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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 529)

We fall under the spell of life-sized Madoka statue at magical girl anime art exhibit

For many years, fans of magical girl anime tended to be from the same demographic as its principal characters: little girls. The genre of young girls using mystical powers to fight monsters saw its potential broadened, though, in 2011 with the television premiere of Puella Magi Madoka Magica, which cast an unflinching, unsentimental eye at the physical and psychological dangers of tasking middle school girls with battling extradimensional entities.

Madoka went on to become such a hit that its original 12 episodes were retouched and repackaged into a pair of theatrical releases. This month a third film, Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Rebellion opens in Japan, and a special exhibition of Madoka artwork and statues is being held in Tokyo.

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I think I speak for all men, and a good number of women as well, when I say we’d appreciate more direct communication in our romantic relationships. For most of us, there comes a point, usually sometime around when we finish school, where our tolerance for doubletalk and subterfuge from the person we’re dating drops off dramatically.

No one really enjoys playing mind games in their quest for love. Especially, as some people in Japan are showing, action video games like Capcom’s Monster Hunter can be a much better way of finding your soul mate.

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Bullying has become a major concern in Japan over the last few years. As even elementary school students increasingly communicate and connect with their peers through technology, evidence of these instances of child-on-child cruelty is often stored electronically. Unlike in previous generations, bullies today don’t have the option of simply denying any wrongdoing took place once a victim comes forward with records documenting the incident.

Of course, there’s still the need to track down the evidence in the first place. This depressing yet necessary task often falls to Hirotaka Abe, a private investigator who specializes in helping parents when their child is victimized by hateful peers.

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Anime fan and pet owner recreates Attack on Titan’s epic opening shot by shot – with cats! 【Video】

This year’s breakout anime hit Attack on Titan snuck up on a lot of people. Sure, previews for the TV series made it look like a fun adventure, but is wasn’t until sometime after it premiered that the franchise became the international success it is today, despite the comic it’s based on having been around since 2009.

Why didn’t more people, from the very beginning, realize just how much entertainment Attack on Titan has to offer? Maybe the story’s antagonists, naked giants who look like anatomy textbook illustrations, were just too repugnantly grotesque. Maybe, being creator Hajime Isayama’s first serial, the artwork on its heroes was a little too rough around the edges. How much more immediately accessible would Attack on Titan have been if they had all been replaced with a more traditionally pleasing aesthetic, like a bunch of cute cats?

Thanks to this feline-infused recreation of the show’s opening animation, now we know.

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Couple holds intimate, romantic wedding ceremony on Tokyo’s busiest rail line

Out of all the rail and subway lines crisscrossing Tokyo, the most well known and heavily used is the Yamanote Line which encircles downtown Tokyo. Stations along the Yamanote serve some of the city’s busiest business, education, and entertainment districts, and the result during rush hour is train cars that are so packed it’s comical (for everyone except the passengers themselves, of course).

This month, however, the Yamanote Line was the site of a gathering quite a bit more intimate than its usual pressed mass of sleeping white-collar professionals, as a couple held their wedding ceremony onboard one of its trains.

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Pitch black sesame garlic ramen at craft brewer’s restaurant stirs our hearts while filling our bellies

When dining out in Japan, there is a commonly accepted truism that you get the tastiest example of a particular type of food by eating it in a restaurant that specializes in it. For example, if you want good ramen, you go to a place that serves that and little, if anything, else.

Speaking of Japan’s favorite noodle dish, popular wisdom also holds that the dingier the ramen restaurant, the better-tasting the food.

So imagine our surprise when we discovered that the Yona Yona Beer Kitchen, a classy restaurant with a full menu in Tokyo’s swanky Nagata-cho neighborhood, can also whip up a bowl of ramen that’s as delicious as it is visually striking.

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We create awesome cinematic videos in slow motion with the iPhone 5s

September 20 was a special day for Apple fans, as the newest iteration of the company’s smartphone, the iPhone 5s, went on sale. The youngest member of the iPhone clan was an instant success, and while some people were motivated to buy one by the simple camaraderie of hitting the Apple store with a group of friends, Apple also touts a number of technical advantages the iPhone 5s has over older models.

One of the biggest strides lies in the iPhone 5s’ camera, which we discovered can be used to take dramatic slow motion video that looks like something out of a movie.

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Like many people who immigrated to Japan, for my first few weeks in the country, almost every day involved a trip to the local 100 yen shop. Setting up a new home requires a big investment of time and money, but at the very least, in Japan you can largely outfit your kitchen with a handful of 100-yen (US $1) coins.

And it’s not just dishes and silverware you can pick up on the cheap, but a variety of handy things to make your home life easier, as featured in a recent ranking of the top 10 convenient items from the 100 yen shop.

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Starbucks: More expensive in China than Japan or America, but why?

It’s safe to say that no one you see at Starbucks is there because they want to stretch their java-buying budget. With locations in more than 60 countries (and seemingly every branch in the Tokyo area at maximum capacity every day between 3 and 7 p.m., the Seattle-based chain must be doing something right, but sometimes it’s hard not to feel a bit surprised at the prices they charge.

But the next time you’re sitting in a Starbucks in Japan or America, pretending to sip from an empty mug because you’re not quite ready to disconnect from the free wi-fi but don’t feel like laying out the cash for another cup, consider yourself lucky. You’d be paying a lot more for your latte if you were at a Starbucks in China.

