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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 41)

Our Team Sample a New Strawberry Rice-Cake Flavoured Milk Drink: “Tastes Like Green Peppers…”

Japan is no stranger to exciting, original or downright odd beverages. Just 20 feet from this writer’s apartment, in fact, there’s a vending machine that sells cans of grape jelly or caramel pudding flavoured “drinks”, and convenience stores stock an enormous array of beverages from green tea or chilled coffee to butterscotch milk and melon soda.

Still, it’s better than row after row of tremor-inducing caffeine-packed cola and the illegitimate offspring of child’s cough syrup and lemonade that is Dr Pepper, I suppose…

On the 15th of this month, however, dairy experts Meito brought Japanese consumers something altogether more challenging- a milk-based drink that’s designed to taste not just like strawberries, but classic Japanese favourite strawberry daifuku mochi rice cakes!

But no sooner had the delicious-sounding beverage found its way into stores than internet users starting leaving rather odd comments on message boards about the drink’s taste…

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Towel Jenga: Super Patient Pooch Lets Owners Stack Towels on His Head

Before I was five years old, I’d been chased, bitten and cornered by dogs no fewer than three times.

From then on, whenever we went on to the park or were out for a family stroll, the mere sight of a dog– be it leashed, unleashed, right in front of me or 100 metres away– would have me clinging to my parents’ legs, begging them to turn back.

If only we’d had a dog like this loveable little Shiba-inu, who lies patiently while his master rests towel after towel on top of his head, I’m sure it would have taken me far less time to get over my fear of dogs.

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Any anime or manga fan will tell you that the sight of characters suffering sudden, sporadic nosebleeds when they’re sexually aroused is not uncommon in Japanese-created works.

A male character catches a glimpse of a girl undressing, a girl has the object of her affection wink seductively at her, a character trips and finds his face inches from a female character’s ample bosom; the result is always the same- a flushed face followed by a gushing nosebleed.

The idea is that sexual arousal causes an increase in blood pressure, which in turn sets off a nosebleed. It’s certainly true that arousal or embarrassment can cause us to flush– I can clearly recall my face bursting into flames when I was 12 years old and the girl in my class whom I was madly in love with was dared to kiss me on the cheek– but could it really cause a nosebleed?

NicoNico News turned to a medical professional to find out whether there’s any truth to the anime phenomenon, or whether it’s just an old wives’ tale…

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Food Fight: We Compare Yoshinoya and Sukiya’s Pricey New Dishes

Fight! Fight! Fight!

Times are tough in Japan, and, as reported here on RocketNews24 earlier this week, the country’s two biggest gyūdon chains, Sukiya and Yoshinoya, are tightening their belts after seeing financial losses in the first half of the tax year.

The restaurants’ response to the decrease in profits? Stop cutting costs, end the focus on dirt-cheap dishes and instead launch new, fancier menus in the hope of enticing new customers and squeezing a few extra yen out of regular patrons.

Both Yoshinoya and Sukiya’s new dishes that are more than twice the price of their regular gyūdon staples, but the restaurants claim that they are a cut above the rest as a result. But will the average salary-man, with just 500 yen per day to spend on lunch, want to pay extra for a fancier menu? And if they do, which dish should they choose?

Armed with a camera and grumbling stomachs, we headed out to both restaurants on two seperate days to try the new dishes for ourselves.

Let the New Gyūdon Wars begin!

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“Spare Some Change, Guvnor?” Photo of Distinctly Impious Monks Causes Outrage Online

In pretty much any major city around the world, you’re bound to run in to a person collecting money for some cause or other. It could be in aid of curing a deadly disease, cutting world hunger, protecting the environment or even animal rights activists PETA asking for donations when they’re not making online videogames…

In Japan, it’s not uncommon to encounter Buddhist monks, standing still in the street with a bowl in hand, asking for donations. This is a tradition that has existed in Japan for centuries, and, while few busy city-dwellers stop to drop a few yen in the bowl, even fewer would begrudge the monks for doing it since they have scant income and bring a lot of comfort to many people.

A photo that appeared online earlier this week, however, showing what appears to be two monks sitting in a side-street laughing and smoking while counting their takings for the day, has caused quite a stir among Japan’s internet users…

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French Commentator’s “Radiation” Joke Angers Japanese Government

Following Japan’s 1-0 victory over France in the friendly football (soccer to our North American readers) match last week, a French variety show host made a joke that has touched a nerve here in Japan.

Alluding to Japanese goalkeeper Eiji Kawashima’s impressive skills on the field, the show presented an edited image of the player, showing him with four arms.

The show’s presenter then suggested that Kawashima’s additional limbs might be the result of “the Fukushima effect” and that they had grown after exposure to radiation leaked from the nuclear plant damaged by the earthquake and tsunami in March 2011. While the joke went down well during the show, many Japanese are understandably very upset…

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Japan’s Armed Forces Show Their Playful Side: Moé-Style Attack Helicopter Wows Crowds

“It just goes to show that we really do live in a peaceful country.”

