Featured

Japan (Page 1428)

From cabbages to katanas – five awesome umbrellas from Japan!

Most people prefer to open their curtains in the morning to find bright, clear skies waiting for them, but with the arrival of the rainy season (known as 梅雨 tsuyu, and written with the characters for “plum” and “rain”) here in Japan we‘ve got a long stretch of wet weather ahead. If that has you down, perhaps channeling your inner superhero when you wake up in the morning and stepping out with this ninja sword umbrella will brighten your day. And if fantasizing about slashing enemy combatants isn’t your thing, maybe the romaine lettuce-inspired Vegetabrella from Tokyo Noble is what you need to put a smile on your face.

Take a look at these five rainy day inspirations helping ensure Japan stays dry during drizzling days of June.

Read More

Moulting spider crab is horrifying and mouth watering at the same time

The spider crab is the largest living crab on the planet and, as its name suggests, looks like the terrifying offspring of the unholy mating of a coconut crab and a Goliath tarantula. So it’s no wonder that watching one of these monstrosities shed its entire exoskeleton is nightmare-inducing, as this video shows.

Read More

“Oh no, I forgot to pack my Lamborghini!” Not to worry: this Tokyo hotel has got you covered

Among the numerous luxuries the Conrad Tokyo provides guests is the hotel’s extensive list of amenities, such as uniquely-scented soaps, shampoos and rubber duckies to make bath time in your opulent, free-standing tub just that much better.

Of course, these pale in comparison to the perks offered for the traveler who books a room in the hotel’s newest promotional package, which include a 552-horsepower mid-engined supercar.

Read More

Japan’s futuristic underground bicycle parking vaults

Culture Japan’s Danny Choo gives us an inside look at one of Shinagawa’s automated bicycle vaults, proving once and for all that they are not operated by tiny elves working under illegal labour conditions.

Our favourite part is when the official explains that the vaults keep bikes safe from “the weather and pranksters.” Damn those pranksters, stealing our bikes! Not funny this time, you guys.

Read More

Series of YouTube videos threaten attacks on commuters at Hakata Station on June 14

Bulletin boards in Japan are hot with rumour and speculation today after videos recorded by an as yet unidentified Japanese male threaten random knife attacks on members of the public at stations in Japan, with Fukuoka’s Hakata Station ultimately named as the spot where the attack will take place.

Although neither the following article nor the videos within it contain any graphic imagery, some readers may nevertheless find their content disturbing.

Read More

Want that new Mac Pro now? Amazon Japan currently offering the next best thing!

Calling all MacHeads! Can’t wait to get your hands on that ever-so-sexy Mac Pro introduced at the WWDC a few days ago? Not to worry, Amazon Japan has you covered, almost. Check out the New TUBELOR (black) from ideaco which can be yours for a mere 3,465 yen (about US$36). Though it doesn’t come with dual GPUs, PCI Express-based flash storage or high-performance Thunderbolt 2, with a little work on your part, this piece of just-as-sexy office hardware could have your co-workers drooling with envy, and, bump you to the top of your office’s cool colleague rankings.

Read More

Very punny: president of Domino’s Pizza Japan offering one cheesy joke a day

There are plenty of difficulties in learning Japanese, from the thousands of kanji characters you have to memorize to the fact that the language doesn’t have a future tense. Pronunciation, though, isn’t that big of a hurdle. Japanese contains only 47 syllables to master, which may sound like a lot, but is in actuality pretty paltry compared to most other languages.

One of the biggest effects this limited pronunciation repertoire has is that Japanese is filled with homonyms. For example, kyoushi could mean either “a teacher” or “death by way of insanity.” Where there are words that sound alike, there are puns, and now where there are puns, there’s the president of Domino’s Pizza Japan.

Read More

Two Japanese youths arrested for placing an exploding bag of dog poop in a local police box

Two youths were arrested by Aichi Prefecture police on June 11 after they placed a plastic bag full of dog feces and lit fireworks inside a police box, showering the small room with the bag’s contents.

Read More

Something every guidebook mentions about table manners in Japan is that, while almost every restaurant and home keeps a bottle of soy sauce on the table, it’s there to add to things like sashimi and grated radish, and not to be poured on white rice.

This isn’t to say that people in Japan always eat their rice plain, though. A recent Internet popularity poll pitted four of the country’s top rice toppings against each other in a battle royale.

Read More

Afghani Embassy picks up a copy of Saint Onīsan to learn about Japan’s religious views

For those learning Japanese, manga can often be a good text. With the help of pictures and rather short sentences we can read along without much effort and perhaps enjoy the studying process a little more.

Well it turns out a member of the Embassy of Afghanistan in Tokyo thought the exact same thing. While out on a stroll last Sunday he picked up a particular manga that he thought would help him learn both the Japanese language and what Japanese people think about religion.

