With just a few weeks to go until its launch in Japan, Nintendo has begun streaming an introductory ad for its new, analogue nub-toting 3DS.
Check out the video in full after the jump.
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With just a few weeks to go until its launch in Japan, Nintendo has begun streaming an introductory ad for its new, analogue nub-toting 3DS.
Check out the video in full after the jump.
We are well aware of the lengths Apple fanatics go to for their devices, and while waiting in line for 48 hours may make for some precious memories, one fan’s devotion gave rise to something quite tangible and utilitarian. Whether you have small hands or inherited stubby fingers like Lisa Simpson, check out the clever case Japanese Twitterer and sound engineer Gusoh came up with so that he could still easily manipulate the larger iPhone 6 with one hand! That leaves the other five digits free for, say, coffee or an iPod Touch? (I’m sure you’ve seen these busy people on the train, right?)
When I first came to Japan, I noticed students using story boards frequently at school. They drew pictures on cardboard with crayon or marker, to assist in skits, plays and telling Japanese folktales. Story boards were especially helpful in English classes because the illustrations helped the audience understand the less-than-perfect translations from Japanese to English. Furthermore, the students could write their translations on the back of each board and narrate rather than memorizing it in English first.
Little did I know that what these students were doing was performing an updated version of a traditional Japanese storytelling format called kamishibai, believed to be the precursor to Japan’s manga and anime.
Find out where Japan’s first superheroes came from and which manga and anime started with from this original, unassuming art form called kamishibai.
Between rising sales tax and the dropping value of the yen, prices are on the rise for food in Japan. That puts us in a bit of a bind, since food is one of our favorite things to buy, along with swell stuff like shelter and clothing (although if you’re a work-from-home Internet writer, you can sometimes get away without that last one).
Thankfully, we recently found a way to make a delicious, hot meal that’s also dirt cheap, by tossing the stewed vegetable contents of a pack of oden from 7-Eleven into our rice cooker.
There are few things in life more competitive than Super Smash Brothers (and, like, hot dog eating contests with hamsters). So, even though you can now Smash Brothers on the go with the new 3DS version, truly competitive players don’t want to settle for the 3DS’s inferior, cramped D-pad and button layout.
A clever Japanese Twitter user recently openly dreamed of a better way to Smash Brothers on his 3DS by connecting an old-school Gamecube controller to the portable handheld and, shockingly, another even more genius Twitter user responded with a real-life prototype he made with plentiful engineering skills, his own two hands, and what appears to be a bunch of fresh spaghetti.
Pop idols exist in this strange space between reality and fantasy. While they are living, breathing individuals, they are set on a pedestal and rarely get to interact with people one on one. While groups like AKB48 may be tied to a certain location to serve as a symbol of pride for one area’s people, outside of meet and greet events, fans cannot really get to know them. Of course, the biggest taboo of all is for a pop idol and a fan to begin dating. But one brave group has decided to step forth from the binds of their image. Meet the members of the idol group Happening Girls. These four lovely ladies depicted here are unique in the idol community because they are allowed to foster relationships, date, and even marry their fans.
Halloween is still more than a month away, but Tokyo’s witch population has gone up by one with the DVD and Blu-ray release of the live-action Kiki’s Delivery Service. To celebrate, the Tokyo Prince Hotel is delivering a double dose of tie-ins with the main character of Eiko Kadono’s novel series and Hayao Miyazaki’s anime, in the form of a bakery selling Kiki-themed treats and a hotel suite decorated with props used by the actors in the film.
Apple iPhone releases have been known to make people do crazy things. Whether it’s dressing as a blue slime and sleeping on the street for days or using your nipple to unlock your phone, there’s a sense of excitement and ceremony surrounding each new model that makes us want to push the boundaries and just have fun.
The latest release on the weekend was no different, and in our excitement to test out the much-anticipated ‘Digital Image Stabilization’ (DIS) on the iPhone 6, it seemed entirely sensible to line up two different models side-by-side and give them both a good shake. And how better to do that than by strapping them onto a vibrator?
Nowadays, it seems everyone is surrounded by multiple electronic gadgets that need constant managing and charging. And we all know it can be a drag remembering to keep all those devices juiced up. Well, you might as well do the charging in style, right? In that case, these adorable USB power adapters may be just what you need to get the job done. Yes, our favorite friends from Disney have turned themselves into power adapters for your precious gadgets, but in this case, they’re keeping their faces hidden — and displaying their cute bottoms instead!