A quote from an internet user sums up the mood perfectly after Japan’s Self Defence Forces unveil a unique attack helicopter covered with manga-influenced designs and colours.

Presented as part of an air show in Chiba prefecture last weekend, the quirky new helicopter quickly stole the show, with hundreds of people taking photos and video to share on the internet.

Whether we’d ever see a helicopter like this fly into battle or not, there’s no denying that it has an awful lot of charm.

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Whichever way you look at it, life in Japan is expensive.

As well as Japan’s food, drink and fuel ranking among the world’s most expensive, compared to many western countries, land in particular is sold at a premium, meaning that accommodation can be costly, and even those with enough capital to consider purchasing a car often abandon the idea when they realise that they cannot afford to buy or rent the necessary parking space.

CNN’s “World’s Most Expensive Places to Live 2012” placed Tokyo and Osaka first and third, respectively, and thanks to the strong yen and weak dollar/euro/everything, coming to live in Japan has never been more financially challenging.

With this in mind, budgeting expert Yoko Hanawa at Yahoo! Japan shares some ways in which Japan’s businessmen and women tackle everyday life in this tough financial climate, and introduces a few ideas of her own that are worth paying attention to.

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Those of you fortunate enough to have been introduced to Studio Ghibli’s animated feature films will know that they’re of the highest quality and easily rival Disney’s own productions.

Back in my native UK, comparatively few people have met with Ghibli’s heart-warming animated creations, with some people, in fact, falling into the trap of thinking that anything foreign and “a bit manga” is probably not for them. Thanks to the UK’s relative reluctance to embrace the movies, it was not until I was 15 years old when, one rainy Sunday afternoon, My Neighbor Totoro was shown on cable TV that I first became aware of Hayao Miyazaki’s work. At the time, I had no idea what I was watching, but have been a huge fan ever since.

Over in the studio’s native Japan, however, Studio Ghibli has become something of a national treasure since its establishment in 1985, with the studio’s near-annual releases always eagerly awaited, and usually met with both an abundance of praise and mounds of cash.

For most Japanese, Ghibli characters like My Neighbor Totoro’s Satsuki and Mei, Spirited Away’s Chihiro, or broomstick-riding Kiki from the movie of the same name, form a part of their childhood or are attached to fond memories, perhaps even more-so than Mickey, Donald and pals are toWesterners.

So when one hawk-eyed Twitter user suggested that perhaps certain Ghibli characters have cropped up in more than movie without us realising it, internet users understandably paid attention…

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Let’s play a little game, shall we?

You’re walking down the street one day when you stumble across a watch on the ground. On closer inspection, you realise it’s a rather swanky gold Rolex, and it looks genuine. You look around for the owner, but no-one is in sight, and there are no residences or open stores nearby.

What do you do?

Pocket the watch to sell later or make your own, or hand it in at your nearest police station? Be honest now…

How about if, instead of finding a watch on the street, you discovered a small stack of cash, sitting unattended beside an ATM? And it’s no paltry sum either- about US$2,000. Would you take it or leave it behind?

A middle school vice principle in Kōchi prefecture, Shikoku, decided on the former… Read More

Your Japanese TV Commercial Favourites, All Under One Funky Beat

I think I’ve just found my new favourite YouTube channel.

Thanks to a tip-off from an awesome RocketNews24 reader, I’ve discovered Eclectic Method; audio-visual remix masters and providers of horribly funky beats, whether the sampled videos were intended for musical enjoyment or not.

The video that pulled me in, however, was the group’s fantastic Japanese TV commercial remix…

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Japan’s Gyūdon Giants Launch Pricey New Dishes After Facing Financial Losses

While hamburger chains like McDonald’s Japan may be forever shaving yen off their prices and launching campaigns like free hamburgers and coffee, stores like Yoshinoya and Sukiya, home of the original Japanese fast food, gyūdon, are about to become a little more expensive.

The stores, which have been locked in fierce price wars for years, have, until recently, hoped to attract customers by offering rock-bottom prices and seasonal offers, but are beginning to feel the strain.

Is the businessman’s staple dish about to get a dash of sophistication? Or will the same-old beef bowl simply receive a bigger price tag?

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Cassette to iPod Converter Helps ‘80s Kids Keep Their Tape Collection Alive

We all love new technology, but when the arrival of a new generation of hardware signals the end of another, it can be kind of sad.

Vinyl will always be considered classic, but VHS and audio cassettes have sadly gone the way of the dinosaurs, with MiniDiscs (remember them?), and maybe one day CDs, soon to follow.

While CD quality sound is universally recognised as being superior to MP3 music, and despite MiniDiscs still hanging on in Japan years after the west turned its back on them, highly compressed MP3 is fast becoming the format of choice for millions of people, meaning that more and more of our once-loved possessions are relegated to sitting on the shelf or in a desk drawer somewhere.

