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Japan (Page 1415)

Get your car washed right: get it washed by some girls in swimsuits for 100 bucks

These days it seems all you can find are mechanical car washes scattered across our urban landscape. Sure they might be cheap and fast, but would you trust your beloved vehicle and decal of Calvin and Hobbs peeing on a Ford logo to the cold uncaring hands of a machine?

No, sir! What you need is the warm and gentle touch that only a woman can offer – a woman wearing a swimsuit since washing a car involves lots of water of course. Also, because school swimsuits offer the most durability they would have to wear those at Swimsuit Carwash in Akihabara.

You see, there’s an excuse reason for everything, including the 10,000 yen (US$100) price tag that comes with the experience.

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Westernized kimono resemble cosplay more than actual clothes

Summer is the season for festivals here in Japan. Every weekend some district or other is putting together a party for locals and tourists to come and enjoy. There are food stands, game stalls, temporary toy shops, and people all around. Most come with a parade event of sorts and end with an explosion of amazing fireworks. But above all, something you’re always going to find at any self-respecting festival are people dressed traditionally in lightweight yukata (a summer kimono) and jinbei (robe-style shirt and shorts) as they wander the streets.

But what about in Western counties like America? In early September of every year, Saint Louis, Missouri, holds a large Japanese-style festival in the city’s botanical gardens. Despite the lingering heat of late summer, somewhere between 20 to 30 thousand people attend this great cultural event each year. But what do they wear? Judging by the array of kimono and yukata available at the English shopping site A Fashion, people hoping to model some Japanese styles might find themselves in what resembles a crazy costume more than actual clothes.

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We try shaved ice doused in Dom Perignon, feel like comically rich billionaires looking for novel ways to spend money

Reporters get a lot of unexpected perks. Occasionally, our editor will demand we interview a porn star or go stuff donuts in our faces on the company dime. That’s great, for sure. But truth be told, the greatest perk of being a reporter is that not only is it expected you’ll be drunk around lunchtime, it’s even encouraged!

And so it went that we were asked to sample some shaved ice doused in Dom Perignon, because everything is better doused in Dom Perignon. Go ahead, pour a bottle over your head and walk down the street. See if you don’t get a couple of phone numbers.

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Make a paper tuna with free summer craft templates from Scotch Tape Japan

“Mom, I’m bored!” When you’re a kid, you can’t wait for summer vacation to start, but once it’s in full swing and the initial excitement of not having to go to school has worn off, the whining begins. Parents are left to scrounge for every scrap of creativity they have left in order to entertain their idling children. Although I don’t have any kids of my own, I can still remember what a terror I was during those long, hot summer days at home.

But this summer, parents are in luck! Scotch (as in the tape) has created a special “summer vacation family crafts” campaign for their Scotch Japan website. With over 300 unique paper craft templates to choose from and a nifty search engine to find them all, your complaining children will be occupied as long as the tape doesn’t run out.

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Underwater snap will remove any fears you ever had about crocodiles

If you were asked to imagine the behavioral traits of your average crocodile, surely the first thing that would come to mind is a creature floating on the surface of the water with a fixed look as it lies in wait for its prey. However, it may well be time to put such thoughts behind you. The following image of a crocodile swimming in its enclosure at a crocodile farm, which is currently doing the rounds online, is winning the hearts of thousands of Japanese.

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JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure creator’s pasta challenge to be held on upcoming Shonen Jump app

With the announcement by Japan’s premier manga magazine Weekly Shonen Jump regarding their highly anticipated smartphone app Jump Live, information has been coming out in drips and drabs about its features.

However, their most recent announcement has fans jumping for mild confusion: it’s a multimedia pasta cooking challenge between the creator of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Hirohiko Araki and creator of Assassination Classroom Yusei Matsui.

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Newest Ghibli film brings 40-year-old tune to the top of the music charts

Studio Ghibli’s latest work, The Wind is Rising (Kaze Tachinu), created under the supervision of Hayao Miyazaki, is proud to be represented by its lovely theme song, Hikouki Gumo. The name literally means “airplane cloud” and it was first released a full 40 years ago by the talented singer and songwriter Yuming. Ghibli’s claim over the sweet, old tune has caused a surge of interest in the piece, bringing this 40-year-old forgotten classic to the top of Japan’s Recochoku Daily Ranking and earning it the title of iTunes top song for Saturday, July 20. Studio Ghibli and Yuming are now collaborating in many wonderful ways to celebrate their successes over the past 40 years.

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Domino’s Pizza Japan offers dinner and a show with new toppings and a Hatsune Miku mini-concert

With the majority of its pizzas costing over 2,000 yen (US$20), even in medium size, Domino’s Pizza is positioned a bit more upmarket in Japan than its native U.S. Sure, the convenience of home delivery is worth paying a slight premium for, but with prices stretching beyond what you’d pay in a reasonable Italian restaurant in Tokyo with full table service, Domino’s Japan has to offer something more than just a slab of cheese and sauce.

The pizza giant recently convinced us to open our wallets, though, with a three-pronged attack that’s two parts delicious pork and one part high-tech entertainment.

