Bringing you yesterday's news from Japan and Asia, today.
Starting with a love of J-Pop and J-dramas when she was 13, Krista Rogers has left her quiet New England hometown in the States both to study abroad in Tokyo and to work on the JET Program in beautiful Yamagata prefecture. She misses chatting in the local dialect and staging Kamehameha battles in the hallway with her students. Although she's currently working on her master's degree in Boston, she will without a doubt be back in Japan before long and buying way too much at Book-Off and Tower Records again. When she needs a break from schoolwork, Krista enjoys eating yakiniku, figure skating, finding cute cafes, watching Big Bang MVs, and continuing on her quest to catch 'em all.
Posted by Krista Rogers (Page 53)
We’ve all been in this situation at some point in our lives–trapped in a public place with a baby screaming its lungs out. While many people would react by repeating “Shut up!” over and over again inside their minds, one pro bus driver in Yokohama who experienced this exact situation on the bus he was driving took the high route by instead reassuring the mother that everything was okay.
When a stray kitten began following Japanese Twitter user @Kawasaki_Hina around like a little duckling, he decided to take her in and keep her for good. Within a short time, it became obvious the feline had made herself completely at home and had taken up a few of his ‘hooman’ hobbies to boot — including watching anime and playing the guitar.
Warning: Melt-in-your-seat adorable feline photos are coming up right after the jump!
Three-dimensional character bread, called chigiri-pan, is currently trending on Japanese Instagram under the tag #3Dちぎりパン. These upright, puffy loaves are handcrafted by artistic bakers with more than a pinch of creativity and dollops of love. We’ve already spied loaves in the shape of some popular Disney, Ghibli, San-X, and Moomin characters, among others. Perhaps one of the following creations will inspire you to try your hand at making some chigiri-pan for yourself!
On September 2, Kurand Sake Market opened a new shop in the Asakusa district of Tokyo. This location is a sister branch to the original Kurand Sake Market which opened earlier this year in Ikebukuro, where sake lovers can sample 100 varieties of sake for 3,000 yen (US$24.64) per person with no time limit.
The Asakusa branch invited curious members of the media in for a sneak peek before its grand opening to the public, so we promptly sent our sake-loving reporters Mr. Sato, a veteran of the Ikebukuro shop, and Sailor Venus-cosplaying reporter extraordinaire Yoshio to check things out. But rather than write their opinions for each of the 30 individual brands they sampled, which would undoubtedly become tedious after a while, they decided to create a handy visual guide so that you can gauge their reactions to each cup with a picture, thus eliminating any language barriers in the process. Let the sake festivities begin!
What would modern life be like without the humble toilet? Actually, we’d rather not think about that.
Many of us around the world should direct our thanks to TOTO Ltd., the world’s largest manufacturer of toilets and the very company that invented the washlet. In fact, Friday, August 28 marked the grand opening of the new TOTO Museum in Fukuoka Prefecture, where the company was originally founded in 1917.
Takashi Harada, our Japanese reporter who proclaims that he couldn’t survive a day without a washlet, immediately made a bee line to the new sanctuary to give thanks to the toilet gods and to learn a bit about the historical evolution of the toilet.
RocketNews24’s Japanese-language reporter Yuichiro visited Cuba a few months ago and had an amazing time in the Caribbean nation. Although he’s already shared several of his travel adventures such as sampling sushi at a five-star hotel and getting a haircut in the popular local style, Wasai recently compiled a list of the top seven things that impressed or surprised him about Cuba.
Okay class, who’s ever tried aburi sushi, or seared sushi before? Sushi prepared in this manner has its own unique savoriness that’s different from that of the raw kind.
Our Japanese reporters recently got it in their heads that they wanted to try preparing some roasted sushi for themselves…and when they do something, they go all out. In other words, forget regular kitchen tools–a flamethrower was obviously called for in this situation! Would they find that bigger flames equal bigger flavor?
Recently, our Japanese reporter Aya Ayabe went out to an izakaya [Japanese pub] and finished her revelries with an order of sudachi rice, sudachi being a type of sour Japanese citrus fruit. The slightly bitter flavor really hit the spot in the midst of the nighttime summer heat, and it got her thinking: “What would happen if I cooked rice with some ponzu sauce [a citrus-based sauce which mixes sudachi with other citrus fruits and soy sauce]?” Still curious, the next day she tried making a batch for herself, and the results were apparently quite epic: “This is the most exciting thing that’s happened to me all summer! I’ll never forget this day as long as I live.”
In any case, Ayabe would like to share her extremely simple recipe for creating ponzu rice with you–a delightfully refreshing treat for the dog days of summer which can be enjoyed either hot or cold.
Japanese brewing and distilling company Suntory Holdings Limited recently announced their plans to send samples of whiskey to the International Space Station in order to investigate the effects of zero gravity on the aging process.
