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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 523)

Tokyo Motor Show 2013: Cars! Crowds! Comely models! 【Photos】

Like a migratory bird made of carbon fiber and engine blocks, every two years the Tokyo Motor Show returns to give us all a glimpse at automakers’ visions of the future. RocketNews24 visited this year’s event, and we’re here to share with you our impressions and photos of the massive crowds, newest concept cars, and hottest current models (both automotive and female).

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Japan is often thought of as an exporting juggernaut, thanks in no small part to the country’s high profile automobile and consumer electronics companies. However, the nation has to turn to importing for much of its energy needs, particularly as it increasingly looks for ways to reduce its reliance on domestically produced nuclear power following the events at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in 2011.

However, one scientist claims Japan could eliminate its need to import energy entirely by turning algae into fuel.

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The last couple of years haven’t been particularly kind to Suzuki Motor Corporation. The company’s US division filed for bankruptcy in 2012, and the automaker announced that it would be halting sales of passenger cars in both America and Canada.

Suzuki still sells cars in its home market, but recent moves by Japanese politicians looking to scale back tax breaks for the compact cars the Shizuoka-based manufacturer specializes in have put it in a precarious position. As the man in the hot seat, Suzuki CEO Osamu Suzuki has come up with a bold and unorthodox plan: openly insult his customers.

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Japan is a crowded place. There’s just no way to get around it. The vast majority of good jobs and schools are found in the major urban centers, which are themselves located on the scarce patches of usable land available in this tremendously mountainous country.

Although few people particularly enjoy living in such dense population centers where you find yourself surprised when you’re not pressed against your fellow commuters on the train in the morning, what can you do about it? It’s not like Japan itself is suddenly going to start getting any bigger, is it?

Actually, it that’s exactly what’s going on, as newly released images show that a new island has recently formed in Japan’s waters.

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When you stop and think about it, the Pokémon series of video games ought to be terrifying. Sure, on the one hand, most of the pocket monsters the player controls are drawn with chubby cheeks and eyes whose size is equaled only by their cuteness. But at the same time, those rolly polly creatures do battle with each other by unleashing lightning storms, fireballs, and tornadoes. From a design standpoint, they shouldn’t look like Bambi’s woodland friends. Pokémon should look like something that could take on Godzilla.

In other words, they should look something like the frightening CG image here.

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While in recent years opinions have become increasingly divided on the gameplay in long-running video game series Final Fantasy, there’s not much room to criticize the franchise’s artistry. New installments of Final Fantasy are consistently among the most visually and aurally pleasing games at their time of release. Each title has a huge team of designers and software engineers who spend untold hours making sure the cut scenes are gorgeous, the interface slick, and the soundtrack stirring and crystal clear. And also, apparently, that the heroine doesn’t inadvertently flash her panties.

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While there are genuine differences between Japan and the West, oftentimes you can find cultural equivalents with just a little searching. Japan may not have ice cream trucks, for example, but mobile food exists in the form of sweet potato vendors who cruise the streets of residential areas. Christmas is Japan is usually spent on a romantic date or partying with friends, but then everyone goes back home to spend time with the family over New Year’s.

Likewise, satirical website Kyoko News exists as Japan’s counterpart to The Onion, running stories that almost seem plausible, but never actually happened. Nonetheless, it seems the United Nation’s Children’s Fund (UNICEF) either didn’t get or didn’t appreciate being the subject of one of Kyoko News’ recent jokes. The organization eventually got the retraction it was seeking, but not without seeing the complications involved in asking for one from a website that states upfront that what it’s saying isn’t true.

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We pick up a new good luck charm at the Tori no Ichi Festival in Shinjuku

Japan’s urban and rural areas alike are dotted with temples and shrines, but there’s no practice of attending regular services at them. Instead, visitors primarily come to offer a few yen as a donation, say a quick prayer, and pick up one of the plethora of good luck charms and amulets sold there, many of which have specific purposes such as passing an important exam or finding a new love.

