Bringing you yesterday's news from Japan and Asia, today.
Japan (Page 1325)
Our love of the Studio Ghibli film My Neighbor Totoro has truly blossomed during the month of May. Just when we thought things couldn’t get any better after we heard about Totoro’s Forest in Saitama Prefecture, complete with a house for black dust bunnies known as Kurosuke no Ie, it seems there’s even more reason to celebrate, with an exact replica of Mei and Satsuki’s house open to the public in Aichi Prefecture.
Despite a rather weak track-record for its hamburgers with patties of noodles, fast-food chain Lotteria is back at it with the Moko Tanmen Burger. This time around they’ve also come up with the Moko Don Burger which uses a wad of rice as the patty. Good thing Dr. Atkins isn’t around to see this.
They say the definition of “insanity” is doing the same thing twice and expecting different results. We’re not sure what to call RocketNews24 reporter Mr. Sato then, because he is returning to Lotteria for a fourth time to try these noodley sandwiches in hopes of some redemption.
Oh the realities of getting older. One minute you’re feeling fine, the next you’re shopping for adult diapers. It’s a fact of life that transcends language, culture, and bladders all over the world.
Yoshio, one of our RocketNews24 Japanese-side writers, has recently joined the ranks of the incontinently impaired himself. To celebrate his newfound misery, he composed a 28-part list describing a typical day in his new, significantly wetter life.
Take a read and commiserate along with him, or see what you have to look forward to when parts of your own body start turning against you.
Everyone is trying to get in great shape for the summer season and everywhere you look there is a new exercise or diet craze that guarantees quick and easy weight loss in only a month. Most of these are too good to be true, but some of them might just work for you! Introducing the “Chef Lawson Diet,” which involves eating only at the Lawson convenience store for an entire month. Actual user testimony guarantees* you will lose five kilograms (11 pounds) in just one month!
* On second thought, RocketNews24 doesn’t actually guarantee anything.
Last week, we took a look at a set of fluffy Sailor Moon pajamas. But no matter how comfortable they may look, eventually you’re going to run out of food, manga, or some other class of household essentials and need to leave your home. But when you do, you can still keep the theme going with these Sailor Moon-themed tote bags to carry your supplies home in, plus sailor suit-style pouches and T-shirts.
There are many ways that data is transferred these days, be it fiber optic cables, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 4G-LTE, and a whole slew of other brand names and acronyms the meanings of which I don’t care to learn.
Now Panasonic has come up with a way to send and receive data that’s easy for everyone to understand: light. Actually it uses light emitting diodes (LED) to be exact, but that’s about as technical as this explanation needs to get, I promise.
It seems like every time you look, there’s some sort of new fad diet or superfood, all purported to be the best thing you can do for your health or to improve your natural beauty. But the good news is, this one’s actually fun to partake in.
Researchers at a university in Japan have now put sweet Japanese sake to the test, and have found it to have a number of positive beauty benefits, including improvement to under-eye health!
Parenting in the internet age is a whole lot more difficult than it was before our world was taken over by machines. Back then, the scariest conversation you had to have with your kids was about the birds and the bees, but now it’s the birds and the bees and the creepy old guy pretending to be a high school girl in an online chatroom.
One Japanese mom posted the conversations on Twitter that she’s recently had to have with her nine-year-old son, and they’ve been getting a lot of attention online. Read them for yourself and you’ll crack up over both how true and how hilarious they are.
Many Japanese animation fans can rattle off a list of the animation directors or character designers they admire, but the visuals are only half of the way anime stimulates the senses. For everything that you’re hearing during your favorite show, you can thank the sound director.
It’s a role Kazuhiro Wakabayashi has been filling for decades, and we recently sat in on a talk the industry veteran gave about the unique challenges a sound director faces, what it’s like to work with some of the biggest names in Japanese animation, including Studio Ghibli’s Hayao Miyazaki and Ghost in the Shell’s Mamoru Oshii, and the surprisingly deep human element of creating the audio environment for a fictional world.
Japan is home to 110 active volcanoes, 47 of which are monitored continually by the Japan Meteorological Association (JMA). Japan also holds seven percent of all the active volcanoes in the world.
Last year, Mount Ontake in Nagano Prefecture exploded without warning, killing over 60 people, many of them hikers. Mount Hakone in the hot springs resort town near Mount Fuji is on level-2 alert. Mount Fuji itself, a dormant volcano and World Heritage site is being looked at with a wary eye by many and authorities are advising hikers to wear helmets, dust masks and goggles when climbing. The volcano that most appears in the news, however, is Sakurajima, located off Kyushu, which is also one of the world’s most active volcanoes.
