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Oona McGee

Half-Japanese Oona McGee hails from Sydney, Australia, where she worked as a journalist and copywriter before making the move to Japan over a decade ago. Now she spends her days exploring the streets of Tokyo with her laptop and camera, always in search of new cafes, restaurants, events and stories to share with our readers. As an experienced food and travel reporter, Oona has travelled extensively through all 47 prefectures of Japan, and is constantly researching new destinations and drawing up itineraries for her next adventure.

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Posted by Oona McGee (Page 209)

Five of Japan’s most unique snow-covered hot spring bathing sites

If you’ve ever experienced a soak in a hot outdoor spring, or rotenburo, in the middle of the snow, you’ll know the incredible sensation of extreme cold and heat on your body is an experience that’s hard to beat. With the best of the snow still to come in January and February, we’ve found five of the best snow-covered hot spring destinations perfect for a weekend getaway. From water slides to goblin masks, this collection of winter snowscapes will help you beat the winter chill in the most unique way possible.

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Thomas the Tank Engine locomotive coming to Japan in 2014!

Thomas the Tank Engine has a huge following in Japan. Known here as Kikansha Tomasu, literally Tank Engine Thomas, the cheeky train and his group of hard-working friends are so popular they even have their own amusement park and a hotel dedicated to them with unique, train carriage-themed rooms. Now Japanese fans are looking forward to their biggest present yet: a chance to ride on a fully-working Thomas the Tank Engine steam locomotive. Set to take passengers down the hills and round the bends of the Oigawa Line in Shizuoka Prefecture, this is a really useful engine we adore!

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Japanese Christmas sweets to make at home!

With Santa filling his sack and preparing for the annual world tour, pâtisseries and chocolate stores around Japan are marking the occasion with all sorts of cute and delicious dedications to the jolly, red-suited fellow. Now you can join in the fun no matter where you are, with these adorable Christmas treats to make at home. You won’t believe how quick and simple these sweets are!

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Ramen characters prove there’s more to Fukushima than just nuclear sadness

Before March 11 2011, Fukushima Prefecture was pretty much unknown outside of Japan. Within the country, however, Japan’s third-largest prefecture was known for much more than its nuclear power plant. Along with being a producer of delicious, mouthwatering peaches and home to areas of stunning natural beauty, Fukushima was also known as a hotspot for incredible ramen noodles.

Now, some of the more prominent ramen restaurants in the area have banded together to remind us all that the real heart of Fukushima has always been fuelled by ramen power. And they’ve even got shiny, new anime characters to prove it!

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Yamanote trains become moving exhibition spaces

Weird and wonderful things happen on Tokyo’s Yamanote train line. From puzzle-solving challenges to weddings and men walking ears of corn, it seems the popular downtown route is a great way get on board with new trends.

From this month, Yamanote line trains will be continuing their tradition of innovation with a surprising collection of artistic photographs. Mounted at a perfect angle for the eye of the passenger, these photos will take you away from the discomfort of a crowded train and transport you to a much more beautiful place.

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Learn about Japanese history with cute smartphone samurai warrior cats!

Earlier this year, we brought you news of cute earphone jack puppies, perched atop owners’ smartphones in a number of irresistibly cute poses. Just when we thought things couldn’t get any cuter, the company behind the adorable animals announced an update to the series with an extraordinary litter of samurai warrior kittens.

If you like your cats with a side of history, this could be the most perfect gift you could ever wish for.

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Make chocolate from cocoa beans with this new chocolate making kit!

If you’re a chocolate lover, then you probably know something about the humble cocoa bean. But what does a cocoa bean actually look like? And how does it become a smooth, delicious piece of chocolate?

Now there’s a simple kit to answer all your questions. Even better, it promises to take you from bean to chocolate in a matter of hours. We take a step-by-step look at the process and discover what it takes to create a little piece of chocolate heaven.

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Go back to the 70s and 80s with a retro iRecorder for your iPhone

There’s no denying that smartphones are awesome. They can send messages, let you browse the web, take photos and play thousands of songs, all while fitting into your pocket, ready to be used anytime, anywhere. But for some of us, none of that convenience can compare to the fun of fitting a cassette tape into a cassette player and pressing play.

Now there’s a gadget that lets us have the best of both worlds: the joy of thousands of songs combined with the lost art of old-school push button technology. Now that fluoro’s back in fashion, there’s never been a better time to pull on those leg warmers, download some Madonna circa 1985 and experience music the way it used to be.

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10 things that surprise foreign women in Japan

Travel website Expedia recently conducted a poll to find out what women were most surprised by when they came to Japan. The top ten results revealed that ladies were fascinated with aspects of everyday culture, but none more so than when it came to bathroom habits. With three of the top ten responses relating directly to bathroom life, it seems there’s a lot going on in the ladies’ rooms of Japan.

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Specialist French fry stand “And the Friet” opening today in Tokyo

If you’ve ever yearned for an authentic potato chip in Tokyo, then it’s time to get excited because specialist french fry shop, “And the Friet”, is set to open in the Hiroo district today!

The Belgian-style stand will offer six types of cut, half a dozen potato varieties including a Belgian variety flown in especially, and a choice of seasonal dips and sauces. It’s time to get your friet on!

