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Philip Kendall

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Hailing from Liverpool in the UK, Philip Kendall made Japan his second home in the summer of 2006 after dolefully abandoning his childhood dream of becoming a ghost buster. Setting up camp in beautiful Fukushima prefecture, he brought joy to literally hundreds of junior high school children as ‘that tall, handsome teacher’ or more often ‘the one with the big nose,’ before relocating to Tokyo at the end of 2011.

Writer, foodie, gamer and eternal student of the Japanese language, Philip now works as a freelance writer and translator, submitting to Tokyo Weekender magazine and website and Learn Japanese Pod, as well as co-running Suds, Grub & Joe- a website dedicated to all things beer, food and coffee-related in Tokyo. Follow his ramblings on his personal blog or on twitter.

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Posted by Philip Kendall (Page 28)

While many critics are pointing to the underwhelming performance of Nintendo’s Wii U platform as yet another sign that the video game giant should beat a hasty retreat from the hardware industry and instead become a multi-platform publisher, recent news from the house of Mario suggests that there’s plenty of life in the old dog yet.

With dozens of new first-party titles arriving in the next 12 months, the Wii U is gradually beginning to pick up steam. But when President and CEO of Nintendo Satoru Iwata made reference to a brand new The Legend of Zelda title for Wii U in a recent interview with Britain’s The Guardian, people really started paying attention.

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Capcom Japan offering limited edition ‘blood pillow’ prize to Phoenix Wright fans

Upcoming Nintendo 3DS title Gyakuten Saiban 5 (known in the English-speaking world as Phoenix Wright: Dual Destinies) may still be a couple of months away from release in the West, but gamers in Japan are already charging their portable consoles in preparation for its launch this Thursday.

Developer Capcom, too, is helping fans get back into detective mode after their brief hiatus by asking visitors to the official Phoenix Wright website to investigate a crime scene and spot the contradictions in three witness statements. Those who can successfully solve the puzzle will be entered into a prize draw to win one of 50 ‘blood pillows’ designed to transform any sleeping gamer into the victim of a grizzly cartoon murder.

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Chopsticks: why every gamer should know how to use them

In an age when we do the majority of our multiplayer gaming online, sometimes separated by entire oceans and continents, there’s nothing quite like a bit of couch co-op or split-screen multiplayer. I refer, of course, to the act of playing games together in the same room using a single screen; something that until the arrival of cheap, reliable internet was the only form of multiplayer video gaming there was. Make a night of it with a few chilled drinks, snacks and a couple of pizzas, and you and your gamer pals are in for a great time.

But with this infinitely more sociable form of gaming there also comes great danger: the risk of gross, greasy controllers. I’m sure many of you can recall taking a controller from a friend or sibling during a long afternoon playing Street Fighter II only to find it positively dripping with perspiration. What’s even worse is when said hand sweat is mixed up with pizza grease and cheesy powder from the endless bags of Doritos and Cheetos you and your friends have been working your way though.

It is time, my gamer friends, to learn to use chopsticks.

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Vietnamese Arsenal fan quite literally chases his dreams, is welcomed onto team bus

To achieve your dreams, you have to really want it. You need drive, determination and, if this video is anything to go by, a good pair of legs.

Taken in Hanoi by a member of English Premier League football club Arsenal, the following video sees one young Vietnamese fan chasing after the team’s tour bus for some five miles, waving and pounding the badge emblazoned on his chest with such vigour that the team eventually decides to welcome him on board for a once-in-a-lifetime private autograph and photo session.

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10 awesome ice creams available from convenience stores in Japan

The country may not be especially well known for its confection and frozen treats, but you’d better believe that Japan loves its ice cream. Whatever the season, there are hundreds of varieties to choose from, and chain stores like Baskin Robbins and Ben & Jerry’s attract enormous lines on a daily basis, constantly whipping up new flavours to appeal to the Japanese palate.

Today, we’d like to take you on a tour of the konbini aisu, or convenience store-bought ice cream, of Japan. They may not be quite as sophisticated as your top-of-the-range Häagen-Dazs offerings, but boy are they tasty, and since they’re available for just a couple of hundred yen each you can afford to treat yourself pretty much every day this summer. We hope you’re hungry!

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Dozens of new Nintendo games available to play for free at Comic-Con 2013!

