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 475)

Celebrate the return of your favorite magical girl with Sailor Moon (Swarovski) Crystal rings

Over the last several months, anime merchandiser Bandai has released a huge number of high quality Sailor Moon items through its Premium Bandai online store. Up until now, these have all been based on the original anime from 1992, but with the July 5 premier of the brand new Sailor Moon Crystal, Bandai’s ready to open the floodgates on a whole new batch of magical girl goodies.

The company is starting things off on a classy note, with the simultaneous release of five fashionable rings based on the tiaras worn by the Sailor Scouts.

Read More

Tokyo restaurant’s awesome pickled avocados contain 30 years of flavor

Recently, we dined on a gigantic, gooey, and glorious cheeseburger. We were glad we did, but honestly, in one sitting we consumed enough beef to last us a week.

So for our next meal out we decided to head for the opposite end of the dining spectrum in both ambiance and ingredients, and headed to a different part of Tokyo to try their pickled avocados with a flavor that’s been over 30 years in the making.

Read More

Tokyo Disneyland Hotel adding new rooms that let you stay with Alice, Belle, and Cinderella

With Japan’s love of travel and fictional characters, it was really only a matter of time before hotels started offering rooms based on popular animated franchises. You can always count on Disney to have its finger on the pulse of travelers, and sure enough the Tokyo Disneyland Hotel has a block of rooms decorated with the cast of its classic films.

It’s been six years since the hotel opened, though, and management has decided it could use a little sprucing up, So next year the character rooms are being renovated, with some returning favorites getting new amenities plus the hotel debut of a few more.

Read More

The sake from Evangelion goes great with Japan’s poisonous blowfish…from a can 【Taste test】

We’re not shattering any illusions when we point out that the hit anime Evangelion is a work of fiction, right? Japan hasn’t built a new capital in the mountains of Kanagawa Prefecture, aliens aren’t attacking the country, and as far as we know, no one’s turned into a puddle of Tang because they couldn’t find a way to deal with their loneliness.

But there is one thing you’ll see in Evangelion that’s 100 percent true to life. The brand of sake hard-drinking character Misato regularly enjoys, Dassai, actually exists, and we recently tried a bottle. Not only that, since one of the many themes Eva deals with is confronting your fears, we decided to pair it with a snack that just might kill us.

Read More

Sailor Moon cosplay event in Tokyo provides costumes for all five Scouts, pro photographer

Anime fans the world over are about to get a treat with the July 5 premiere of Sailor Moon Crystal, the new series featuring Japanese animation’s most beloved cast of magical girls. But while we’re all excited about being able to see the Sailor Scouts once again, this month also brings a chance to become them, with a cosplay event in Tokyo that’ll provide you with not only a Sailor Moon costume, but a professional photographer to take pictures for you, too.

Read More

While some have argued that a woman can increase her bust size by eating a bunch of hamburgers or copious amounts of frog fallopian tube, not every woman who’d like to project a more voluptuous image wants to reach that goal by changing her diet.

Some instead turn to visual subterfuge, such as buttoning their shirt out of order to create the illusion of having a larger chest. That technique won’t help you much once swimsuit season rolls around, though, which is why one Japanese fashion magazine is suggesting a non-wardrobe related way to give yourself larger-looking breasts: paint them on.

Read More

Tokyo dating event needs guys who like girls who like anime about guys who like guys

No matter how deeply you respect someone’s core values, or how physically attractive you find them, it’s hard to build a successful romantic relationship without some common interests. So it’s really no surprise that an upcoming singles party in Tokyo’s anime mecca of Akihabara is looking for men and women with a shared love of animation.

This isn’t the only romantic anime event coming to Tokyo, though. On the other side of town, organizers are in the process of assembling a quorum of guys who’d be happy dating women who’re fans of male homosexual anime and manga.

Read More

This Tokyo cheeseburger is so huge, there’s no room for a whole bun

Long ago, fast food chain Wendy’s poked fun at the meager size of some restaurants’ hamburgers with a series of commercials asking “Where’s the beef?” Whoever came up with that advertising slogan would be proud of the chefs at a new restaurant in Tokyo’s Shibuya, which serves a cheeseburger so massive we had to ask, “Where’s the bun?”

Read More

For years, Hachiko, the faithful Akita dog that waited every day outside Shibuya Station after its owner died at his workplace, has been Tokyo’s most famous animal. Recently, though, it seemed like cat-loving Tokyoites had found an animal celebrity of their own when a cat perched on top of a signpost in Ginza started drawing crowds.

Unfortunately, the scene has gone from heartwarming to heartbreaking with some sharp-eyed observers’ theory that the cat is in actuality being abused by its owner.

Read More

Gundam water pistols turn squirt gun fights into galactic battles

At one point in the Gundam franchise, there’s a scene where cadets are shown training with the hit anime’s giant robots by shooting humongous paintballs at each other. Until today, you could have made the argument that it was the silliest use of guns in the hundreds of hours of animation that make up the complete saga.

But not anymore, because now there are Gundam water pistols.

