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School kids in Japan learn about bugs, terrifying miniature horse-beasts and baby Ohmus

Back when I was a kid growing up in Liverpool, we studied only the subjects that were essential for daily life: namely Numbers, Words, Throwing, and of course a selection of moves from the 1983 romantic drama Flashdance. There was no time for art or creativity, and we were only ever allowed outdoors to collect firewood or when the time came to offer up a sacrifice to The Beast.

So it’s great to see that school kids in Japan are given a chance to learn the things that really matter, like identifying a Japanese rhinoceros beetle from a lineup of frightening, hopefully imaginary, creatures.

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Japanese airline ANA causes controversy by airing “racist” commercial

All Nippon Airways has landed in some hot water thanks to a recent commercial advertising the company’s new international routes to Vancouver and Hanoi. The 30 second clip features a Japanese actor speaking English and wearing a fake nose and blonde wig. But is the commercial inherently racist? It seems the vote is split in this particular case.

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Your iPhone is embarrassingly bad at simple math

The Cult of Apple is so smug about the many features and perks of the iPhone that it becomes a test of will for us Android users not to snatch any iPhone we see out of the hands of its user and throw it overhand into the nearest wall.

But now we may have a new weapon in the war on Apple: basic arithmetic. Seedy Japanese Internet geek forum 2chan has apparently proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that, when it comes to the calculator function, Apple’s smartphone is as dumb as that kid in your elementary school class that ate glue all day.

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Japanese university seating plan meme submitted to web for approval

The internet is a vast ocean of small infographics, flow charts, and images with the aim to succinctly present the truths of life to the masses. However, not every clever doodle is worth being held in our hard drives to be pulled out during a relevant discussion later on. These images sink into the deep abyss of the internet ocean, only to be found when James Cameron finally gets a good enough sub.

Let’s watch as one humble netizen submits their typical Japanese university seating arrangement to others. Will the chart hit home with other students, or will it fall flat? First let’s look at an English translation of it.

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“I think I love you…”: Romantic confessions from around the world

Declaring your love, or even just your like, for a boy or a girl in Japan can be a pretty big deal. While we don’t think most people’s stories are quite as dramatic as in anime, with characters struggling for seasons just to admit their fond feelings for another, it’s certainly true that many Japanese people are pretty shy about asking each other out.

While it’s kind of cute and kind of frustrating if you’re used to a more forward culture, is it really that different from other countries?

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Twitter user exposes test-taking “geek” to the world, geek sees tweet and turns to confront him

It’s January, which only means one thing to Japanese high school students: University entrance exams. These tests can be a source of extreme stress of Japaneses students, and many of them spend hours upon hours every day studying in class, at home, or at cram schools. Substandard test scores means they’re denied entrance–and spending the next year or two studying to take the tests again.

One of the hardest tests is the Center Test, which is used by both public and some private schools to make admittance decisions. Like the SATs or ACTs on steroids, it covers a range of topics and is, by anyone’s standards, really freaking hard. So what does the picture above have to do with the Center Test? Click below to find out!

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Bass, the favorite instrument of Japanese rock fans?

While the meme above is probably nothing new to you, it took its time reaching Japanese Internet audiences. But now that it has shown up on this side of the ocean, we’ve learned something a bit surprising about Japanese rock fans.

Which instrument do you think was the most liked according to a recent online survey? We’ll give you a hint: Without it, the Red Hot Chili Peppers wouldn’t be nearly as much fun to listen to!

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Otaku Internet services: For all your online Japanese geekery needs

When it comes to language learning, one of the biggest problems is staying motivated. Memorizing 100 kanji for a test next Friday might get you through the work, but memorizing 100 kanji so you can read your favorite comics or talk online with fellow comic-fans will really light a fire under your keister. And we all tend to learn better when we’re having fun! We think someone proved that with science and stuff. It might have been Mr. Sato…he’s been playing with the chemistry set again.

Anyway, we know a lot of our readers are both Japanese-language learners and manga/anime fans. If you fit that description and you’re always looking for something to help keep you motivated to study, why not add these sites to your daily reading list? It might be difficult to get through everything at first, but if you keep with it, you’ll be reading like a champ in no time! Just don’t ignore your real homework! We don’t want any angry Japanese teachers knocking on our doors…

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Fan makes detailed clay figure of Hayao Miyazaki, even his cigarettes look life-like

Hayao Miyazaki has created some of anime’s more memorable characters, winning legions of fans all around the world. As such you would imagine that along with the thousands of pieces of fan art, an aspiring sculptor somewhere would pick up the gauntlet and recreate some of them in three dimensions.

One sculptor answered that call, and set out to make the ultimate Ghibli character from clay: Mr. Miyazaki himself… We hear his friends say he’s “a real character.”

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Gotta size ’em all? Image of all 718 Pokémon depicted to scale leaves us awestruck

Haven’t you always secretly wanted to know what a puny Caterpie would look like next to the legendary Lugia? And I bet you didn’t know just how much of a pipsqueak Pikachu actually is. Well, thanks to one artist on deviantART, now you can compare the sizes of all six generations of Pokémon in one picture! We were blown away by the amount of work it must have taken to research the dimensions of all 718 Pokémon and compile their silhouettes into one image. Can you guess which are the biggest and smallest Pokémon?

