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Amazing Japanese grade-schooler enters fast track to playing soccer for Real Madrid 【Videos】

These days, it’s not uncommon for Japanese soccer players to be placed on foreign teams. Shinji Kagawa with Manchester United and Yuto Nagatomo with Inter Milan are just two examples of Japanese athletes who play for teams abroad.

Now, the island country can lay claim to a new rising star, a nine-year-old soccer player who recently signed a contract with the world-famous Spanish soccer club, Real Madrid. Read on for a full introduction to this talented young player, as well as some videos of his amazing play style!

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Western games may have won the Tokyo Game Show this year

The old saying in Japanese gamer circles used to go “Bei game wa Kuso game” (“Western games are sh&%ty games”), but the tables may have turned in a big way if this year’s Tokyo Game Show turnout is any indication.

Western publishers were out in spades this year. In fact, the very first thing attendees saw when entering the gates of this year’s TGS were a bunch of armed soldiers and (tastefully) military-garbed booth girls promoting the newest entry in the Battlefield series of online multiplayer military shooter games.

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Top 27 ugliest album covers from Yugoslavia 【Photos】

As with any major business venture, presentation is very important when working in the music industry. Cool covers on brand new CD albums can inspire one to make a purchase without ever having heard the band. Granted, the Internet makes it easy to find a few demos before handing over your cash, but a well-designed jacket still makes a big difference. A great, eye-catching cover can make even the most mediocre album famous for its genre by drawing in attention from fans.

Then again, ugly covers can be just as eye-catching and somewhat endearing in their own way. Here we have a collection of hideous, old CD and record jackets that were probably purchased out of pity alone. Get ready to laugh at this collection of music covers that really missed the mark. From a list initially provided by a French entertainment site, we now bring you 27 of the ugliest album covers from the former Yugoslavia. Read More

Japan waits with baited breath for local distributor of spreadable beer

These past few days, the Internet has exploded with word of Italy’s new beer spread. For a land like Japan, where beer is more than just a popular choice of beverage and is more-or-less central to their lifestyle, the invention of spreadable beer is cause for great excitement. Soon, rather than have a handful of snacks with their mugs full of beer, they’ll be spreading blobs of beer over their favorite snacks!

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Dream gaming cabinet puts 119 consoles, 75 controllers at your fingertips

In the topsy-turvy world we live in, where console manufacturers are reluctant even to let people bring their last-gen games to their newest hardware, a lot of gamers may be feeling fatigued, longing for the good old days when a pixelated blue hedgehog fighting a fat scientist with a weird fetish for forest creatures was the definition of a triple-A title.

One gamer, at least, was so fed up with the current gen console wars, he decided to ball up basically the entire history of gaming consoles into one sexy rig with 75 distinct controllers jutting out from it as if the cosmic protagonist of Katamari Damacy had rolled it through a vintage game store.

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Artist amazes with Mario and Yoshi water sculptures

It’s one thing to look up into the clouds and see the vague shape of some video game character you recognize or maybe a dinosaur or something. After all, clouds are slow moving and amorphous; you’re bound to see some sort of Rorschach-esque pattern in there. But would you believe that a splash of water might, just for one instant, contain something as awesome as Mario and Yoshi?

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Bubble Soccer is part soccer, part sumo, mostly Looney Tunes

Sports are getting way too serious these days. There are juicing scandals, fan fistfights and bench-clearing team-on-team brawls in just about every sport. It’s all just getting a little too heady, don’t you think?

Well, these Italians sure did. So, they took matters into their own hands, and created the hilarious new sport of Bubble Soccer, which finally combines the body contact of sumo wrestling, with the majesty of soccer and the zany antics of old Warner Bros cartoons, much to the amusement of Japan’s netizens.

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7 surprising realizations during our Japanese reporter’s trip to Turkey

Turkey! It’s more than just a giant bird. It’s a mysterious country straddling the border between Europe and Asia. Practically everyone has heard of it, for its likeness to the popular holiday dish if nothing else, but it seems that a majority of people know very little about the region’s culture.

Recently, members of our Japanese staff took a trip to the alluring land of Turkey. While they weren’t exactly sure what to expect, they were nonetheless surprised by a number of things on their visit. Here’s a list of seven things that surprised our Japanese staff on their trip to Turkey.

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You call that sushi? Ukraine’s take on the Japanese classic

Whenever foods specific to a certain culture make appearances in foreign restaurants, something almost always gets altered along the way. For example, I’ve been living in Japan for years, and yet I still shake my head whenever I see an “American-style” pizza topped with eggplant, potato and mayonnaise. It’d be one thing if everyday consumers realized that the “Western” food they eat is actually unique to Japan, but as far as they are concerned, all of us Americans put taters and mayo on our pizzas!

But of course, Japan is in no way the only country to confuse traditional ingredients for those suited to their local tastes. Recently, one of our RocketNews24 correspondents, Natasha from Ukraine, wrote up a fine report on the sad state of sushi in her country. Here’s the gist of what she had to say.

