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KK Miller

Writer After falling in love with Totoro and always thinking how delicious Satsuki’s bento looked, KK Miller continued to study about Japan all the way through university. Frequent time was spent between learning about Japanese history and rereading Harry Potter for the bajillionth time. A year abroad in Japan only cemented her decision to live in Japan, so she moved here right after completing her degree. Dressing up as a Harry Potter character every Halloween since being in Japan, KK continues to spread the magic and her love of Totoro and Harry Potter to everyone around her. While Satsuki’s bento turned out to consist of all the Japanese foods she doesn’t like (umeboshi, dembu, and whole grilled fish), she continues to enjoy Japan through traveling, photography and writing.

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Posted by KK Miller (Page 34)

OPPO’s new R5 smartphone is a multi-tool disguised as the thinnest cell phone ever

Apple’s iPhone 6 has gotten a lot of press for being very flexible in all the wrong situations. Competitors are chomping at the bit to occupy any ground the iPhone gives up. Introducing OPPO’s new entry into an extremely saturated market, the R5. Coming in at a ludicrously slender 4.85 mm, OPPO is ready to show the world what its new phone can do. In an obvious attempt to illustrate the clear differences between Apple’s phone and OPPO’s R5, they created a commercial to show just how tough it really is. If you ever find yourself in a situation where you have some fruit to cut, a nail to hammer in, or need to lift a car 4.85 mm off the ground, don’t take out a multi-tool, just get out your new R5!

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Catatsu is one of the ridiculous new “hot” items for your pet to wear (yes, wear) this winter

As you may have already heard, winter is cold in Japan. Maybe not as cold as some other more northern countries, but it’s still very chilly even indoors because many people still choose to only heat one room in the house at a time, or live in buildings made out of lightweight materials in an effort to make them as earthquake-safe as possible. This proves to be a bit of an issue for pet owners. Many pets are built to resist some amount of cold (because duh, fur!) but others aren’t equipped to deal with the cold daytime weather.

Perhaps this is why Japan sells some pretty ridiculous pet clothes! UNIHABITAT has a couple of new pet outfits that are going to turn some heads, but will also keep your pets warm and cozy this winter season.

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Scandal as pretty star of the “Sunflower Movement” is found to have a shady past

What do you stand for? Well, whatever it is, a pretty face can really help your cause along. Just ask Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement, whose protests gained international attention when Taiwanese star Johanne Liou was photographed within the throngs of their supporters.

The angel-faced Liou seemed to have pretty much everything required to be model spokesperson for the group. Strong principles? Check. Good speaker? Check. A confident, informed woman? Even better. Unfortunately, her shady past involving prostitution wasn’t something that was destined to go down well when it was leaked.

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BABYMETAL keeps turning metalheads, voted Best Metal Album of the Year

What’s cute, frilly and metal all over? BABYMETAL of course! From relative obscurity only two years ago, to doing various concerts around the world in 2014, the presence of BABYMETAL has been sudden, if not shocking. It’s hard to believe that the combination of idol music and hardcore metal has created something that many people are getting fired up over. In fact, BABYMETAL has such a fan base now that their self-titled first album was voted as the Number 1 Metal Album of 2014. Say what?!?

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Avengers assemble! In a Chinese college student’s house【Photos】

Once you finally finish your years of study in high school and get into a good university, it’s party time! Or…do nothing time. Some people occupy their new-found free time with Netflix queues, watching the latest and greatest television shows and movies. Others take the opportunity to let their creative juices flow and make some really awesome things. One college senior in China decided that just watching super heroes on a screen was not enough, he figured he could become those heroes instead. How awesome would it be to punch the great evil known as homework when you look like Captain America?

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Let the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra transport you into your favorite Square Enix games!

Great stories make great games. But when all is said and done, when you have finished the game, saved the world and beaten down the bad guy, the thing that sticks with you the most is the music. Especially in roleplaying games, a grandiose soundtrack will elevate your game from memorable to unforgettable. There has been a trend in the past decade or so to perform live symphonic versions of famous video game music. These concerts have been incredibly popular around the world, but how would you like to hear the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra whisk you away to a fantasy world? Now, you don’t have to wait for their next concert!

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Taiwanese festival tries to put itself on the map, or blow itself up trying【Video】

Anything worth doing in excess is worth overdoing in excess. Or at least that seems to be the motto for this gathering in Taiwan. An entire street is covered in what looks like red scraps of paper, or if you’re feeling more poetic, flower petals. Turns out it’s neither of those things, and as the following video will show, “Boom Boom Pow!”

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Skinny Japanese man isn’t skinny enough, makes greatest face at realization!【Photos】

Japanese people have a stereotype for being incredibly tiny. Grown men and women can shop in the “junior” section, which is a handy way to save a bit of money, especially when buying some brand name items. But just because you “can” doesn’t mean you “should“. One Japanese “baller” finds out the hard way that some children-only items should really only be used by children. Unless you are looking for a new and permanent metal chastity belt.

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Japan introduces a new kind of needleless injection, you won’t believe how it works!

Needle phobia all boils down to “Needles? No thank you!” This seemingly innocuous fear makes many things in life quite difficult. Drawing blood, injections…sewing…are just some of the things that become very problematic. Needle(ss) to say, science fiction has been ripe with alternative injection systems, the most famous is probably the hypospray from Star Trek. While needle-free injections have existed for a while now, a Japanese research team is ready to release their invention into the world, a new kind of needle-free injection that works on the magic of bubbles and is pain FREE!

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Water pipe bursts at Beijing art building, turns everything into a frozen winter wonderland

Nothing kills a great winter vacation more than coming back to find out your pipes have burst. That water can be flowing out of the broken pipe for days before you return home to find you have a new indoor swimming pool. It only has to happen once to forever taint your holidays with an extremely nagging “did we turn the water off?”