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Police from the Himonya Precinct in Tokyo’s Merguro Ward have announced the arrest of one Keiko Hatano. Mr. Hatano has an unusual given name for a man in Japan, but even more unusual is the crime he is suspected of: fondling a woman’s posterior after explaining to her that he “studies English.”

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Originally a particularly polite way of saying “you,” the Japanese word otaku evolved into a label for anyone with an obsessive, passionate devotion to their hobby. While most commonly associated with anime fans, the term is also applied to hardcore video gamers, technology buffs, and even auto enthusiasts.

Much like “geek,” otaku was initially a derogatory term, but has lost a lot of its sting and become largely co-opted in recent years. Still, it’s important to not let yourself get too wrapped up in your hobbies. Conveniently, there’s now a mathematical formula to determine if your otaku-ness has become too much for your own good.

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Self-Defense Force hopes people will answer the call of duty (and cute anime girls)

Given the less assertive role of the Japanese Self-Defense Force compared to a conventional military, it’s natural that the organization’s recruiting tends to be on the low-key side. The JSDF does indeed do invaluable work in disaster-relief and humanitarian missions, but the pitch to recruits is less hunting down the world’s villains and more holding the fort and being ready to lend a hand when people are in need.

Accordingly, the JSDF Coordination Office for Kagawa Prefecture, located on Shikoku, the smallest of Japan’s four main islands, has decided to go with showcasing the soft power-look of cute anime girls in its recruitment efforts.

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For many parents, one of the hardest things to accept is that their children are growing up. Every milestone on the path to adulthood seems like it comes too soon, whether it’s finishing school or moving out of the house. Perhaps there’s no greater shock than the day a doctor tells you your child is carrying a fetus. Especially if your child is two. And, especially, if your child is a boy, as was the case for one family in China.

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Can you spot the shocking hidden image in this plate of curry and rice?

There are certain customs restaurants in Japan follow when serving dishes that originated overseas. Fried rice should come on an octagonal plate. Steak must be accompanied by a few wedges of carrots, steak fries, and corn.

When it comes to curry and rice, the roux should never completely cover the grain. Ideally, it should be poured over half of the plate, allowing the customer to enjoy mixing the two together in whatever ratio they feel is best.

Trying to keep with the spirit of this tradition caused problems for one Tokyo restaurant, though, when its special plate of three kinds of curry ended up containing an unfortunate and unintentional hidden image.

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Recently, a number of Japanese college students irked their universities when posts about their rule-skirting shenanigans showed up on everyone’s favorite social network for immortalizing bad decisions, Facebook.

But underage drinking is almost universally accepted in Japan, and colleges here lack the animal mascots that are prime kidnapping targets in American institutions of higher learning. Just what kind of shameful, inappropriate behavior had these kids been up to?

They’d been getting job offers from A-list companies.

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So what’s the biggest gift-giving faux pas you’ve committed? Forgetting to take the receipt out of the bag before you hand it over? Re-gifting something to the same person who originally gave it to you?

Well, don’t be too hard on yourself. You’re still a shining example of etiquette compared to one young man who decided to steal some merchandise to give to his girlfriend’s parents. And that’s not even the worst part.

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Despite its pronunciation in Japanese coming out unnervingly close to “shoe cream,” choux crème does not, in fact, refer to a product to keep your wingtips looking their shiniest. More commonly known in North America as cream puffs, choux crème are one of the many non-indigenous desserts popular in Japan.

In similarly confusing fashion, the popular chain Beard Papa sells neither razors, lawnmowers, easy chairs, nor any of the other trappings assorted with fatherhood and/or having facial hair. Beard Papa is instead Japan’s most prolific choux crème bakery, and for the next two months they’re bringing back their popular melon bread-inspired cream puffs.

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Sony uses radio controlled helicopters to record epic footage of massive reservoir drainage 【Video】

In April, we tagged along with a team from Sony on a trip to Gunkanjima, mecca for urban explorers and movie villains alike. While there, Sony’s engineers used the company’s new Action Cam video camera, mounted on a radio controlled helicopter, to film the island’s ruined ghost town from the sky.

Sony is at it again, this time using this technology to get up close and personal as Hokkaido’s enormous Hoheikyo Dam discharges two tons of water per second. This really is quite the sight.

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Even with the falling yen making Japan more affordable for international travelers, the country still isn’t exactly a bargain destination. Likewise, even local residents, who recently went through the double whammy of paying quarterly resident taxes and an announcement that sales tax will jump to 8 percent next year, are looking to stretch their entertainment budgets.

Thankfully, travel site Trip Advisor recently announced the results of its survey regarding the top 20 free sightseeing locations in Japan.

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Like many members of the RocketNews24 team, I met the love of my life after arriving in Japan, and just to be clear, I’m talking about my wife, not a cold can of crisp, delicious Ebisu beer. There’s a lot to be said for an international marriage, whether it’s the chance to learn about another culture in the most in-depth way possible, or simply the opportunity to dazzle your spouse by cooking food from your home country, even at a quality that would have your friends and family back home hitting the speed dial button for the local pizza delivery.

Of course, Japan, like any society, has its own baseline attitudes about married life, some of which can be startling for foreigners with a Japanese spouse. Blogger Madame Riri has composed a list of marital quirks to be aware of and think through together with your Japanese sweetheart before the two of you say “chikaimasu” (“I do”).

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