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Giant Robot Battle Fists Now On Sale in Japan! But With Great Robot Fists Comes Great Responsibility

Finally you can put awesome power of giant battle robots in the palm of your hand— or around the palm of your hand—with GIANT ROBOT BATTLE FISTS. Now available in Japan! Sounds like the perfect Christmas gift to me!

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  • Dec 4, 2012

Love Disney? These Adorable Mickey and Minnie Hotel Rooms Are For You!

Ah, the wonderful world of Disney! With the holiday festivities swinging into full gear, there’s bound to be a lot of fun and magic going on at Tokyo Disney Resort this time of the year. Well, Disney lovers, in a few months, there will be one more reason for you to visit the land where dreams come true.

The Disney Ambassador Hotel, long loved by Disney fans for its Art Deco style interior containing numerous Disney character motifs and surely a delightful place to stay for any visitor, will be going under partial renovation and reopen on February 6th next year.

So what new changes can guests look forward to? Read More


  • Nov 22, 2012

Hello Kitty Now Serving Herself Up as Main Dish for Thanksgiving!

No one can accuse Hello Kitty of being a slacker. She’s constantly involved in projects with popular franchises, and we’ve seen her tackle an unbelievably wide range of jobs from appearing on anime-themed boxer briefs to being featured nude on a T-shirt. She’s also not averse to tolerating a little pain, having been through some baking and steaming in her line of work.

This time, our fearless Miss Kitty endures some roasting, just in time for the Thanksgiving Holidays!
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The Slow Rise to Success of the Stapleless Stapler, Japan’s Latest Office Trend Poised to Take the World

Get ready to say goodbye to staples.  Not the office supply chain, those little metal pins we’ve relied on for so long to fasten papers together.  Japan is currently undergoing the no-staple revolution thanks to some innovative new products that have surprisingly been around for a long time – stapleless staplers!

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Make Citrus Your Bitch With the Citrus Sprayer

Nothing livens up a salad or a roast chicken breast like a bit of fresh lemon, but isn’t it a pain to have to do all that cutting and squeezing? Don’t you just wish you could grab a lemon off the tree and pump it dry on the spot?

Well, now you can with Citrus Sprayer, a clever little utensil that turns fresh citrus fruit into a natural spray bottle!

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How’s It Hangin’ Japan? “To the Left,” Say About 40% of Guys

Here’s your Japanese vocabulary lesson for the day:

■   Chinpoji   –    Cheenpojee   –   [noun]
The perfect position for a man’s junk to rest in his underwear, pants, etc.

For men worldwide, to function normally we have to have our gear oriented in the correct position.  If through moving or sitting we fall out of chinpoji, then our minds become clouded with neuroses.

According to a survey by Japanese underwear maker Wacoal, 75% of men “are anxious about the positioning of their ‘front parts.’”  Not just the discomfort going on inside the pants; many men feel that their packages can be seen by people on the outside too when they’re out of place. This causes us to perform emergency public adjustments, which makes any woman within eyeshot go “ugghhh.”  In the end no one wins.

Yahoo Japan’s R25 explored this issue deeper, seeking to discover if all men’s chinpoji are the same and, if so, ask a medical professional why.  Here’s what they found.

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Incredible Flip-Book Animation Adopted by English Band Muse as Official Music Video

Regular RocketNews24 readers may recall an article we did back in March this year that introduced us to Furiko (Pendulum), the flip-book animation hand-drawn by eccentric Japanese comedian Tekken that had us all welling up with tears.

The video, set to English band Muse’s symphonic track Exogenesis, told the story of a young couple’s life together, following them from the moment that they first met through middle-aged marital hiccups before they meet their inevitable mortal end. The video received deservedly high praise, not just because every one of the 1,038 pages that make up the animation were hand-drawn, but because the video managed to pack as much genuine feeling and emotion into three minutes as most hollywood blockbusters in two hours.

Months later, Furiko has caught the attention of none other than Muse themselves, who were so moved that they decided to make it the official music video for their beautiful track.

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Revolutionary Speakers Made Entirely of Rubber, All the Bass without those Pesky Magnets

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaoIMy1ybFE?feature=oembed&w=640&h=360%5D

At this year’s CEATEC Japan, Tokai Rubber Industries Ltd. unveiled the first ever speaker made entirely of rubber – or should I say “smart rubber.”  With this technology what appears to be an ordinary strip of latex can be wired into a speaker.

There already is a range of modern products such smartphones using miniature speakers to produce decent quality sound. However, smart rubber speakers stand above with one thing they don’t have – good bass.

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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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The word “Bonsai” needs no translation. It is renowned internationally as a beautiful form of art which condenses nature into enjoyable little plants.