But every member of our team is already out of college, and so popular with the opposite sex that we’re starting to feel bad about not leaving any for the rest of the populace. Looking further down our to-do list, we noticed that “build mansion with supermodel grotto” was preceded by “achieve economic success,” so we decided to head to our local Shinto shrine for Tori no Ichi, Japan’s annual festival for buying good luck charms for success in business.

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Heart-shaped lemons from Hiroshima make sour a little sweeter

We’ve talked before about the booming trend of latte art in Japan, in which baristas create intricate pictures in the foam atop your coffee. But what if you prefer to get your caffeine fix from a cup of tea instead of a mug of java? Does Japan have anything cute to brighten your beverage?

Why yes, it does! And if you like a little citrus in your tea, you can spruce up your drink with a slice of lemon grown in the shape of a heart.

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Mercedes Benz measures the brains activity of Zen monks to evaluate their new car【Video】

Given Mercedes Benz’s reputation for luxury, it’s tempting to dismiss the automaker’s cars as being strictly for trust fund sorority girls or high-flying lawyers who just made partner.

Mercedes does have quite a bit of performance cred too, though, particularly for its extra-sporty cars that bear the mark of AMG, the company’s in-house tuning and motorsports division. But while you can find plenty of driving enthusiasts who get excited by the cars coming out of Stuttgart, in a new video Mercedes tries to stir the hearts of a new demographic: Zen monks.

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So what was your biggest achievement when you were 15? I was pretty proud of getting my learner’s permit. I also made a couple nice tackles on the football field, and came this close to finally winning a round against my friend Eugene in Street Fighter II. All in all, not a bad year.

Of course, these accomplishments don’t seem like much compared to those of Jack Andraka, a high school student from Maryland who just made the biggest breakthrough in pancreatic cancer detection methods in more than half a century. This is simply too cool not to share.

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There’s nothing particularly wrong with RocketNews24’s “.com” domain name. We haven’t declared ourselves an autonomious principality (yet), so .gov is out of the question. And while some (me) might argue that .handsomeandwittyreporterswhowritesuchgreatarticlesthatmenareinspiredandladiesswoon is the most accurate description of what we do around here, for some reason that’s not available for official use.

So we ended up with plain old .com, our only logical option out of the top-level domains recognized by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN. But if only RocketNews24 had come into existence a little later, we could have taken advantage of ICANN’s recent approval of .ninja as a domain name.

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All-you-can-eat Whoppers at Burger King Japan. Thank you. Thank you so much.

One of my closest friends recently visited Japan with his wife, and we made plans to get together to sip fine cognac and discuss neoclassical philosophy (OK, canned Ebisu beer and Japanese sports cars). Since they were staying in a hotel with an awesome view of the city, we held our high-minded symposium in their room while admiring Yokohama’s gigantic Ferris wheel.

My friend asked how much all our convenience store-bought booze would run us at a restaurant, and I told him it would depend on whether or not we took advantage of the all-you-can-drink specials that many offer. “Free refills on beer? That’s awesome, but you could never get away with that in the States,” he responded.

It’s a crying shame that he already flew back home, because if he’d stuck around just a little longer, he’d have been able to experience another gastronomic experience unique to Japan: all-you-can-eat burgers at Burger King until December 1.

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We celebrate Pocky Day by sharing Japanese candy with the Maasai people of Kenya

Along with having a pleasing smell, one of the essential requirements of being part of the RocketNews24 team is a certain measure of eloquence. I can proudly say that the rest of the crew writes really, really good (they also help me out a lot, quite obviously).

But sometimes, words aren’t quite enough. How can mere prose do justice to the subtle hues of a cherry blossom, or the reverberations of a temple bell? Sometimes, in order to properly carry out our mission of spreading the simple joys of Japanese culture, we have to carry it with us and head out into the world, which is just what we did recently while traveling Africa.