With temperatures dipping below zero in many parts of the world, each day is a potential pipe bursting tragedy. However, sometimes two wrongs really do make a right, and the horrible outcome of water soaking everything with Jack Frost blowing through create a really spectacular winter wonderland.

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All your ordinary moments through a sweet retro gaming lens【Animated GIFs】

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then how much is a pixel worth? We guess that really depends on how many pixels are in a piece of art. The following works by @1041uuu certainly capture more than your ordinary dots of color. You are going to wish your life was as fantastic as these nostalgic, creative and inspired GIFs capturing everyday life in Japan.

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There’s something strange in the Cebu ‘hood: 14 high school girls faint after seeing a “ghost”

Who you gonna call…? Frederik Kriekenbeek! No, that’s not the Cebuano word for “Ghostbuster,” it’s the name of the local priest who specializes in exorcisms in Cebu, Philipines.

What seems like a case of ghostly possession has struck the idyllic Filipino island when, on November 21, 14 students fainted when they were “possessed” by a ghost. Never fear though, this does seem to happen every once in a while; that’s why they have a local priest who specializes in exorcisms. He really is, who they call.

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An ocean apart, what do Japanese college students think about the US?【Video】

World opinion of the United States goes up and down like a giant see-saw. Sometimes the US is seen as a world leader in economics, science and technology, yet there is no denying the fact that around the globe, there are some groups that harbor negative feelings towards Americans. Post WWII, there has been an incredibly strong bond between the USA and Japan, but has public opinion been swayed in recent years? If this small sampling of college students is representative of how the youth of Japan feel about the US, relations between the two countries will continue to be solid.

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The Japanese work environment might qualify as a something of a business paradise because Japanese workers so rarely take a day off. They are instead known to put in tons of free overtime and often don’t use “sick leave“.  There is even a word in Japanese for “death from overwork”: karoshi.

Despite the health risks, many won’t take the day off if they are feeling a little under the weather. But what do Japanese people consider “a little sick” and “really sick”? A survey was conducted aiming to answer that question. Do their answers line up with your own, or would you file them away under “only in Japan”?

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Casual cosplay: for those who want to dress the part 365 days a year【Photos】

With the recent release of Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, people around the world are settling in for long gaming sessions of collecting and trading their favorite Pokémon. Playing the game on the Nintendo 3DS sometimes isn’t enough though, you want to live and breathe it wherever you are. But with Halloween and most of the convention circuit closing down for the year, how else do we cosplay our favorite characters and Pokémon?

Introducing casual cosplay!

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Scope out which love hotel to take your next date to right now in Google Street View

Love hotels in Japan provide a service that is very unique in the world. They play a convenient role for those passionate one-night stands, which is exactly the sort of business you’d expect at a place called a “love hotel”. But they are also a place where married couples can go who are being pressured from their parents to give them some grandchildren. That’s kind of hard to do with mom and dad in the room next door. One quick glance in any city shows that these love hotels are a dime a dozen, which is probably why there are so many random and fun hotels with different styles of rooms and designs.

And now, with the convenience of the Internet, choosing a love hotel is easier than ever. Why should we settle with those “flattering” pictures they provide when we can take a tour of it ourselves with the help of Google Street View!

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NHK offices are too boring for broadcast after earthquake, “borrows” from tweets

This week’s large earthquake that struck Nagano, Japan was unfortunately quite damaging. The magnitude 6.7 quake brought down over 140 houses in the area, injuring at least 40 people. When an event like this occurs, everyone switches on their TVs to see how bad things were and where it struck. In Japan, people will often turn to NHK, their nationally funded broadcasting service. Normally a trusted news source, NHK decided to expose the conditions of an otaku’s room where his unique collection was scattered across the floor.

How did they get such an in-depth look at the damage done to a local resident? Was there a connection with someone within the TV station? Did they rush to his home to capture the footage first hand? Nope, they simply pulled the photos “From Twitter” without asking for permission. Can NHK actually do that?

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Japan is doing what people do best with fallen leaves: playing with them【Photos】

There isn’t much to dislike about fall. The weather has finally turned to a comfortable temperature and the colors of the fallen leaves fill you with awe and playfulness. People and animals alike always enjoy the autumnal weather to its fullest as we all know what is to come, the “stay-at-home-under-the-kotatsu” cold of winter.

So while it lasts, enjoy some of the creative pictures of fall collected from all over Japan. Maybe it will inspire you to get outside and frolic around too.

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Question reveals how foreigners feel about speaking Japanese, getting English in return

Living in a foreign country has its trials and tribulations. There are all new customs and sometimes a new language you have to learn, creating a situation that can be really frustrating and depressing. Then one day you wake up, turn on the TV and suddenly, “Huh, I kinda get what’s going on here,” and you know you’re finally ready. It’s time to speak to the locals…with confidence!

In Japan, a very interesting thing happens though. You may speak close to native level and yet the Japanese person will respond back in ENGLISH. Has this happened to you?

“How do you feel when you speak fluent or reasonably good Japanese to a Japanese person and they insist on answering you in English?” Foreigners were asked this question on Japan Today and it was shared by  Madame Riri, a Japanese blogger. What do both parties have to say about this? More after the jump!

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All-male dance group in Japan breaks the ice with incredible “Frozen” inspired number【Video】

How many ways can people display their love for Frozen? It seems like we’ve exhausted all the options. In order to get noticed in the digital age, some are probably trying to ride the coattails of the movie’s popularity. With so many tributes, parodies, interpretations and whatnot, it’s hard to sort through what is worth your precious internet minutes.

A dance troupe in Japan wants you to watch their Frozen performance and they guarantee it won’t be a waste of your time. How do they know? It starts with one simple word: cross-dressing.

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