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Japan (Page 1323)

Microsoft’s Windows 10 ads inadvertently ruffle feathers in Korea with… a bad choice of font?

American tech giant Microsoft apparently has some explaining to do to Korean Windows users.

That’s because a television commercial announcing the recent release of Microsoft Windows 10, the latest and blessedly less-infuriating edition of the company’s flagship operating system, apparently commits an unwritten faux pas by way of a text font displayed in the ad.

And if you’re as baffled as we initially were about how a simple, commonly used font could be so offensive, well, let us tell you a little story about Japan-Korea relations…

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Chilled, green tea, sweet potato and more mark 40 years of Japan’s Hi-Chew candy

Morinaga’s Hi-Chew is one of Japan’s favorite candies. Its popularity has spread across the world and you can often find different flavors of Hi-Chew at your local store. Fans have gone to great lengths to show their appreciation for the flavorful chewy snack over the years, including our Japanese team who once even created their own giant Hi-Chew, thus disproving the old adage that “bigger is better”.

Now, to celebrate the candy’s 40th anniversary, Morinaga is releasing some special new flavors and an extra-special version of their most popular flavor that will become the first refrigerated Hi-Chew in history.

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Birds of a feather flock together, so the saying goes. And that concept applies to non-humans as well; it’s not uncommon for pets and their owners to act, and sometimes even look, somehow similar after spending years together. Even in the super popular anime and game series Pokémon, where the aim of the game is to collect as many pokémon as possible, many of the pokémon trainers in the series use pocket monsters that somehow resemble them.

But what the characters of the anime series Free! were pokémon trainers? Which creatures would they have under their well-toned wings? Find out as this Japanese fan puts her imagination to work in a series of awesome Pokémon x Free! crossover illustrations!

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Japanese elves bring us a new snack cake with the great taste of old meat!

Japan never ceases to be the country of making something taste exactly like something it shouldn’t. In the land where you can get kimchi-flavored soft drinks and spaghetti-flavored ice candy, it would seem food companies are really just drunk with power when it comes to what they can and will make stuff taste like.

And now we have “the perfect snack cake for any meat-lover,” Momotan Aged Meat Flavored snacks. It’s in the form of a typical Japanese confection called manju with a cake-like outer coating and sweet been paste filling. However, these Momotan manju are heavily seasoned to make you swear you were eating a morsel of month-old meat instead!

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For a country that’s ordinarily very concerned with not doing anything to shock or offend, Japan can be extremely open about its sexual tastes, in ways that manifest as both perfectly healthy and perfectly pervy. Japan is also pretty open and comfortable with its weakness for cute things, as you’ll often see adults of both genders sporting clothing or accessories bearing the image of popular children’s characters.

But what happens when you have both a sexy anime huggy pillow and a cute Disney stuffed animal in your bedroom, and you leave them alone for a while?

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“Do you want some ramen with those eggs?” Our reporter tries ramen with ALL THE EGGS!

So, you like eggs, but with all the conflicting research about the little balls of protein, it’s hard to decide if you should be eating zero eggs, an egg a day, or as many as you can stuff in you face. Sadly, we’re not entirely certain either, but if you simply don’t care about what’s good for you or not, we’d like you to meet your comrade-in-shells, P.K.

Our clothes-hating Japanese reporter P.K. is a huge fan of the unfertilized bird babies, and he recently read that all that research saying you shouldn’t eat too many eggs is bunk. So he decided to make up for lost time and headed down to Ramen Kagetsu Arashi to get a bowl of noodles with more eggs than a chicken coop. Egg lovers, get ready to hear your stomachs growl!

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The quintessential Kyoto experience: becoming a maiko for the day! 【Pics & video】

They say that it’s rare to see a real maiko walking the streets of Kyoto, since these artists usually work at night and live in their own secluded world, far from the rest of Japanese society. In fact, if you spot a maiko strolling around Gion during the day, there’s a good chance she’s a tourist who’s undergone a fabulously elaborate makeover.

We took our Japan Wish competition winner Ashley to a studio in Kyoto’s Gion neighborhood to have a maiko-over and be transformed in an amazing process that yielded completely stunning results. Ashley was able to choose her own kimono and obi sash, and as part of the deal she was treated to a professional photography session and the opportunity to take a stroll around the streets of Gion in full maiko garb!

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Even among otaku, those with a fondness for anime series Love Live! are known for being particularly obsessive. As a matter of fact, it wouldn’t be much of an exaggeration to say that the Love Livers, as the franchise’s fans are known, worship the show’s central characters.

And if that’s the case, one arcade figured, why not give fans a place where they can kneel down and make offerings to their anime idols?

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Cardcaptor Sakura is ready to capture your phone with this elegant anime iPhone case

Cardcaptor Sakura’s titular heroine keeps her captured cards in a magic tome called the Clow Book, pulling them out as needed in the course of her adventures. In your daily life, though, you probably don’t run into that many occasions that call for instantly producing wooden cages, creating a labyrinth in an alternate dimension, commanding the sun to rise, or any of the other mystical functions of the Clow Cards.

