Mario course, goes insane with joy and breaks down in tears

Well, that didn’t take long. It was just a couple of days ago that we took a look at Mario Maker user PangeaPanga’s course titled Pit of Panga: P-Break and shook our heads in awe at its diabolical difficulty. While it’s true that Nintendo doesn’t allow you to upload Mario Maker levels unless you can prove they’re beatable, we wouldn’t have been surprised if no one other than PangeaPanga himself was able to clear his creation.

But in less than a week, the hardest of the hard-core have risen to the challenge, and while this video of a Japanese gamer finishing the level is a display of some impressive platforming skills, what really makes it worthwhile is the surge of adrenalin that sends him shouting his victory to the heavens, and how it leaves his body in pain and his psyche tattered as he breaks down in tears of joy at his gaming accomplishment.

Read More

Third season announced for Sailor Moon Crystal, Sailor Uranus, Neptune, and Saturn on their way

For long-time fans of Sailor Moon, the anime’s recent remake, Sailor Moon Crystal, was an unexpected opportunity to bask in the nostalgia of seeing many of their favorite characters from the series once again. We say “many of their favorites,” though because fan loyalty is divided pretty evenly among the franchise’s numerous celestial-themed heroines, and there just hasn’t been time in the 26 episodes of Sailor Moon Crystal to introduce all of them.

So if you’ve been waiting patiently for Sailors Uranus, Neptune, and Saturn to show up, you’ll be happy to know that production has begun on a third season of Sailor Moon Crystal that will finally bring together the full complement of all 10 Sailor Senshi.

Read More

To –san or not to –san? Should you use the Japanese honorific suffix when speaking English?

For roughly the past two decades, I’ve woken up every morning and asked myself the question “How can I use more Japanese vocabulary today?” That desire was the major reason I decided to study abroad in college, plus move back to Japan after graduation, and I’ve actually reached the point where I’ve got a pretty sizeable stockpile of Japanese words I wish I could import into my native language.

And yet, often when I hear someone use the Japanese honorific “-san” when speaking English, it feels awkward and superfluous to me. But it turns out there’re actually a few compelling reasons behind English-speakers peppering their speech with “-san,” as it solves a couple of linguistic limitations of the English language.

So what are the pros and cons of importing the word into English? Let’s take a look.

Read More

  2. 1
  3. ...
  4. 453
  5. 454
  6. 455
  7. 456
  8. 457
  9. 458
  10. 459
  11. ...
  12. 539