Do you have any aspiring astronauts, astronomers, aeronauts, or cosmologists in the house? If so, you’ve just stumbled upon the perfect birthday gift for said person.
For only 500 yen (US$4.05), you can now purchase legitimate fragments of a Japan-launched rocket being sold under the moniker uchuu gacha (“space capsules”). In fact, it’s such a good deal that we just had to buy one for ourselves!
One of the beautiful (or painful, depending on how you look at it) aspects of the Japanese language is its complex system of numbers and counting methods. For starters, there are two commonly used systems of numbers–often referred to as the Sino-Japanese numbers and the native Japanese numbers–that are used in different contexts, as well as a seemingly limitless number of counter words. Confused yet?
So how the heck do you become a master of Japanese numbers? Well, a good way to start is by checking out this handy-dandy infographic put out by Japanese Video Cast!
A Japanese website recently published a list of four commonly occurring behaviors at work which are actually considered to be crimes by Japanese law. The scariest thing is that regardless of where you are in the world, you might have been doing them all along!
Perhaps take a moment to check whether you have explicit permission before doing any of the following four things at your place of employment, or else you could find yourself in a legal mess in the worst case scenario.
Recently, our Japanese reporter Yoshio visited his parents’ house and decided to finally take a stab at tidying up his childhood room, which had been left untouched ever since he moved out. In the process, he was surprised to find many lost relics and treasures from his childhood, and became caught up in a wave of nostalgia for several hours. Needless to say, he didn’t get much cleaning done in the end…
If you’re the nostalgic type, perhaps you’d like to take a peek at the treasures that Yoshio dug up, some from over 20 years ago!
2015 has been a good year for lovers of Japanese art in Boston. The city’s phenomenal Museum of Fine Arts has hosted not just one, but three special exhibitions of Japanese art so far this year, along with its newly restored Japanese garden outside. The most hyped of all of these is an exhibition dedicated solely to Katsushika Hokusai, one of the most important ukiyo-e painters and printmakers of the Edo period who’s best known as the creator of The Great Wave off Kanagawa.
Besides the Hokusai collection, the museum is also hosting a particularly powerful exhibit displaying the work of 17 photographers in the wake of the 2011 Tohoku triple disasters, along with a lighthearted exhibit showcasing prints of some whimsical Japanese toys and games. As all three of the exhibitions are preparing to wind down within the next few weeks after hosting thousands of visitors over the past months, we thought we’d take a moment to share some of their highlights with you!
When one of our Japanese-language reporters stepped into a taxi the other day, the driver suddenly turned to him and asked, “Sir, do you know what you should say if you have a run in with some yakuza?”
Our man was a bit taken aback by the sudden question out of nowhere, but he answered, “Shouldn’t you say you’ll call the police?”
“That’s the usual response, but there’s an even better one,” the driver replied. He then proceeded to share a bit of advice which an actual yakuza whom he had once driven had secretly shared with him.
At Tokyo DisneySea, there’s a special theater-style attraction called Turtle Talk where you can ask questions in real time to Crush, everybody’s favorite East Australian Current-surfing sea turtle from Finding Nemo.
Sounds fun, if not a bit like a generically staged Q&A session, right? However, audience members during a recent talk were in for a bit of a surprise when Crush shared an unexpectedly profound piece of wisdom in response to a young woman’s question.
Despite our fondness of cats here at RocketNews24, we do still have a soft spot for pooches. So here’s something to appease the dog-loving readers of our site–a new line of gel dog beds sold by Japanese pet interior brand UNIHABITAT, which are designed to recreate the feeling of lying between a human’s legs.
Get ready, pampered pooches of the world, because you’re in for a treat–if your jealous humans don’t buy them all up for themselves first, that is!
Remember those beautiful edible “jewels” that we shared with you a couple of weeks ago? Made simply from sugar, agar-agar, and a beverage of your choice, the jewels are both pretty to look at and make a cool – in both senses of the word – summer treat.
They’re still all the rage right now on Japanese social media, so our Japanese reporter Shimazu decided to try making some jewel flavor combinations for herself. She even experimented with three different manners of preparation–serving them right away, freezing them, and letting them sit for a few days to harden.
Which method of making them do you think she enjoyed the most?
‘The other day, I felt a tap on my back while at a Japanese-style shopping mall in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. I turned around and there was a beautiful, wide-eyed woman smiling at me. She asked me a favor in broken English: “I don’t have any friends in this city, and I’d like to hear more about Japan. Won’t you get dinner with me?”
I was surprised at myself by my cold reaction–“Ah, not another one.” Despite my efforts to ignore her, she continued pestering me, this time asking how long I was planning to stay in Cambodia. When I responded, “I’ve lived here for over 15 years, she promptly disappeared with a creepy cackling noise.’
Take a stroll down the streets of Ginza and you’ll have no trouble realizing it’s Tokyo’s epicenter of everything posh and luxurious. The neighborhood is packed with shop after shop boasting high-end fashion, jewelry, and dining, so it’s only natural to think that any sushi restaurants in the area cater to an upscale clientele.