Recently, exports around the world of these little trees have increased by leaps and bounds. Hugely popular across Asia, Europe, and America, Bonsai exports to these areas have hit a record high, 10 times what they were only ten years ago.  With the onset of autumn, as exports reach full-scale, people who work in the bonsai business hope that bonsai can regain some of its popularity domestically as well.

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  • Oct 15, 2012

 

In this age of global travel and internet communication, meeting and even getting seriously involved with someone from outside your country is a very real possibility. For that matter, how do Japanese women and men rate as romantic interests? Takako Matsushita, a Japanese cabin attendant who has also appeared on T.V. and in magazines, offers her perspective on how Japanese women may get higher marks than Japanese men in the international dating market. And her message? Japanese men need to watch out, or all the nice ladies in Japan may be snatched up by foreign men! Read More


  • Oct 12, 2012

 

Those of you familiar with our Japanese site are probably aware that our reporters often travel overseas to bring interesting stories from around the world to our Japanese readers. Recently, one reporter shared with us an eye-opening realization he had while traveling, one that could have serious bearing on the reputation of Japanese tourists abroad.

Being Japanese and also very fond of traveling myself, this was a story I couldn’t take lightly! Read More

Hitachi’s New Quartz Storage Technology Lets You Keep Your Data Safe for a Long, Long Time

At the recent International Symposium on Optical Memory in Tokyo, Hitachi, working with Kyoto University, presented their new type of digital storage.  It works on a principle similar to CDs but with a few added benefits like withstanding over 1000℃ temperatures.

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Why do Foreigners Like Japanese Manga so Much? We Head to Comiket to Find Out!

While manga is ubiquitous in Japan — just ride the subway in any major city and you’ll see people from all walks of life flipping through a comic book — many Japanese people are surprised to hear how popular manga has become overseas. After all, aren’t Westerners only interested in macho superheroes or short comic strips?

Perhaps that was the case in America before, but in recent years many major bookstores have begun to reserve more space near the front of the store for Japanese comics and in some European countries like France and Germany manga occupies a large portion of overall comic sales.

But why?

Earlier this month, we sent one of our Japanese reporters to Comic Market (or “Comiket“), the world’s largest self-published comic book fair and otaku mecca, to interview real live foreigners and ask them why they like Japanese manga so much.

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According to a report published by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) Japanese high school students have markedly lower self-esteem and self-confidence than students in America and other Asian countries.

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Award Winning Manga to be Freely Used by Anyone for Anything Anytime, Author Will Not Request Royalties

Shuho Sato, the writer of Burakku Jyakku ni Yoroshiku, which commonly translates to “Say Hello to Black Jack,” is planning to make the award winning, 10 million copy selling manga available for free “second use.”

This means that after 15 September anyone in the world will be free to novelize, televise, create merchandise, or in any way adapt the original work for either commercial or non-commercial purposes without having to pay royalties.  This is the latest move in the writer’s quest to find alternatives to the “outdated” model of intellectual property rights.

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First World Problem: Trying to Say Your Coffee Order, Becoming a Quivering Blob. Here’s an App to Help the Wannabe Coffee Connoiseur.

As we all know, part of Starbucks’ appeal is its big menu and many choices, which naturally lead up to customizable orders. Seeing people rattle off all the options that comprise their beverage of choice is almost enough to make you develop an inferiority complex for just wanting a plain coffee. Read More

Overseas Edition of “Prince’s Proposal” Getting Turned Down by Fans: “Princes Look Disgusting”

Unlike American game makers, Japanese video game companies often sweat over every detail before selling their games overseas to make sure it fits the culture.  Although the sentiment is appreciated the results are often poor, as people in other countries enjoy those cultural differences more often than not.

Case in point is Prince’s Proposal’s (Ojisama no Puropozu) treacherous journey abroad.  Prince’s Proposal is an otome game where your character, a university student, has a chance encounter with six princes whom you must find romance with by making the right choices throughout the story.

Its recent westernized incarnation called Be My Princess, however, decided to replace the stylish anime princes and characters with rubbery, emotionless ones.

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Website Lets You Check if Anyone Was Murdered or Committed Suicide in Your Home

None of us wants to live in an apartment or house where someone was killed, also known as stigmatized properties. It’d be pretty creepy in the least.  However, in Japan the desire to not live in a place like that is so intense that you’d think Poltergeist was a documentary.

Oshima Teru is an up and coming website that also must be a real estate agent’s worst nightmare.  Its main purpose is to map out every property where unnatural deaths occurred. Originally only focusing on the Greater Tokyo Area, they have expanded into nearly worldwide coverage including North America and Europe.

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