Nintendo has announced that it will be giving visitors to this year’s San Diego Comic-Con event the chance to get their hands on a number of as-yet-unreleased Nintendo games for Wii U and 3DS.

Being based in Japan, the spiritual home of video games, we’re used to feeling smug about getting our sticky fingers on most of Nintendo’s titles before many in the West, so you can be sure this news has left us greener than Luigi’s cap with envy!

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Worldwide best seller The Zombie Survival Guide finally gets a Japanese release

Japan is facing a potential crisis. While the rest of the world has been readying itself for the zombie apocalypse for years now thanks to the likes of author Max Brooks and his The Zombie Survival Guide, the inhabitants of the land of the rising sun have been given precious little to prepare them for life after society has been torn to shreds by the flesh-hungry living dead.

Thankfully, with World War Z–a movie loosely based on Brooks’ 2006 novel of the same name–finally hitting Japanese cinemas on August 10, the powers that be have decided it is time to arm the nation with the knowledge it’ll need to survive. Arriving in bookstores next month, a Japanese language version of The Zombie Survival Guide might just keep the country going until we can start rebuilding society.

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A young man from Nanjing, China, has been arrested after stealing more than 800 social science textbooks, history compendiums and poetry books from a book shop in the town. When questioned by police, the young man maintained that he was searching for ‘the meaning of life’ within the books’ pages.

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It wasn’t so long ago that everywhere you looked in Japan there were ads for Korean pop groups, cosmetics and health drinks. More people than ever were snapping up Korean language textbooks and, despite territorial squabbles and a few extreme-right noise makers, Japan was positively leaping on anything prefixed by the letter ‘K’.

Recent reports, however, suggest that all is not well in the K-Pop (Korean Pop music) camp in Japan, with major Korean record label and talent agency S.M. Entertainment reporting losses of more than 70 percent compared to the same period last year. Has the K-Pop bubble finally burst in Japan?

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Calling all retro gamers! 1,000 Nintendo consoles up for grabs on Yahoo! Auctions

Launched in 1983 in Japan, Nintendo’s Family Computer, or Famicom as it is more fondly known, quickly became a household name thanks to titles like Donkey Kong and Mario Bros. Strikingly different in design to its Western counterpart, the NES, the Famicom’s low profile with its multitude of buttons and ridges and docking slots for a pair of gold and burgundy controllers is now considered to be an iconic piece of video game hardware, frequently bought and sold at auction or at used game stores.

While many gamers would no doubt quite like the idea of picking a Famicom up for themselves and reliving a few 8-bit classics, we’re not entirely sure how many people would be in the market to buy 1,000 of the things all at once…

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Hot enough for ya!? Despite having enjoyed an extremely mild spring, summer in Japan has kicked off with the ferocity of a right-wing tiger with a bad case of hemorrhoids and a stinging mouth ulcer. If you’re from more tropical climes and currently living in Japan you’re likely wondering why everyone keeps moaning “atsuiiiii” (“It’s hoooot!”) and dabbing their faces with handkerchiefs like politicians struggling to explain cross-dressing photos published online. For the rest of us, though, summer is a sweaty nightmare than can not so much be beaten as endured.

Thankfully, we’re here today to help you out with 10 tips for getting through summer without melting into a sad little puddle. Read on, my sweaty friends.

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Ladies and gentlemen, the internet has a voice, and it will be heard.

In news that is sure to be met with cheers from all around the globe, multinational video game company Nintendo has reversed its earlier decision not to allow the streaming of footage of popular brawler Super Smash Bros. Melee at the upcoming Evo Championship Series fighting game tournament in Las Vegas. And it’s all thanks to the power of the people.

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Ask someone to describe the Japanese people in ten words or fewer and more often than not ‘polite’ or ‘reserved’ will appear somewhere in the mix. Japan is known the world over as a safe, pleasant place to live where people are on the whole helpful and courteous; few people visit Japan and return home with tales of rude airport staff or inattentive waitresses.

When I first came to Japan, I had the pleasure of living for five years in a pretty little town in Fukushima Prefecture, surrounded by rice fields, rivers and some of the deepest greens I have ever seen. Of course, I experienced the warmth of locals’ hospitality and kindness first-hand, but it was only in when I moved south to Tokyo in 2011 that I came to understand the real meaning of the word manā (‘manner’), and began to appreciate how much more important it is in urban living.