“Dutchsinse,” a self-proclaimed “News Personality” who has a cult following on Facebook and YouTube gives a near daily video update of volcanic and earthquake activity around the world. He recently highlighted Japan’s volcanoes and earthquakes and warns that pressure building in the region of Sakurajima, along with other multiple large eruptions in the Pacific region, could be a sign of something bigger to come.
The cicadas are chirping, the sun is shining, and we’re starting to get sweaty – it can only mean one thing: summer is coming! And with it all kinds of delicious treats like ice cream, ice cream, and, oh yes, ice cream.
But when you only really want to cool down and don’t want to consume too many calories, shaved ice is a much lighter alternative source of summer snack. But why rely on others to do your shaving for you? Why not shave it yourself in style with this awesome retro shaved ice maker?
Tetsuya Nomura is the mastermind behind this upcoming Batman figure, the likes of which you’ve never seen before. The 44-year-old video game artist/designer/director of Square Enix fame (he’s a veteran of both the Final Fantasy series and Kingdom Hearts) personally designed this version of the Dark Knight, and if you’re a fan of both his work and DC Comics, you’d better ready your wallet now!
On a recent trip to Shikoku, we heard about a small town tucked away in the Iya Valley called Nagoro. Like many small rural towns in Japan, the human population has dwindled to almost nothing in recent years. Unlike other towns, though, Nagoro doesn’t look empty. That’s because it’s populated by hundreds of scarecrows.
Of course we had to go check it out.
Happy Saturday, everyone! We hope you got through the week with all your bits and pieces still connected and without getting fired. But before you go off and start being nice to people now that you have a day off, let’s argue about food.
This week we’re talking about soy sauce-based ramen and miso-based ramen – two firm favourites in the world of delicious, soupy noodles and each with legions of fans. But of course, as Sean Connery and Christopher Lambert told us in the 1986 film Highlander, there can be only one, so pick a side and make your click count.
While dogs remain one of Japan’s favorite pet choices, you can actually get much of the same enjoyment from a pet turtle or tortoise. For example, we’ve seen that with enough patience, you and your shelled friend can enjoy going for walks together. And just like dog owners might one day experience the joy of coming home and finding a litter of puppies, so too can those with a turtle feel blessed when it lays a bunch of adorable little eggs.
As a matter of fact, the latter might even be the better of the two, since turtle eggs are far easier to cook than puppies. What’s that? You say you wouldn’t eat your animal companions’ eggs? Then you’re clearly operating under different thinking than this pet owner in Japan.
Usually, lingerie maker Triumph International Japan takes about half a year between announcing its innovative and unusual concept bras. So since it’s been about six months since we saw the company’s paired Close Sisters Bras, we figured the its next design highlighting a social trend was just about due.
Sure enough, this week Triumph showed off its newest creation: a bra that’ll give you verbal pep talks and also help you snap selfies.
When it comes to sex, people like it all kinds of different ways. Some people don’t even like it at all, but as long as it’s consensual, we don’t care, as long as you’re happy! Nevertheless, we’re also pretty curious about it–maybe we’re busybodies or maybe the idea of people smooshing themselves together is just too funny not to think about.
Regardless of the why, we are naturally curious about sex in Japan. And we bet you are, too! So here’s a recent survey done with 3,000 Japanese women to find out how many have had one-night stands!
Village Vanguard is a popular chain of novelty stores across Japan. There you can find all sorts of things from bird poop stickers to Resident Evil curry to wasabi toothpaste. As such, it’s easy to get desensitized to their range of items and lose the ability to be surprised with what they come out with next.
Or so we thought, until word came of a new product that will be sold there around the end of May. Purin Senyo Shoyu is a specially crafted soy sauce meant to be drizzled over a jiggly glob of pudding. You might wonder what pudding and soy sauce taste like together. The answer is surprisingly simple: it tastes like sea urchin.
When I stop and think about it, I’ve actually got a couple of things in common in Shinji, the protagonist of hit anime Evangelion. We both live in Kanagawa Prefecture. In our teen years, we were both entrusted by our fathers with pieces of fantastic machinery (although Shinji’s Eva Unit 01 combat robot is more technologically advanced than the Mazda I drove through my student years). And for both of us, our mental images of said fathers are strongly linked with their facial hair.
But while I’ve never seen my dad entirely clean-shaven, Shinji’s old man, Gendo, occasionally gets rid of his signature Abe Lincoln beard as part of his sporadic spokesman role for razor manufacturer Schick. He’s once again answered the U.S.-based company’s call, and as part of his anime’s latest endorsement deal, the stoically mad scientist is appearing in a new animated ad and giving away some cool Evangelion goodies, including a motorized razor stand shaped like the mecha his son pilots.