Read More

Continue? Save your iPhone from a battering with these protective Street Fighter II cases

While Mortal Kombat gets most of the attention, whether positive or negative, for violence in fighting video games, Capcom’s Street Fighter II, the title that established the genre as gamers know it today, had some pretty grisly graphics, too. Unlike modern polygon fighters which zoom in on the victorious character as he or she strikes a victory pose, Street fighter II cut away to a different screen after each match, which showed the gory details of what a losing combatant would look like after taking a few too many hadokens or spinning bird kicks to the face.

Now, with a new set of iPhone cases, you can adorn your smartphone with the losing portrait of the Street Fighter II character you like best, or perhaps hate the most.

Read More

Recently we talked about a shop in Kanagawa Prefecture that sells styish kamaboko fish cakes decorated to look like the beautiful hydrangeas that bloom during Japan’s rainy season. But what if your palate runs more towards the sweet than the fishy, or your ideal of natural beauty isn’t the flowers growing from the soil, but the stars above?

In that case, one Kyoto confectioner has just the thing: sweet bean gelatin modeled after the Milky Way.

Read More

This Japanese schoolgirl loves anime, lollipops, and competitive pistol shooting【Video】

In a lot of ways, 14-year-old Akari Aruga is like a lot of girls her age. She likes watching anime, enjoys the theme song from Attack on Titan, and says lollipops are her favorite food.

But you know what’s not par for the course for an adolescent girl in Japan? Being a crack shot with a pistol in target shooting.

Read More

Our recipe for green tea rice-cooker pancakes: amazingly tasty, ridiculously easy

We recently found out that you can use a rice cooker to make awesome, gigantic pancakes. Our first reaction was surprise, as we’d honestly never even thought to try. Soon enough, though, our surprise faded and was replaced by something even stronger: hunger.

So we decided to get off the culinary sidelines and whip up a batch for ourselves. Since we were using Japan’s most beloved kitchen appliance, we decided to take another cue from our adopted country and spruce things up a bit by making matcha green tea pancakes.

We’re going to spoil the ending right now and tell you that they taste amazing. Want to make them yourself? Read on and we’ll give you the whole incredibly easy recipe.

Read More

After spending a year in college studying in Tokyo, I moved back to Los Angeles for about two years before coming back to Japan for work. Having always prided myself on my familiarity with Japanese slang (partly to distract myself from my terrible penmanship when writing kanji characters), I was surprised to find out how many new terms had sprung up in just the 22 months I’d been away.

At the same time, it turned out that a few of the vocabulary words I’d picked up while studying abroad had since passed their expiration dates and become obsolete. This wasn’t a one-time transition, either, as language is constantly evolving, and today we bring you a list of eight words that’ll at best make you sound like a senior citizen, and at worst simply won’t be understood by anyone under the age of 25.

Read More

Japan’s most successful manga artists draw their characters for the camera 【Video】

Although most manga artists have a team of assistants backing them up, compared to live-action films, comics allow for a much more direct transmission of the creator’s vision. Movie and TV programming are by nature a collaborative effort, and you can’t really watch a scene go from concept to finished version in real-time.

With manga, though, you can give a talented artist a pen, and within minutes see him or her transform the emptiness of a blank sheet of paper into a character that will inspire and entertain countless fans, like in this video featuring some of Japan’s most popular manga artists and characters.

Read More

As the rainy season in Japan begins to wind down and we head into the sweet spot of midsummer, more and more people are hitting the beach and working on their tans. For followers of a certain fashion aesthetic, there’s nothing more appealing than a beautifully bronzed body, which holds true whether we’re talking about men, women, or even video game consoles, it seems.

Read More

Israeli bath and beauty product maker Sabon opening beach restaurant in Kamakura

Having grown up a quick drive from southern California’s miles and miles of prime coastline, I’ll admit Japanese beaches can sometimes be a little underwhelming. Among other problems, they’re crowded with day trippers during midsummer, and infested with jellyfish as the season winds down.

One great thing about beaches in Japan, though, are the umi no ie, temporary restaurants/lounges built right on the sand and only operated during July and August. Due to their temporary nature (the buildings are completely disassembled come September), umi no ie used to be pretty bare-bones. In recent years, though, the ones at Japan’s more popular beaches have been attracting some well-known corporate sponsors and collaborative partners, such as Israeli bath and beauty product manufacturer Sabon, which is set to open its first umi no ie next week.

Read More

Honda readying a Fuel Cell Vehicle for buyers next year, just in time to challenge Toyota

Toyota recently announced it plans to begin consumer sales of a Fuel Cell Vehicle sometime around the beginning of 2015, which has the potential to be a huge step towards a more environmentally-friendly system of personal transportation. Rival carmaker Honda isn’t about to let Japan’s largest auto manufacturer have this new field all to itself, though, as it looks to be moving ahead with plans to start selling an FCV of its own within the country that aims to be the class leader in both performance and price.

Read More

  2. 1
  3. ...
  4. 472
  5. 473
  6. 474
  7. 475
  8. 476
  9. 477
  10. 478
  11. ...
  12. 507