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Japan (Page 1515)

Costco Japan’s bulgogi bake is a melting pot of deliciousness

For the most part, grocery shopping in the Tokyo area is a small-scale affair. The majority of shoppers go to the store on foot and carry their purchases home, meaning that each residential neighborhood has a number of small markets to ensure consumers don’t have to lug their bags more than a few blocks.

However, with a little over 15 years’ experience since opening its first store in Japan, mega retailer Costco has converted a number of the locals to its “bigger is better” philosophy. As you’d expect, Costco gives customers in Japan the chance to save by buying in large quantities, and also serves up hot meals in its food court, just like in other countries.

One thing that’s different about the food court at Costco in Japan, though, is the menu, which includes a Korean fusion item called the bulgogi bake.

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I wanna have your baby! Japanese women rank nationalities by desirablity of their baby batter

Recently, 30-something Japanese women actively seeking a marriage partner were interviewed to see what nationality they would most like to father their children. Did your country make the list? Read on to find out!

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One for the guys: 3 gross habits to shake before moving in with someone

Relationships are something that have to be worked at rather than simply hoping will go well and complaining about when they’re not everything we dreamed. That honeymoon period where you’re first getting to know your partner and learning one another’s little quirks is fun and exciting alright, but it eventually ends and before you know it you’re having to think about things like whose turn it is to hang out the laundry or clean the sink.

One thing that really puts relationships to the test is whether two people can stomach one another’s little habits and quirks. Sharing your home means letting your partner see you at your most natural, rather than just freshly showered, shaved and looking good for dates. Farting in your sleep, trimming your toenails, popping off to the bathroom for a number two; these things all have to be done and there’s no way of hiding them forever. But there are certain behaviours that we all really ought to get in check before signing a lease on an apartment or agreeing to cohabit, as exhibited by the following three tales from gentlemen (and we use the term loosely) in Japan…

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Shigeru Mizuki is one of Japan’s most loved comic artists, having created the manga Ge Ge Ge no Kitaro in 1959. Although the serial ended after a 10-year run, the light-hearted story about the traditional Japanese spirits called yokai still has a strong following today, thanks to multiple animated and live-action adaptations premiering as recently as 2008.

Mizuki isn’t resting on his laurels either, despite turning 92 next month. He started a new manga series just last December, and the energetic nonagenarian has recently released a book cataloguing the eating habits that have resulted in his long life. So what does his diet consist of? A surprisingly large amount of junk food.

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Does anime food have a place in the 3D world?

Animesia is a project combining two things dear to the hearts of the Japanese – anime and food. The title itself is a play on the word anime and the casual Japanese word for food, meshi. Run by The Association of Japanese Animations, it aims to turn the 2D dishes seen in your favourite animes into real, edible morsels, for a limited time only!

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Dude for a day – Japanese women describe the things they’d most like to do if they were guys

What would you do if you could be a member of the opposite sex for a day? I for one would make it my first priority to get on those “women only” cars on Tokyo’s rail network and see how sweet it really is, as well as observe how all the female commuters act without men around. Next, I’d walk into any store frequented by hardcore otaku and freak the guys out just by being there, then I’d spend the evening hitting the bars I usually frequent and see how many free drinks I can score.

Posed with the same question, a group of 300 women in Japan aged 21-33 shared their thoughts on the matter, their answers ranging from the usual “pee standing up” to some surprisingly saucy suggestions.

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Most socializing in Japan is done in groups, and while there’s definitely something to be said for the “the more the merrier” philosophy behind it, that same social norm can sometimes work against a person’s love life. Sure, a guy might have a thing for a girl who he’s in the same school club with, but it can be hard to take the relationship to the next level if they never have any time alone together. On the opposite side of the scale, if there’s no one who strikes a man’s fancy in his immediate social circle, expanding his network of acquaintances, and with it his dating pool, can be a tricky endeavor to pull off.

The end result is a number of men in Japan who don’t enter into a serious romantic relationship until they’re well into adulthood. Luckily, this isn’t a complete deal breaker for them, but that lack of experience does change the playing field, as shown in a survey of 206 Japanese women in their teens, twenties, and thirties who shared their hopes and concerns about being a guy’s very first girlfriend.

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Study shows broccoli sprouts may regrow hair, and not just on Chia Heads

Whoever coined the phrase “Vanity, thy name is woman,” clearly was not a balding man. From implants to Rogaine, men (and some women) with thinning hair are willing to pay a lot of money to keep their cranium covered. A recent study suggest they might be better off making a trip to the greengrocer to return their locks to lusciousness.

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Underground pipe explodes, creates a 10-metre man-made geiser in Kanagawa Prefecture

Japan’s Kanto region just can’t catch a break recently – first heavy snow brings the capital city to its knees (and this writer given the X of denial as he was told “Sorry, sir, the flight has already departed” after it took five hours to reach the airport in it), and now giant columns of water are spurting up out of the ground.

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Japanese company builds giant robot you could be piloting right now

Chiba Prefecture’s Wonder Festival is a bi-annual figure and model expo. The event’s bread and butter is figurine of anime and video game characters, in both frighteningly realistic and sexily unrealistic varieties.