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My, Kitty, haven’t you grown!? Japan’s favourite feline gets a risqué remake

Oh, Kitty-chan, you look… different! Sent to us by Madrid-based reader April, these photos of a cheeky t-shirt riff on everyone’s favourite Japanese cat are sure to raise a few eyebrows both at home and abroad.

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Mention Honda to most people, and they’ll think of a successful car company, if still a few rungs below giants Toyota, GM, and Volkswagen in sheer size. But Honda just happens to be the biggest engine manufacturer in the world, providing power for not just for passenger cars, but also motorcycles, scooters, boats, jet aircraft, and even lawnmowers.

Honda’s most die-hard fans point to the company’s racing pedigree and ease with which its engines can be tuned to make more power, both of which factor into its current project of building the world’s fastest riding mower.

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Enjoy the delectable taste of chocolately Edible Anus

Excuses are like anuses; everyone’s got one. That’s the reasoning behind the Edible Anus line of chocolates created in England. These handcrafted chocolates represent something that transcends cultural boundaries to offer creamy sphincter shaped goodness to the whole world, even reaching Japan where netizens have been left open-mouthed at the idea of munching on a chocolatey orifice.

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On 9 November, 2011, a member of the Association for Aid and Relief Japan, Atsushi Miyazaki was killed while helping relief effort in an earthquake stricken region of Turkey.

Although Miyazaki had made the ultimate sacrifice for another country by laying down his life, the Turkish people also have shown an unending sense of gratitude by continuing to honor his name years later.

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  • May 29, 2013

I think we can all agree that Akira Toriyama’s Dragon Ball is one of the most popular and well-known animes in the world. Well, here in Japan, a good understanding of the story and characters of Dragon Ball is considered basic knowledge on the Internet, so much so that it has become routine practice for Japanese Internet users to ask someone to explain a complex story or situation by using the story and characters from the series as comparison. Yes, you’ll see people on message boards literally saying, “I don’t quite understand that. Can someone explain it to me in terms of Dragon Ball, please?”

Now, it seems this practice has spread beyond Japan, and a tweet from Spain comparing some pieces of electronic and gaming equipment to Dragon Ball characters has fans of the anime laughing out loud. Read More

When Akio Toyoda took the helm of Toyota Motor Corporation in 2009, he was faced with a collapsing economy and a recall scandal that now seemed to have been blown out of proportion.

Still, he was able to steer the company through these stormy waters by being something more than just the founder’s great grandson who took over the company. He was a guy who truly loved cars.

As proof, it came to light on 30 April that he will participate in this year’s 24 Hours Nürburgring, a grueling endurance race on one of the most challenging circuits in the world.

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Hyundai Ad Uses Suicide to Promote New Car, Causes Outrage and Sadness in the UK

As much as we might bemoan their very existence when they interrupt our favourite TV shows or appear ad nauseam prior to YouTube clips, when done well ads can be genuinely entertaining. With each shot written, debated, edited and otherwise laboured over sometimes for hundreds of hours, successful ads become pop culture in their own right and are often of higher quality than the shows whose commercial crevices they are stuffed into.

An ad recently aired in the UK, however, become a talking point for all the wrong reasons when it depicted a man trying to kill himself by breathing in the exhaust fumes produced by what transpires to be a particularly environmentally friendly type of vehicle: Hyundai’s iX35.

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We Sample Traditional Portuguese Cuisine… at McDonald’s

Our fast food correspondent Kuzo constantly travels the world visiting exotic countries and partaking of their McDonald’s menus to see what wonders they have in store. In the past, we’ve seen him visit McDonald’s restaurants in Turkey and Russia to name a few, but now his McSight is set on Portugal. Here is his super-sized McReport, translated into English for you, our beautiful, hungry readers.

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Below is an account from Sayaka, a reporter over at our sister site Pouch. It is an intriguing look at differences in business culture between Japan and the west. It makes one realize that there is no perfect business strategy as such but by incorporating the best parts from each culture, one can get pretty close to their own perfect business model. Moreover, Japan’s business culture has to be one of the most unique in the entire world.

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Stage Adaptation of Studio Ghibli’s Princess Mononoke Coming to Japan this April!

The British stage production of Studio Ghibli’s 1997 animated classic Princess Mononoke, originally only intended for audiences at London’s Diorama Theatre this April, will be brought to Japan, it was announced earlier today.

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Mr. Sato Gets a Turkish Makeover with “A Popular Hairstyle” of the Nation

Our Mr. Sato has struggled with hairstyles in the past, and his troubles are compounded further by his jet-setting international lifestyle. A hairstyle that’s cool in one country can be totally dorky in another. The mullet’s continued success in Japan is testament to that.

So, when visiting Turkey recently, our reporter went to a barber and asked for “a popular hairstyle in Turkey.” Could this be the start of a sexier Mr. Sato?

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