On the other hand, you probably whip out your smartphone several times a day, and the next time you do, it could be inside this regal-looking Cardcaptor Sakura iPhone case.

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7 Japanese customs that even Japanese people wish would just disappear

Japan has a lot of unique customs, and not all of them make sense to newcomers. Eating fried chicken on Christmas Eve, anyone? How about the weird ritual of girls giving chocolate to guys on Valentine’s Day (do guys really like chocolate more than we girls do?).

But it turns out that there are plenty of customs that even Japanese people think are a waste of time. Here’s the top seven worst offenders, and why they are so annoying…

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Mos Burger’s sauce-soaked Wet Burger sure is wet, but is it worth your burger bucks? 【Taste test】

A few days ago, we talked about fast food chain Mos Burger’s plan to unleash something called the Wet Burger, or Nure Burger in Japanese. Unlike normal sandwiches which are content to have their sauce on the inside, the Wet Burger is submerged in tomato sauce before serving.

But is this new challenger a legitimate rival to the standard Mos Burger, already considered one of the stars of the Japanese fast food scene? Or is it simply too bold and saucy for its own good?

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5 discriminatory interview questions employers in Japan are no longer allowed to ask

For many young people in Japan, August means summer vacation, festivals and free time. For fourth-year university students however, it means time to start interviewing for jobs. The job-hunting process in Japan is long, grueling and very systematic, culminating in interview after interview for the jobless, soon-to-graduate, young adults.

Interviews can be nerve-wracking for even the most experienced candidates, but Japanese companies don’t always ask the most predictable questions. In fact, some of their questions can be downright weird. Many of these oddball interview questions, however, may not actually be legal.

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All our culinary dreams come true with gyoza-flavoured cup ramen

When it comes to ramen, nothing goes better than a side serving of gyoza (dumplings) washed down with a beer. Now our culinary dreams are about to come true with the release of gyoza-flavoured cup noodle ramen.

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Will whiskey aged in space taste smoother? Suntory is set to experiment this month

Japanese brewing and distilling company Suntory Holdings Limited recently announced their plans to send samples of whiskey to the International Space Station in order to investigate the effects of zero gravity on the aging process.

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Smoking food and sword juggling at Kyoto’s Ninja Labyrinth restaurant【Video】

Time to rewatch Naruto and brush up on your ninjutsu, folks! We took our Japan wish competition winner to experience a modern twist on an ancient part of Japanese culture. Come and take a look at the spectacle inside Kyoto’s mysterious and shadowy ninja restaurant.

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These crustaceans are going to make you put fountain pen to paper

How often do you sit down, dip your pen in some ink and write a letter or put your thoughts down on paper? The art of handwriting might be lost in the West, but surprisingly, students in Japan will often practice cursive writing even though they aren’t taught it in class. And in Japan, there are still plenty of chances for people to write things out from resumes and New Years cards to love letters and condolences, so there is always an opportunity to show off your epic penmanship.

And if you feel your written notes are lacking a certain artistic flair, the stationery store KINGDOM NOTE has just the thing for you: Colors! It’s not just normal boring colors that they are offering either, but original inks in colors inspired by crustaceans.

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How do they make those amazing life-size anime statues? We find out (and snap tons of pictures)

The twice-yearly Wonder Festival exhibition is all about models of anime, video game, and other 2-D characters. Just like with model airplanes or trains, you can often find multiple versions of the same character in different scales, usually several times smaller than the heroes and heroines they’re based on are actually supposed to be.

Walking around the convention, though, we came across two stunning life-sized figures. It wasn’t just their size that impressed us, though, but their amazing attention to detail. Not only did we stop to gawk and snap pictures, we also got an explanation of how they were made, and it involves a 3-D printer!

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Despite raging typhoon, Gion Matsuri goes on as it has for over 1,000 years【Video】

The Gion Festival, or Gion Matsuri, has been celebrated consistently for over a thousand years and is one of the most famous festivals in Japan. The highlight is the Yamahoko Parade which occurs twice, on July 17 and July 24, and our competition winner’s wish was to see it happen with her own eyes here in Japan. This year, with a incoming typhoon, there were rumors swirling about the festival being cancelled, but with hardly any interruptions in its long history, this parade wasn’t about to be stopped by mere weather!
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WikiLeaks reveals US spied on Japanese government and corporations for at least three years

Uh-oh, looks like the political relationship between the US and Japan may get a little shaky as whistleblower organization WikiLeaks has exposed America’s three-year surveillance of the Japanese government, major industries and banks. Even worse, it looks like the US may have also shared their collected info with other countries.

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History Channel shows our Mr. Sato to the U.S.…as a student who’ll eat anything for five bucks?!?

Here at RocketNews24, we like to think our Japanese-language reporter Mr. Sato doesn’t just belong to us, but that he belongs to the world. After all, the value of panning for nuggets of wisdom in his stream of craziness transcends any mere national boundaries.

And now it seems Mr. Sato belongs to history as well, as we recently found out he was featured on American TV as part of the History Channel’s family of programing. It’s a great honor…except for the part where they mistakenly introduce him as a college student who’ll eat anything for five bucks!

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