So what are we to do with those Backstreet Boys cassettes? What fate awaits forgotten Bon Jovi tapes that rattle around the glove-box of a car whose stereo no longer has a tape deck? Are we destined never again to hear their muffled warbles and grainy beats?

Help is at hand!

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First of all, let it be known that I like meat.

Chicken, beef, turkey, pork; it’s all good. While I’m by no means shy of vegetables or fish, I love to cook, and there are few meals that I enjoy more than a good chicken curry, a classic beef lasagne, home-made hamburgers, or a nice, simple, piece of medium-rare steak.

But when food comes to me with its face still intact, I’m not so happy.

In the past, a few vegetarians have told me “If you couldn’t bring yourself to kill and prepare meat then you shouldn’t eat it.” Personally, I wouldn’t care to chop down a tree and painstakingly make individual sheets of paper, either, but I’m still happy to use the stuff on a daily basis, but even if it makes me a wimp, or immoral, I’m still happy to eat meat so long as I don’t have to get my hands dirty. So long as there are no eyes looking up at me from the plate, and preferably nothing that screams “I used to be alive, you know!”, I’m happy to tuck in.

So when I came across ITMedia writer Wataru Kato’s first-hand experience of eating a whole, roasted rodent, it was with both a curious mind and a slightly churning stomach that I read on, wondering whether, were I presented with the same dish, I could bring myself to eat it, let alone sit with it staring back at me.

The rodent in question is a specially bred Peruvian guinea pig, quite far removed from the kind of creature you might spot scuttling down a dark alley or up a drain pipe.

Nevertheless, we recommend tackling this particular story after you’ve finished your next meal.

Hold on to your lunch…

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Convenience stores- in Japan: they really do live up to their name.

Pay your bills, pick up stuff you ordered on Amazon, send a FAX, buy concert tickets, withdraw cash, buy milk; whatever you need to do, they’ve usually got you covered.

Although 7-Eleven is Japan’s undisputed king of combinis, as convenience stores are fondly known over here, blue-and-white-striped Lawson is never far behind, and has a special place in many shoppers’ hearts.

So when news surfaced that a foreigner named Lawson is working part-time at a convenience store of the very same name, people understandably went a little bit nuts.

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McSwindle? Predictions of McDonald’s Next Cost Cutting Business Move Spark Laughter on Twitter

Regular visitors to RocketNews24 will no doubt be aware that McDonald’s Japan has been making the headlines a lot since the beginning of the month. The removal of menus from its counters, worried rumours of the restaurant putting a stop to free cups of water; the fast food chain has received a lot of negative attention.

After tweets on the theme of “McDonald’s next bizarre business move” hit the thousands, tweet-gathering mega blog Togetter has put up a collection of some of the best thoughts and creative ideas from Japan’s internet users, with some little short of laugh-out-loud funny.

So, what do the people of Japan predict for Ronald and pals’ near future? Let’s find out!

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When Idol Meets Dog: Intricately Detailed Dog-Sized Hatsune Miku Outfit Wows Internet Users

Electronic idol Hatsune Miku’s popularity seemingly knows no bounds.

If we’re not seeing stories of catastrophic cakes being made in her image, we’re hearing reports that one of her uber fans has spent an exorbitant amount of money acquiring the last Hatsune Miku edition Sony MP3 player ever made.

Clearly Ms. Miku has her share of fans, but when you come to think about it, is dropping a ton of cash really equate the greatest measure of fandom? Surely just about anyone with a computer and some spending can bid on an MP3 player!?

But hand-crafting a tiny, intricately-detailed Hatsune Miku outfit for your pet dog? Now that’s what we call a fan!

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While I was fortunate to have been inland and more than 60km away from the Fukushima power plant when it ruptured, on 3 March, 2011, my co-workers and I nevertheless started to get a little anxious when, just a few hours after the initial earthquake hit north-east Japan, our water supply went off.

Heading to the nearest supermarket in search of bottled water, we were met by the sight of hundreds of locals who had had the exact same idea: buy as many provisions as possible and get back indoors. By the time we found a place to park and got into the store, there was barely anything left on the shelves; it had all been snapped up by (understandably) panicked buyers. Deciding to try our luck at the local convenience store, we drove over to 7-Eleven, but found the shelves just as bare.

Although our sitation never got anywhere close to desperate, and our supply came back on about 24 hours later, the thought of  not having any clean, safe drinking water really struck home for a while there.

Until it suddenly becomes unavailable, water is something that we all take for granted on a daily basis. Turn the tap and fill up a glass, fill the kettle and make a coffee, jump in the shower, wash your clothes; we use it almost constantly and can’t get by without it.

So it comes as something of a relief to hear that there are clever people out there creating devices that can do something as unfathomable as turn chemical-filled pool water into something that’s safe to drink in an emergency…

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