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Just a nine days into the month of July and the majority of Japan is in the grip of a heat wave. With highs of 35 C (95 F) and stifling humidity, city workers are already wiping themselves down with deodorizing body paper at every opportunity and dodging from one area of shade to the next while outdoors. It’s at times like these that many of us dream of escaping to a hidden oasis of our own, enjoying an icy cold beer and listening to soft music as we doze in the shade of a tree. For those of us working in the city, though, a trip to a cheap izakaya or beer garden is about as close as we’re likely to come to making our daydream a reality.

Today, though, we’d like to invite you to come with us to Gansu Province, China, which is home to a natural oasis known as the Crescent Lake, where the thought of padding across its lush grass and dipping our feet in the pure springwater is already helping us feel cooler. Welcome to Yueyaquan.

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Honda’s cool new “Hands” video just made our day

It may be just a bit of clever PR, but this video released by Japan’s Honda Motor Company earlier this week, simply titled “Hands”, is one of the coolest shorts we’ve seen in a long time.

Beginning with the line “Let’s see what curiosity can do,” the video treats us to a look at some of the company’s creations past, present and future, all in the form of sleight of hand tricks, topped off with a generous helping of computer-generated magic. Check out the full video after the jump.

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Rambo randomly rambles into stores in figure form, looks as cross as ever

In what has to be one of the most random, yet awesome, releases we’ve seen so far this month, Japanese toy and figure fanciers Kitan Club has recently launched a range of six key-chain figures based on… Sylvester Stallone as John Rambo. No, we’re not quite sure why either.

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With hundreds of game sites and magazines at our disposal, and with more amateur reviewers banging away at keyboards than ever before, making an uninformed purchase is now, thankfully, an extremely rare occurrence for any gamer. Gone are the days when we stood in the store nursing our pocket-money, studying the backs of Commodore 64 cassette cases and basing purchasing decisions entirely on cover art and postage stamp-sized screenshots; we have more information at our disposal than ever, and have only ourselves to blame if we slip up.

Even so, there are times when even the most informed gamer picks up a title that just isn’t their cup of tea. Be it the pacing of the game, an unorthodox control scheme or a steep learning curve, there are some games that we simply give up on and either trade in or shove in a drawer. Of course, Japanese gamers are no exception, with more than 15 percent of those asked in a recent survey admitting that they had unceremoniously dumped a game despite barely starting it. More than just a list of shame, though, the results of the survey turned up some great video game blasts from the past, not to mention a few titles so obscure that we’d almost forgotten they existed…

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Japanese Titanic: a tale of garbled, hilarious, English

As anyone who has ever taught or studied a second language will tell you, online translation software simply don’t work. Sure, you can throw in short phrases or key words and it’ll help you out from time to time, and languages that are grammatically similar escape more-or-less unscathed, but the rest of the time the sentences these programs spit out is absolute garbage.

With a keen eye for humour, online hub and original content creators Smosh put together the following hilarious video, ‘Japanese Titanic‘. The script is made up entirely of lines generated by an online translator after turning the original English into Japanese and back again, making this easily one of the funniest videos we’ve seen in weeks.

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Mario Kart Arcade Grand Prix DX screeching into game centres across Japan this month

Start your engines, boys and girls! Long-running racing series Mario Kart is making its third entry into the arcade scene, with Mario Kart Arcade Grand Prix DX launching this July in Japanese video arcades!

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Japan-exclusive Oreo Sticks – Can they compete with the real thing?

There are few things with the power to excite and abhor travellers more than foreign versions of sweets and cookies that exist back home. Even though we pass them by dozens of times a day in supermarkets and convenience stores in our own country, spot M&M’s, Doritos or even a Kit-Kat in a land where everything else is alien, and immediately we feel like home is not so far away; it’s like running into a friend from your home town during your first week of college where everything else is scary and unknown. What happens, though, if that same friend has a weird new haircut and is affecting some peculiar accent just because they’re in an unfamiliar town?

Oreo Sticks, a snack exclusive to Japan, will likely have the very same unnerving effect on snackophiles. With packaging familiar to millions, yet containing a snack entirely different to those we’re used to, Oreo Sticks have the potential to shatter cookie fans’ dreams, but with a little courage they could also be something quite wonderful.

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