But while the first thing most people associate with the event is toys, if your model is made of metal instead of plastic or urethane, and it’s self-propelled to boot, you’ve crossed the line of three-dimensional art and moved into straight-up engineering. Of course, Wonder Festival’s exhibitors aren’t going to stray too far from their fanciful roots, so what do you get when you combine technology with science fiction? You get this amazing giant robot, which is so easy to pilot that attendees could test drive it.

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Japanese amateur wrestling champion finds fame online for his taste in nerdy hobbies

The man pictured above is Tomoyuki Oka basking in the glow of winning the All-Japan Sambo Championships. Having excelled in the Russian grappling sport, he exhibits all the features of supreme manliness: a square hair-lined jaw, steely and dominant glare, burly muscles that dwarf his first place trophy (the Putin Cup), and a half-hearted effort at those “V” fingers that Japanese people usually pose with in pictures.

But wait a minute… What’s that under his sambovka?

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Do try this at home! 5 foods that you can recreate in taste by combining other foods

Have you ever had an experience when you ate two different foods at once, and the resulting flavor tasted like a completely different food? If yes, then don’t worry, because apparently your taste buds aren’t going crazy. Kyushu University in Japan recently publicized a list of different food combinations that mirror this phenomenon based on actual scientific research. Some of them are so outrageous that you won’t believe it until you actually try making them yourself!

Here’s a little question to get you started: What two food items should you combine in order to produce the flavor of corn soup? The answer and four more recipes after the jump.

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Pokémon train brings smiles to Tohoku kids’ faces

The Pokémon with YOU Train is a collaboration between JR East and Pokémon that’s been bringing smiles to the faces of kids affected by the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, and this week it made a special appearance in Chiba!

We’re not kids any more, but having seen how awesome it is, we really wish we could take a ride on this thing!!

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Insult or homage? Lady (Taking a) Liberty toys have us scratching our heads

We’ve covered the strange world of gachapon toys on this site before. They are those vending machines that spit out an item in a plastic egg, and any bank of gachapon machines in Japan is sure to have a few bizarre offerings. Twitter user @dradon3 recently spotted this mystifying toy depicting the Statue of Liberty feeling free enough to let it all hang out. Says the ad copy, “Be free from all restraints that bind you.”

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Japan takes customer service very seriously, something that’s easy to see when even convenience store clerks are so dedicated to their job they’ll ask if you want your hot and cold purchases bagged separately, or else build a protective barrier between them. Hospitality standards are no joke, either, as illustrated by the tasks traditional innkeepers are expected to perform, such as carrying the dishes and utensils for full-course meals into and out of guests’ rooms.

It’s no surprise, then, that travelers in Japan have plenty of stories to tell about attentive inns and hotels, such as the 12 below from an online survey by web portal My Navi Woman in Japan.

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You can look at this life-size Super Sonico anime figure, but you can’t touch

Last Sunday, while the Tokyo area was still blanketed in white from the previous day’s snowstorm, we braved the cold and made the trip out to Makuhari Messe in Chiba Prefecture for the winter installment of Wonder Festival. The bi-annual model expo is packed with the latest anime and video game-inspired figurines, including a fully-operational robot suit and hyper-realistic sculpture of one of Attack on Titan’s monsters from the torso up.

But the Attack on Titan figure wasn’t the only giant bust on display, as there was also a life-size statue of voluptuous anime character Super Sonico. In keeping with her exotic dancer-quality figure, though, her display area had some strip club-style rules, such as no groping allowed.

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The Wind Rises U.S. TV spots streamed

The official channel for Hayao Miyazaki‘s final feature film, The Wind Rises began streaming two English television commercials on Monday.

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Nippon or Nihon? No consensus on the Japanese pronunciation of “Japan”

As any student of Japanese will tell you, its use of Chinese characters known as kanji can be a nightmare at times. And although they can be really useful at deducing the meaning of complex words, they give little in the way of clues as to how one should pronounce them.

Take the kanji for Japan (日本) for example. Even a first grader can tell you what it means, but ask a group of adults how to pronounce it and you might get a mixture of “Nihon” or “Nippon” and maybe even an occasional “Yamato” if one of those people happens to be a smart-ass.

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Want to be an extra in the upcoming Attack on Titan movie? Check out this list of weird criteria

Attention, die-hard Attack on Titan fans! The producers of the upcoming live-action Attack on Titan movie slated for release next year are looking to recruit suitable extras. Since there are unfortunately no titans available for casting in real life, they’ll have to make do with humans and a bit of CGI magic. So why not give it a shot? Just be sure to confirm your eligibility beforehand with the requirements listed on the official recruiting announcement (which is itself quite amusing).

Do you think you’ve got what it takes to transform into a convincing titan?

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Director Collet-Serra hopes live-action Akira will be his next work

In interviews with entertainment news websites Collider and ComingSoon, director Jaume Collet-Serra, who was previously in talks to work on Warner Brothers‘ stalled live-action Akira film project, mentioned that he’s still working on the film, and that he hopes it will be his next one.

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