That being said, three reporters from our Japanese-language sister site began to wonder what would happen if they went to a Ginza sushi restaurant dressed to varying degrees of formality and ordered a special o-makase (“leave it to the chef”) course.
Would they each be offered different menu items depending on how they were dressed? Would their bills come out to be significantly different? With these burning questions in mind (and the prospect of eating sushi in the guise of journalism), they decided to conduct a little experiment to find out for themselves!
Japan is so hungry for workers it used up its five-year visa quota in record time
Burger King offers every fast food franchisee in Japan 40M yen to jump ship and join them
Studio Ghibli launches huge new anime movie T-shirt collection with special design details
Studio Ghibli announces first new short anime film in 8 years, exclusive to Ghibli Park
The dream of riding Final Fantasy Chocobos is coming to Tokyo VR centers
New Kyoto Converse sneakers celebrate Japan with traditional kimono fabrics for your feet
Japanese-style afternoon tea in this Japanese manor house outside downtown Tokyo is something special
Foreign tourists in Japan will get free Shinkansen tickets to promote regional tourism
Uniqlo’s new Dragon Ball T-shirts and hoodies modeled for the first time【Photos】
Beautiful Starbucks in Kyoto blends into its traditional landscape in more ways than one
Japan’s 5.3 million beautiful Hitachi Nemophila flowers are now in full bloom[Photos]
Brand-new Pokémon manhole covers coming to help the recovery of a disaster-stricken part of Japan
Japan’s awesomely beautiful Alpen Route snow corridor is now open
Move aside, convenience store egg sando – there’s a better version of the iconic sandwich in JapanNew Kyoto Converse sneakers celebrate Japan with traditional kimono fabrics for your feet
Pokémon hot spring footbath opening in Japan this spring
Studio Ghibli croquettes not to eat, but to keep your stuff in, going on sale in Japan[Photos]
Japan’s popular bead bonsai kit is as beautiful as it is gruelling to make
Secret staff cafeteria in Tokyo is a hidden gem you won’t find in travel guides
Tinder just opened a convenience store in Japan, aimed at adults only
Japan reportedly adding Japanese language skill requirement to most common foreigner work visa
Pokémon and Ikea Japan cross over into each other’s worlds with collaboration events
Wisteria season starts early with blooming of Japan’s Great Wisteria in its beautiful garden
Japan now has a special desk for people who work at home with a pet cat[Photos]Japan’s 5.3 million beautiful Hitachi Nemophila flowers are now in full bloom[Photos]
Japan’s best conveyor belt sushi restaurant of seven years ago has now, finally, come to TokyoBrand-new Pokémon manhole covers coming to help the recovery of a disaster-stricken part of Japan
Famous Tokyo cherry blossom spot installs view-blocking screens to fight overcrowding[Video]
Uniqlo announces new T-shirts for One Piece, Naruto and more for manga publisher’s 100th birthdayJapan’s awesomely beautiful Alpen Route snow corridor is now open
Survey asks foreign tourists what bothered them in Japan, more than half gave same answer
Japan’s human washing machines will go on sale to general public, demos to be held in Tokyo
Starbucks Japan releases new drinkware and goods for Valentine’s Day
We deeply regret going into this tunnel on our walk in the mountains of Japan
Starbucks Japan releases new sakura goods and drinkware for cherry blossom season 2026
Studio Ghibli releases Kodama forest spirits from Princess Mononoke to light up your home
Japan’s newest Shinkansen has no seats…or passengers [Video]
Major Japanese hotel chain says reservations via overseas booking sites may not be valid
Put sesame oil in your coffee? Japanese maker says it’s the best way to start your day【Taste test】
No more using real katana for tourism activities, Japan’s National Police Agency says
New Kyoto Converse sneakers celebrate Japan with traditional kimono fabrics for your feet
Japanese-style afternoon tea in this Japanese manor house outside downtown Tokyo is something special
Foreign tourists in Japan will get free Shinkansen tickets to promote regional tourism
Uniqlo’s new Dragon Ball T-shirts and hoodies modeled for the first time【Photos】
Beautiful Starbucks in Kyoto blends into its traditional landscape in more ways than one
Japan’s prime minister exchanges Dragon Ball kamehamehas with president of France[Video]
Draw like a Studio Ghibli anime artist with exclusive watercolour set approved by Hayao Miyazaki
Giant wearable baby head, huge randoseru backpack part of empathy-boosting art exhibit in Japan
We stress-test Uniqlo’s “Impressive Jacket and Pants” to see if they live up to their names
Japan now has stricter requirements for foreigners applying for citizenship
Japan now sells…sake made with moth poop?!?
We try the new teriyaki burgers from McDonald’s Japan 【Taste Test】
Step into Japanese culture with Converse’s new Japan-exclusive shoes featuring gods, sushi style