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University students start a JK fan club, confuse twitter users everywhere

Clubs are a big part of student life in Japan. From junior high school all the way through to university, students spend hours away from home with their classmates, immersed in an extra-curricular endeavour of choice. While sporting clubs, music clubs, and culture clubs are common, it’s not everyday you come across a JK club. So when a group of university students posted their pamphlet for new recruits online, even Japanese netizens were left scratching their heads. Could this be a group of JK Rowling enthusiasts? A Japan/Korea appreciation society? The real answer turned out to be just as perturbing, with Japanese commenters still wondering why.

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Impress house guests with toilet paper origami!

Hotel and restaurant bathrooms have really done a number on us by introducing a new level of hospitality through toilet paper etiquette. When the next sheet of paper on the roll is folded into a neat triangular point, we’re made to feel that extra bit special, safe in the knowledge that the area has recently been attended to, as if the place was just done up in anticipation of our arrival.

One lady in the United States has taken the triangular toilet paper fold to a whole new level, incorporating traditional Japanese origami concepts to produce a book of cute, funny and surprisingly beautiful designs to dress up the toilet roll in your bathroom. From swans to candles, who knew toilet paper could be so adorable?

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New “Privacy Glasses” protect your identity and your image

Protecting your privacy can be a difficult task in today’s world of information technology. With surveillance cameras on every corner and a recording device on every smartphone, there’s a good chance your image has been captured somewhere without you even knowing it. Safeguarding your mug in the future is set to become even more difficult with advancements in facial recognition technologies and wearable computers like Google Glass.

So what can you do to ensure your identity remains intact? In Western countries the answer would be simple: put on a pair of sunglasses. In Japan, however, sunglasses are a much less common sight, and many consider them to be worn only by those trying a little too hard to look cool, and in more extreme cases associate them with the yakuza lifestyle. Researchers at the National Institute of Informatics in Tokyo have addressed this issue by designing a non-threatening pair of white shades to protect both your identity and your public image, dubbing them the “Privacy Visor”.

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Bangkok brothers get banged with a Starbucks lawsuit

Starbucks has a policy of seamlessly blending their coffee outlets into remote tourist locations around the world. So when two brothers in Bangkok set up their street-side coffee cart business under a familiar looking green logo, Starbucks was quick to assert that this was not one of their operations.

Damrong and Damras Maslae are now in hot water as the global coffee franchise is coming down hard and suing them for copyright infringement.

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How a foreigner’s Halloween prank in Japan started a debate about the imperial system

As we’ve seen, Japanese people are enamoured with the idea of Halloween. From limited edition sweets to pumpkin-orange accessories, the holiday in Japan is centred around all things cute, and very occasionally creepy. So what do you do if you’re a foreigner in Japan who wants to give the locals a taste of the prankster spirit that usually lurks around the corner on a traditional Halloween night?

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LED tatami floors take us to the tea ceremony of the future

Japan is known for its dichotomy of unique tradition and state-of-the-art technology, so tatami mat floors that light up during a traditional tea ceremony should really come as no surprise. Although the photo above might look like an illusion or a Photoshopped image, it’s actually a real tea ceremony room in Yokohama, Japan. The eerie yet peaceful glow is thanks to a company that uses LED lighting to illuminate traditional Japanese flooring. And the results are absolutely stunning.

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Hamamatsu train station unveiled in miniature form

There’s no denying that the world looks a whole lot cuter when it’s scaled down to miniature form, and even ordinary train stations are no exception to the rule. Hamamatsu station, in Shizuoka Prefecture, has been given the mini-me treatment, thanks to one of its renowned residents, award-winning modeler Takuji Yamada. On display in the city centre, people from all over Japan are gushing at the model’s remarkable quality and it’s amazing likeness to the original.

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Period pain? There’s a comic for that!

There’s a five-frame comic doing the rounds on Twitter that’s got all the ladies talking. Called “The day of period pain”, it’s being praised for authentically depicting that dreaded time of the month and proves that, in Japan, there really is a comic about everything.

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Giant rubber duck arrives in Osaka!

Rubber ducks invoke a sense of bath-time fun and childhood wonder no matter how old we get. Their bright colours and kind expressions are so pleasing that one artist has super-sized the fun by creating giant, inflatable versions that travel around the world.

One of these has recently taken up temporary residence in Nakanoshima, Osaka, where it will be appearing for one week only. To add to the excitement, a local hotel is serving up limited numbers of ‘rubber duck plates’ featuring the cutest rice creation you’ve ever seen!

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Meet the new model set to make manga artists’ lives a whole lot easier

When it comes to replicating human poses and natural movement, artists often look to anatomical models. Traditional figures do have their limitations, though, with the lack of details making it difficult to recreate the lines of a raised shoulder or a clasped fist. But things are set to change, with a new figure on the market called the S.F.B.T-3, (Special Full-action Body Type v.3). Ten years in the making, this girl has 80 moveable parts in her body, allowing for an unprecedented number of poses and anatomical designs. We take a look at the doll’s amazing details and see how it performs in some popular anime poses for the illustrator’s eye.

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