In light of emergency vehicles being unable to reach victims of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department has announced the addition of 10 off-road bikes to their force.
Japan (Page 1535)
Anime Japan 2013 had plenty of booths at Tokyo Big Sight advertising the latest anime and hawking related swag, but some companies also took the opportunity to showcase new technology that might be of interest to fans of animation.
As two of the most popular leisure destinations in one of the most crowded countries on the planet, Tokyo Disneyland and DisneySea can get pretty packed with visitors. The more guests who show up, the longer you’ll spend waiting in line for attractions (so be sure to follow our advice about the best days to visit this year), so in order to get the most out of their day, some people try to arrive as early as possible, so they can get into the parks as soon as they open.
Of course, with so many Disney fans in Japan, even if you show up at that early hour, you’re likely to be sharing the park with a throng of other excited kids of all ages. If only there was some way you could get in even earlier.
Actually, starting April 14, Disney is offering a way to do just that.
Don’t worry everybody, we’re fine. We didn’t suffer a stroke halfway through writing this article’s title, and the RocketNews24 offices haven’t been violently seized by half-literate chimpanzees with a penchant for prose (we make a protection payment of a bunch of bananas each week to the simian mafia to prevent just such a thing).
Spaghetti-flavored popsicles really do exist in Japan, though, and we decided to melt one down to see what would happen.
In some spots, a trip to Tokyo Disneyland can feel very much like a visit to the original in Anaheim. Capering costumed characters pose for pictures with kids of all ages. Guests can stroll through Fantasyland and Tomorrow land. You’re never much more than a couple minutes’ walk away from a churro vendor.
But in some ways, Tokyo Disney Resort is incredibly Japanese. Well-behaved children uniformly refrain from kicking Mickey and his pals in the shins. Tokyo DisneySea will just as happily serve you an imported beer as an ice cream sundae. And of course, like any popular destination in Japan, the parks gets incredibly crowded.
Disney fans in the know, however, have a strategy for beating the crowds, and have compiled a list of the eight least crowded weekends and holidays of the year at Tokyo Disneyland and DisneySea. And because we’re nice like that, we’re sharing that list with you today!
Japan’s infatuation with Natalia Poklonskaya, Crimea’s newly appointed and unusually photogenic attorney general, is still going strong. In the week since we first reported on it, fan art based on Eastern Europe’s comeliest stateswoman has continued to proliferate.
But how do Poklonskaya, and for that matter her anime-loving daughter, feel about the unique sort of attention she’s been getting?
Although the juicy pork dumplings called gyoza originated in China, they’re a favorite of both students and expats in Japan. Filling and cheap, they make a great hot meal, and are also a popular way to fortify yourself for a night of drinking, or to satisfy the alcohol-induced bout of the munchies that follows one.
While Japan is filled with gyoza joints, some of the most popular develop an almost cult following, so when we got wind of a tasty pot sticker depository called Sosan no Mise at the next station over from the RocketNews24 office, we decided to check it out.
Spring has arrived in Japan, and that can mean only one thing: Hanami, or cherry blossom viewing parties! But what is it about hanami, and those pretty pink petals in general for that matter, that manages to capture the hearts and minds of so many?
Let’s take a look at a handful of videos that capture the mood of hanami season perfectly and see if we can pinpoint exactly what it is that makes the season so special!
Tokyo Ramen Marion, a small ramen shop in the Kita Ward of Tokyo, has a menu item that outshines its namesake dish. That item is the chashu pork nigiri sushi, made to resemble the sushi that is almost always made with fish. Our reporter took a trip out to see what this unusual food was all about and came back with a full belly and a completely new view of Japan’s most famous dish.
At first glance, Gunma may not seem to have a whole lot going for it. It’s one of Japan’s few landlocked prefectures, which means less access to Japan’s legendarily fresh seafood. The lack of a coastline also means Gunma doesn’t have a vibrant urban heart like Japan’s largest cities which grew out of its busiest ports, so economic and modern entertainment opportunities are limited compared to Tokyo, Osaka, or Fukuoka.
What Gunma does have is mountains, hot springs, and shrines, though. It’s also got Gunma-chan, its lovable horse mascot who shows off the prefecture’s attractions and some adorable dance moves in this new video.