Meet μ [the Greek letter mu], a four-year-old Scottish Fold female cat who enjoys all the typical feline hobbies of catnapping, meowing for treats, coughing up hairballs, and sitting down on your laptop while you’re trying to work. But μ has another hobby which is a bit more, shall we say, atypical in nature. Like many human children (and adults!), μ likes nothing better than to cuddle up with her favorite pink stuffed animal when she falls asleep!
Earlier in our thankfully extremely sporadic series, “Oh Boy, That’s Pretty Racist,” we covered a Japanese “comedian” (I use this term loosely) who posted Vine videos as a poorly acclimated Indian guy living in Japan, complete with racist accent and affinity for curry, of course.
For our second installment, we have a Japanese woman living in Taiwan explaining the reasons people should choose Japanese women over Taiwanese women using broad cultural stereotypes that at best unfairly pigeonhole Taiwanese ladies, and at worst are outright false. Let’s take a look:
On the evening of 19 September, JR Osaka Station became the scene of unseasonable weirdness as dozens of photographs of an unknown teenage boy seen sitting on the train fell from the sky like giant snowflakes of randomness.
Upon investigating the incident, Osaka Prefectural Police found this to have been an act of revenge by what is fast becoming Japan’s most oddball sub-culture: train otaku.
If you’re an Apple fanboy living in Japan, you may have noticed – while waiting in a ridiculously long line for your latest gadget – that there was a huge number of Chinese nationals waiting in line along with you.
That’s because, for the last couple of years, heading out to other countries to buy up the latest Apple products and sell them for a profit back in China has become a popular pastime for China’s more enterprising scalpers.
But this year, when Apple stores unexpectedly sold out of the new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 + before lines could dissipate, things got a little out of hand with the remaining Chinese customers, who reportedly stormed at least one Tokyo-based Apple store and wrecked the place – in addition to leaving piles of garbage out on the streets. Which would not have gone down well had it not been for the actions of one man.
Apple’s iTunes service released a trailer for the English dub of Studio Ghibli and Isao Takahata‘s The Tale of the Princess Kaguya on Monday.
On the application for a lot of jobs in the service sector, they’ll ask if you’re willing to work nights and weekends. Oftentimes, it’s hard to see this as anything other than a trick question. On the one hand, candidates obviously want to put their best, most eager face forward, and if you say you’d rather not take shifts then, you’re opening yourself up to the very real possibility of losing the job to someone who’s, at least on paper, more industrious.
Honestly though, no one really wants to be working at those times, since nights and weekends are some of the best times to enjoy spending the money you earn as part of raising your overall quality of life. Thankfully, one udon chain seems to understand this, and as part of their recruiting advertising, points out that working at its restaurants won’t get in the way of the more important things in life, life spending your weekends at an anime convention.
For most of this summer, Kyoto Prefectural Police have been carrying out an aggressive campaign of going to people’s homes and asking them to voluntarily give up their shoes with built-in hidden cameras. These house calls have resulted in hundreds of pairs of these “tosatsu shoes” (voyeur shoes) winding up in police custody.
This plan to deter the use of tosatsu shoes to illegally film in private areas such as up women’s skirts had proved so successful that police in Kyoto are spreading the word to other departments and will continue the same tactics in the future.
While the English edition of RocketNews24 is primarily focused on Asia in general and Japan in particular, our Japanese-language sister site, Pouch, covers stories from around the world. Sometimes, the source information they work with is in English, so Pouch’s team members are always on the lookout for ways to brush up their language skills.
So we weren’t shocked to hear that one of Pouch’s writers, Marie, had recently gotten really into a new English-learning smartphone app. What did surprise us, though, was when we took a look at the phrases she was learning, including such nuggets as, “I just took a dump.”
The Tokyo Game Show for 2014 closed its doors this past weekend, and a record number of game companies showed up to display four times as many titles as last year. As always, the ever popular cosplay was a big hit and thousands of people came to buy the unique goods sold there. But what about the show itself? Was it the best attended TGS in years? Did it smash attendance records all around the world?
Cat cafes have established a pretty solid foothold in the Japanese dining scene. That said, some of them deliver more on the “cat” than the “café” part, with pretty unimpressive interiors and menus.
That’s not a problem at Monta, though, a cat café which recently opened up in Tokyo’s Asakusa neighborhood. With stylish and colorful furnishings and delicious food, we’d be tempted to stop by even if it didn’t have a half-dozen cats running around inside.
Those cute kitties, though, sure helped seal the deal and get us through the door, though.