As he’s shown in the past, RocketNews24’s intrepid Japanese-language reporter Mr. Sato is a stylish guy. As a matter of fact, he’s got such a flair for fashion that when clothing brand Uniqlo brought back its service where you can design your own T-shirts, which can then be purchased by other shoppers, he leapt into action and created the most seductively sensual look possible: a black short-sleeve plastered with his own handsome mug.
Unfortunately, Uniqlo rejected the design, and not just because Mr. Sato’s visage is so steamy its borderline illegal, but because of a lack of confirmation that he owns it.
Uniqlo announces new T-shirts for One Piece, Naruto and more for manga publisher’s 100th birthday
Japanese kindness restores our faith in humanity after a highway bus accident in Tokyo
Japan now has a “for foreign tourists only” Mt. Fuji sightseeing train[Video]
Krispy Kreme releases Super Mario doughnuts in Japan for a limited time
7-Eleven Japan releases a crazy new viral sandwich: Chocolate Sprinkles and Whipped Cream
Taiwan’s most beautiful politician kicks groper in balls during visit to Japan
Starbucks Japan releases new My Fruit³ Frappuccino at only 34 stores around the country
Silicone testicle covers banned from Japanese sauna following cups being left behind and on shelves
Ramen restaurant in top Tokyo tourist neighborhood skips price gouging, but how does it taste?
How many doughnuts can you pack in a Mister Donut all-you-can-pack deal?Starbucks Japan releases new My Fruit³ Frappuccino at only 34 stores around the country
Tokyo government organizes food truck event to clear out delinquent/homeless teen gathering area7-Eleven Japan releases a crazy new viral sandwich: Chocolate Sprinkles and Whipped Cream
Nine amazing off-the-beaten-path cherry blossom spots in Japan for yaezakura and shidarezakuraJapan now has a “for foreign tourists only” Mt. Fuji sightseeing train[Video]
Stunning central Japan wisteria festival is like a purple fantasy straight out of a Ghibli movie
Studio Ghibli releases the My Neighbour Totoro tea caddy, with a magical self-closing lid
Japanese onsen egg maker from 100-yen store Daiso needs to be on your shopping list
Create a tiny Ghibli anime world on your bookshelf with new miniature papercraft art kitsKrispy Kreme releases Super Mario doughnuts in Japan for a limited time
Starbucks Japan unveils new sakura cherry blossom collection for hanami season 2026
Train station platform ramen store closes its doors on half a century of history in Tokyo
Studio Ghibli releases Catbus pullback keychain that runs like the anime characterStarbucks Japan releases new My Fruit³ Frappuccino at only 34 stores around the countryJapanese onsen egg maker from 100-yen store Daiso needs to be on your shopping list
Nine great places to see spring flowers in Japan, as chosen by travelers (with almost no sakura)
Starbucks Japan releases first-ever Hinamatsuri Girls’ Day Frappuccino
Cherry blossoms begin blooming in Japan with record-early starts for sakura season
Studio Ghibli adds new Mother’s Day gift sets to its anime collection in Japan
Virtual idol Hatsune Miku redesigned with look that adds new elements and brings back old ones
Survey asks foreign tourists what bothered them in Japan, more than half gave same answer
Japan’s human washing machines will go on sale to general public, demos to be held in Tokyo
Starbucks Japan releases new drinkware and goods for Valentine’s Day
We deeply regret going into this tunnel on our walk in the mountains of Japan
Studio Ghibli releases Kodama forest spirits from Princess Mononoke to light up your home
Starbucks Japan releases new sakura goods and drinkware for cherry blossom season 2026
Japan’s newest Shinkansen has no seats…or passengers [Video]
Major Japanese hotel chain says reservations via overseas booking sites may not be valid
Put sesame oil in your coffee? Japanese maker says it’s the best way to start your day【Taste test】
No more using real katana for tourism activities, Japan’s National Police Agency says
Taiwan’s most beautiful politician kicks groper in balls during visit to Japan
Starbucks Japan releases new My Fruit³ Frappuccino at only 34 stores around the country
Silicone testicle covers banned from Japanese sauna following cups being left behind and on shelves
Ramen restaurant in top Tokyo tourist neighborhood skips price gouging, but how does it taste?
How many doughnuts can you pack in a Mister Donut all-you-can-pack deal?
Drinkable pixels: 7-Eleven Japan creates new convenience store juice with “pixels” inside
Adorable miniature doughnuts from Mister Donut Japan!
How do young Japanese women spend their hard-earned money to treat themselves?
Our interest spikes as Haikyu head anime sweets arrive in Japanese convenience stores【Taste test】
Studio Ghibli director Hayao Miyazaki releases new artworks, still wants to make movies
This Japanese pub with one-yen bottles of sake broke our brain and made our day
This six-year-old Japanese girl is school’s one and only first-grader as lack-of-kids shutdown ends