Unfortunately cherry blossom season is still about five months away, and we couldn’t fit our cast-iron bell in the overhead bin, so we settled for the next best thing: bringing boxes of the chocolaty snack Pocky to share with the Maasai people of Kenya.

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After waiting so long to watch the live-action Kiki’s Delivery Service trailer, we kind of wish we hadn’t

Despite being over 20 years old, Kiki’s Delivery Service is still one of the most beloved films from legendary anime house Studio Ghibli. When news broke earlier this year of a live-action remake of the story of a young witch coming of age in the big city, fans were elated.

Since the first still shot of lead actress Fuuka Koshiba dressed as heroine Kiki was released last May, we’ve been waiting with bated breath for a trailer. When we heard one had finally been released, we pulled it up on YouTube with all the excitement of a kid tearing open a present on Christmas morning.

Of course, sometimes you’re a naughty kid and Santa brings you a lump of coal, which is just how disappointed we felt when we saw the special effects for the live-action Kiki.

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Poor Shimane Prefecture doesn’t exactly get a lot of respect. Despite being home to cultural sites like Izumo Shrine and Matsue Castle, ironically one of the prefecture’s biggest claims to fame is that many people living elsewhere in Japan mix up Shimane and Tottori, its neighbor to the east, when looking at a map of the country.

Recently, though, Shimane is getting some much needed attention, thanks to a group of amazing students at its Ota Dai-san Junior High School. Like many middle schools in Japan, Ota Dai-san has an orchestra. And like a few schools, its orchestra has won awards. But what makes Ota Dai-san’s orchestra completely unique is that it has only eight members, who rotate between instruments in mid-performance.

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Honda’s automated valet parking service in action 【Video】

As someone who feels lonely when his car doesn’t have a clutch pedal, the seemingly inevitable march towards self-driving automobiles isn’t exactly my favorite technological trend. Convenience is all well and good, but I can’t help but feel sorry for future generations that may never know the joy of a crisp-shifting manual transmission, or the amazing stress-relieving properties of a quick blast to redline.

Of course, there’s no pleasure to be found in navigating through a crowded parking lot hunting for a space. That’s why Honda is looking to take this task off drivers’ hands with an automatic valet parking system.

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Who’s up for 2.4 kilograms of free noodles?

Despite its well-earned reputation as a society where meals are generally sensibly-sized and low calorie, Japan isn’t above the occasional burst of gastronomic decadence, and we’ve mentioned the jumbo-sized portions known as dekamori before.

Of course, it’s not easy to finance such a big appetite. Thankfully, if you’re craving a dekamori of the stir-fried noodle dish known as yakisoba, there’s a place where you won’t have to pay a single yen, as long as you can polish off 2.4 kilograms (5.3 pounds) of it ,that is…

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Don’t eat that! We make delicious-looking models of tempura out of wax

Although the language barrier can make traveling or living in Japan tough at times, dining out is a snap. There are plenty of conveyer belt sushi restaurants where you just grab what you want as the plates go by, and at many ramen and beef bowl restaurants you simply buy a meal ticket out of a vending machine, then pass it off to the cook.

Even when technology isn’t there to save you, ordering is still easy, thanks to the numerous Japanese restaurants that display wax models of their menu items, allowing you to bring the wait staff to the display window and point and what you want. There’s a whole industry devoted to replicating food, and we recently tried our hand at making a wax creation of our own.

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Last chance to chow down on a kilo of curry rice before famed Akihabara eatery goes extinct

While most of Akihabara’s fame comes from its anime megastores and maid cafes, there’s one other landmark in the neighborhood that people regularly make pilgrimages to. Wherever you find hordes of young men dropping their paychecks on their hobbies, you can also find cheap, tasty grub, and for years, Mammoth Curry has been the place to get your fill of the spicy stuff in Tokyo’s electronics district.

Unfortunately, much like its wooly namesake, the age of Mammoth Curry is coming to an end in Akihabara, as the eatery is closing its doors for good this month.

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