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From children to netizens: Asian international relations have a long way to go

We here at RocketNews24 occasionally get hit with accusations of having an anti-China or anti-Korea slant. And while we don’t think a story about a young Chinese man getting a seatless bicycle wedged in his butt is inherently anti-Chinese, we can see how it might be interpreted that way. We can also see how we get labeled as anti-other-Asian-countries since we largely get our information from Japanese sources, and it would be naive to say there aren’t anti-Chinese and anti-Korean forces at play within the Japanese media. You couldn’t hope for a better example than the following story that was said to have been posted by a Chinese person on a message board. The anecdote has a lot to say about how Chinese children are raised to view Japan. However, the reaction to the story itself is more revealing about what it’s like on the other side.

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Surprising foreign words Japanese people are likely to know

As mentioned many times before on this site, the modern Japanese language uses a set of characters to represent foreign words called katakana. Such characters are used for foreign place names such a Beverly Hills (ビバリーヒルズ) or people like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (マフムード・アフマディーネジャード).

However, this feature of Japanese has been criticized by some for allowing the purity of the language to be polluted by foreign influences. It can also cause confusion by creating English words that have different meanings than the original.

That being said, for foreigners visiting Japan with a limited knowledge of the language this list may prove invaluable. Excluding the obvious classics like “OK” (オケ) and “McDonald’s” (マクドナルド) here are some relatively newer loan words ranked by understandability in Japanese.

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Young woman celebrates adulthood with dizzying Hello Kitty/My Melody nails

This 13 January marked yet another Coming-of-Age Day in Japan. Every year on the second Monday of January, young adults who have turned 20 in the previous year congregate in city halls and community centers across the land.

These ceremonies honor the passage into adulthood and for such a once in a lifetime event, it’s not uncommon to see young women dress to the nines with an elegant kimono and elaborate hairstyle. Nails are an important feature too, but one young woman decided to accompany the event with some once-in-a-lifetime nails. In fact the image above is only about 45% of them.

Get ready to see the full picture, but beware! It’s kind of like staring into an Escher painting.

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The vocaloid classroom: Where music class meets the 21st century

Music class can be pretty hit or miss. Some people really enjoy it and find a life-long passion–other fumble hopelessly with the drumsticks and just wish it were time to start math class. Either way, we all had to sit through it, right?

But as important as learning an instrument may be, it kind of seems like music class is still stuck in the 20th century–or even the 19th century. After all, the music industry today relies as much on Pro Tools as it does on an expert bass player. So while we’ll always need skilled musicians, it does seem prudent to introduce the more technologically advanced aspects of music to the classroom, doesn’t it?

Well, one Japanese school did just that by offering a vocaloid composition trial lesson to their curriculum!

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Absolutely wow: Dawn of the new year seen from 30 km up【video】

The new year has arrived and it feels like we’ve already fallen into the same old routine. A well-known and comfortable routine, so we’re not complaining! But it is a bit sad to let the wintry festivities go.

Fortunately, there’s still a bit of fun to be had leftover from New Year’s Day: One enterprising Hokkaido resident took it upon himself to film the dawn of the new year–from the freaking stratosphere! He posted the video on YouTube and it is absolutely beautiful.

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Cappucino art that’s out of this world: Twitter cappuccino artist shows off his extraterrestrial skills

We’ve seen some pretty cool latte art over the years, but this might be the most, um, unusual we’ve spotted. It’s not exactly cute, but it certainly is out of this world!

From aliens to bunnies to Ghibli’s Catbus, this guy does it all in 3-D foam sculptures atop cups of coffee!

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How glam is your pussy? Cat wigs hot in 2014

Meet Shiro and Mimi, just two of the stars of Kago Neko, a blog all about one Japanese cat fan’s pets. Sadly, the pair were not, in fact, born with such luscious barnets, but their owner, perhaps sensing their inner glam rock star, provided them with a couple of rather fetching blonde wigs. We think you’ll agree that they look pretty rockin’.

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New website lets artists post drawings that self-destruct in 24 hours

There are lots of websites out there that invite artists to post their works for all to see. However, there are a great many artists out there, and over time a build-up of paintings, drawings, CGIs and photos can become too much for the average person to know where to begin, let alone anyone scouting for new talent.

On 6 January, a new website called Slash Temp (stylized “/temp”) was opened that lets illustrators freely post whatever creation they like on one condition: a ticking timer will be attached that deletes the image in 24 hours. This isn’t just some random image dump though. There is a way to preserve drawings that get a rise out of viewers for better or worse…

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Shut up and take my money: “Kung Fury” brings martial arts, vikings and Hitler together at last

For many, the ’80s was a decade of the best fashion, movies, and music known to humanity. For the rest of us, it was a painful embarrassment that we’re still trying to forget by drinking heavily.

Still, we’d be lying if we said there wasn’t something magical and stupidly fun about the cinema and games of that decadent decade. Which might explain the recent resurgence in ’80s-centric media like the critically acclaimed Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon and, now, the too-insane-to-actually-get-made-but-totally-will movie Kung Fury!

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Ugoita fashions musical umbrellas and game cartridges for your low-fi pleasure

A white Christmas in Osaka is a rare thing and this year was no exception. All week has been back-to-back rainy days – par for the course in this neck of the world. If you happen to live in a similar climate, then these cold and damp days might have you feeling a little bummed out.

To help turn your mood around is a cute little invention by Ugoita. This umbrella has sensors attached that convert the impact of raindrops into tones. However, that’s just one of many unique electronic creations that worked.

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