Read More

Saving book worms from book germs: Libraries install Bacteria Elimination Boxes

Anyone who has ever worked in a library could probably tell you that wiping down the covers of the books in the children’s section is one of the most grimy and disgusting tasks you could ever be assigned. I’d personally rather clean the toilets with a wet wipe to be quite honest! Thankfully, in order to counteract at least the living layer of grime found on these and other books, many libraries in Japan have installed a Bacteria Elimination Box to kill off any harmful little microbes that previous patrons might have left behind. It’s the perfect piece of equipment for bibliophilic germaphobes exploring the stacks!

Read More

Are you man enough for Family Mart’s line of masculine sweets?

So here’s a tricky question: do desserts count as masculine or feminine food? On the one hand, a slice of chocolate cake is just as bold a statement of your culinary decadence as a nice fried pork cutlet. In either case, it’s at least a little wild and macho to eat something with such shaky nutritional value yet unquestionable deliciousness, similar to how I rationalize eating a pack of ham out of the fridge when I’m too lazy to go buy bread for a sandwich as being a natural result of my raging testosterone.

On the other hand, sweets are, well, sweet. Truly red-blooded males can’t even bring themselves to utter the word “sweet” unless they add “taste of revenge” after it while clenching a fist and glaring at the horizon.

Thankfully, Japanese convenience store chain Family Mart is here to help end this confusion with a line of desserts tailor-made for everybody born with a Y chromosome.

Read More

Kawasaki’s ‘Digital Kowloon Walled City’

Every city has its bad parts and areas to avoid, but there’s no denying that these less favorable areas give even the poshest urban centers something to talk about. While Kowloon Walled City no longer exists, its fixture in popular imagination will likely persist for decades, if not centuries.

In 1987, the city housed 33,000 people in 6.5 acres and was largely lawless, though informal social structures naturally emerged among the citizens. The city, as you might expect, has been the inspiration and setting for many fictional works, from books to movies to video games. And, now, it’s provided inspiration for a unique business venture in Japan.

Read More

Xbox One delayed in Asia until late 2014, no release date for Japan

Microsoft’s forthcoming Xbox One console will not be released in Asia until late 2014, despite the fact that it will launch in the West in November this year, it was revealed last night.

Read More

Woman falls onto Subway line, mistaken for hand luggage by station employee

On June 10, Japanese underground railway network Tokyo Metro made an official statement about an incident in which a woman, who fell onto the Hibiya subway line at Roppongi station, was mistaken for hand luggage by the employee on duty at the time. Not realizing the full seriousness of the matter, the station employee then gave the go ahead for the train, which was stationary at the platform at the time, to continue forward on to its next destination.

Read More

Neither down nor out: The rumors of Japan’s demise have been greatly exaggerated

Next to the USA, the second largest economy in the world used to be Japan. But after the bubble collapsed, the Japanese economy has been stagnant and, in 2012, fell to third place. Second place, as you probably know, was taken by China, whose economy is expanding at an unprecedented rate.

China’s rise is an undeniable fact. But is it true that Japan is on the wane? Mr. Chong Wong, a Chinese expert on diplomatic issues, took up the question. Writing on his blog (Chinese only), Mr. Wong offered up evidence that Japan wasn’t in decline but was actually the best in the world in some ways. We’ve listed the major ones below.

Read More

Teacher confesses to installing camera in girls’ restroom, ‘Just wanted to test out the equipment’

The Kusatsushi Board of Education in Shiga Prefecture, Japan made a public announcement on June 3 that a teacher employed at an elementary school within the Kusatsushi area was being questioned after installing a small, compact-style camera inside the girls’ toilets at the school where he worked.

Read More

Bring it on down to Burger King with a month of half-price specials!

Burger King is celebrating its sixth year in Japan with a month of half price specials! From now to July 7, Burger King stores across Japan will be taking part in the campaign, with four of their popular products receiving a 50 percent price cut.

Read More

Police in Japan pull over Google Street View car, presumably not for speeding

The Google Street View car, once something that people would have simply watched roll by while scratching their heads in confusion, has become so ingrained in popular culture that should we ever spot it trundling down our own street many of us would immediately bound in its direction like excited golden retriever in an attempt to get our ugly mugs plastered on the internet for all eternity.

It’s rare, though, to see the the famous car running into trouble with the law.

Read More

Anonymous trainer completes Pokédex with 649 homemade Pokémon stamps

For almost 20 years, children and adults across the globe have set out into the tall grass to train so that someday they can claim the title of Pokémon Master. For some that means defeating the Elite Four. For others it means beating the snot out of Gary Oak. And for a smaller percentage of players, that means catching every single monster.

After almost a year and a half of hard work, one anonymous user on 2chan has carved out a true Pokémon legacy by creating handmade stamps of all 649 Pokémon to date. We’d say that this person has made quite a name for themselves, except for that we don’t know who they are! Keep reading for a look at the full stamp collection.

Read More

  2. 1
  3. ...
  4. 1425
  5. 1426
  6. 1427
  7. 1428
  8. 1429
  9. 1430
  10. 1431
  11. ...
  12. 1504