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Fukuoka Aquarium porpoises play relay with magical underwater bubble rings

Fukuoka Aquarium’s black finless porpoises proved themselves to be the true wizards of the sea earlier this month when they began blowing incredible bubble rings like Gandalf the Grey high on pipe-leaf, even passing them back and forth relay-style.

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Capcom Japan offering limited edition ‘blood pillow’ prize to Phoenix Wright fans

Upcoming Nintendo 3DS title Gyakuten Saiban 5 (known in the English-speaking world as Phoenix Wright: Dual Destinies) may still be a couple of months away from release in the West, but gamers in Japan are already charging their portable consoles in preparation for its launch this Thursday.

Developer Capcom, too, is helping fans get back into detective mode after their brief hiatus by asking visitors to the official Phoenix Wright website to investigate a crime scene and spot the contradictions in three witness statements. Those who can successfully solve the puzzle will be entered into a prize draw to win one of 50 ‘blood pillows’ designed to transform any sleeping gamer into the victim of a grizzly cartoon murder.

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Toyama Prefecture treated to some hot rainbow action

On 20 July, Kita Nippon News was flooded with pictures and reports of high rainbow activity out of Toyama Prefecture. In particular was this shot of a rare rainbow cloud. Well, actually it was one of those artificial clouds left by aircraft called contrails, but it was still pretty cool.

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Chopsticks: why every gamer should know how to use them

In an age when we do the majority of our multiplayer gaming online, sometimes separated by entire oceans and continents, there’s nothing quite like a bit of couch co-op or split-screen multiplayer. I refer, of course, to the act of playing games together in the same room using a single screen; something that until the arrival of cheap, reliable internet was the only form of multiplayer video gaming there was. Make a night of it with a few chilled drinks, snacks and a couple of pizzas, and you and your gamer pals are in for a great time.

But with this infinitely more sociable form of gaming there also comes great danger: the risk of gross, greasy controllers. I’m sure many of you can recall taking a controller from a friend or sibling during a long afternoon playing Street Fighter II only to find it positively dripping with perspiration. What’s even worse is when said hand sweat is mixed up with pizza grease and cheesy powder from the endless bags of Doritos and Cheetos you and your friends have been working your way though.

It is time, my gamer friends, to learn to use chopsticks.

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Woman gets trapped between train and platform, fellow commuters push to rescue her

It’s Monday, which is the worst way to start the week, isn’t it? So, how about some heart-warming news to get things going?

Let’s see, what have we got? Oh, yes, a story about how, while alighting from a train in Japan’s Saitama Prefecture, a woman slipped and became pinned between the train and the platform.

Wait, that’s not the heart-warming part!

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Adorable terrorists take over campaign office, hide in shoes

We recently reported on Japan’s recent trouble with traffic backups in otter pipes, but it seems the country is facing another animal menace: feathered anarchists interfering in the political process!

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  • Jul 22, 2013

Drink up and smile with this cute limited edition line of tea from Kirin!

Can you guess whose cute little bottoms these are? If you’re a Disney fan, chances are you already have a good idea. Well, I chanced upon these bottles recently in a convenience store, and they were so cute I just had to buy them all! And if these adorably packaged bottles just happened to contain a nice cool drink, so much the better, especially since the drink was a unique type of tea I had never tasted before.

But first of all, let’s take a look at the face of the characters who are showing their lovable derrieres for all the world to see:

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We try one meter of skewered grilled chicken: The Mega-Yakitori

When out on the town many drinking establishments in Japan offer yakitori, which is basically grilled marinated chicken on a stick. These are offered in a wide variety using different parts of the chicken, added vegetables, or different sauces, salts and spice blends.

Now Zenyaren Sohonten Tokyo is offering a one-of-a-kind type of grilled chicken called The World’s First Mega-Yakitori. This limited edition menu item is said to contain 30 times the meat of a regular stick of yakitori. This isn’t a simple case of quantity over quality either as the chicken is specially selected from regions across Japan.

Before anyone even asked him, Mr. Sato was digging out his most loose-fitting jeans and on his way to try it out.

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Get paid one million yen (US$10,000) for three months of hardcore gaming!

For anyone who loves gaming but often gets told by those around them to put their efforts into something more productive, we here at RocketNews24 have some great news. It comes in the form of a job post searching for someone to play video games for three months that carries a million yen (US$10,000) reward. Gaming all day only to be paid a salary at the end of it, is for many, the stuff dreams are made of. But believe it or not, this is a real job posting that is valid right now in Japan.

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Yasu High School continues to impress with their promotional soccer videos

For any young man in Japan looking to get into professional soccer, enrollment in Yasu High School in Shiga Prefecture would be a good decision. This school has graduated several pros in Japan and is continuing to build a reputation for soccer skills since winning the National High School Soccer Championship in 2006. In case you don’t believe them, they posted a promotional video on YouTube showing a brief minute-and-a-half flurry of fancy footwork along with surprisingly good cinematography for a high school video.

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  • Jul 21, 2013

【Disney Tip】 Did you know you can get a letter from your favorite Disney character? Here’s how!

There are probably very few of us who haven’t been touched by Disney magic at one time or another, and I’m sure we all have our favorite Disney characters (whether childhood or current). Well, have you ever thought about what it may be like to receive a letter from your Disney character? It turns out, there’s a way to actually make that happen! Read More

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