Meet Machi Okabe, the gorgeous violinist whose music is just as beautiful as her face (or is it the other way around?). Her exceptional musical talents combined with her breathtaking beauty have been attracting a lot of attention from netizens around the world this week.
Watch the following videos to see for yourself what’s everyone’s been talking about!
When it comes to Finland, there’s no shortage of opportunities for getting acquainted in Japan’s capital of Tokyo. From cafes where you can chow down with cute, stuffed Moomin characters created by a famous Swede-Finn, to Finland’s top doughnut chain, Arnold’s, and Karhhu, Finland’s number one beer, it’s easy for Tokyoites to take their taste buds for a dip in Nordic cuisine.
Now, people in Japan have found a new way to get acquainted with Finnish culture with the introduction of a clever little name generator from VisitFinland.com. Simply enter your name and within seconds you’re bestowed with the Finnish version, complete with a full explanation of the meaning behind your new name. We translated some well-known names and found they were connected to the wild nature of Lapland and mysterious tales of forest kings.
Sprint’s new commercial featuring a “framily” that includes a father who is a talking hamster and daughter who only speaks French is definitely weird. If you live in the US, you may have caught the 30 second clip during prime time Monday evening and were left with an upturned eyebrow and slight frown. But this strange commercial isn’t quite an original creation. The Sprint framily was actually inspired by a long-running marketing campaign over in, you guessed it, Japan.
What if you found an unmarked envelope full of money in your mailbox? Would you keep it?
On March 20 and 21, exactly 30 households were faced with this very dilemma as an unknown person deposited a total of 760,000 yen (US$7,420) in the mailboxes of an apartment complex in Ikoma City, Nara Prefecture. The largest sum found in a single mailbox was 137,000 yen (US$1,339). Just 10 days earlier, mysterious envelopes were deposited at an additional 30 homes in Kawasaki City, 486 km (300 mi) away. This time, the envelopes contained gift certificates with monetary values ranging from 5,000 yen (US$48) to tens of thousands of yen (hundreds of US dollars).
If this sounds like easy money to you, you might be surprised to learn what half of the residents chose to do with the cash.
Japan has long been a hotbed of musical experimentation, with everything for J-pop metal to folk music to bizarre rap available to anyone willing to look. Some experiments have worked out better than others, but one of our favorite success stories is the appropriately named Genki Sudo and his music/dance group World Order. Even if you don’t recognize the name, you’ve surely seen the videos of sexy young men dancing like robots through the streets of cities around the world.
This time, Genki and the gang are back in Tokyo–Akihabara, to be precise–and they’re not alone, thanks to a special guest appearance by…AKB48?! Check the madness out below!
Japan’s birth rate has been dropping for decades now, and while it’s possible the demographic shift is a result of couples just getting that much better at using contraceptives, you have to allow for the possibility that fewer babies is due to fewer couples doing the deed.
Lending further credibility to this explanation is the fact that the proportion of Japanese men in their 30s who still have their virginity has gotten so high that society has coined a new slang term to describe them: yaramiso.
Growing up in dreary North West England and attending Catholic school, my experience of “sex education” amounted to little more than a couple of awkward encounters around the back of a local bowling alley and a guest speaker coming into school one afternoon to show us a selection of gruesome slides labelled with the names of various sexually transmitted diseases. Thankfully, with the help of (painfully slow dial-up) internet access and my surprisingly liberal parents, I managed to piece together enough info to work out what went where and how, and made it to adulthood relatively unscathed, only occasionally feeling pangs of guilt whenever I had impure thoughts about the cute presenter of youth-oriented news programme Newsround.
If only I’d grown up in Japan and had YouTube to hand; with videos like this one from Japanese NPO group Pilcon – which instructs us how to put on a condom in a manner we can only describe as “sex ed meets airline safety demonstration with extra smiles” – I could have learned so much more easily!
But what on earth is that sock thing she has in her hand?
Copies of Keiji Nakazawa‘s Barefoot Gen manga were temporarily removed from 13 elementary and middle schools in Osaka’s Izumisano City. Nakazawa’s manga that tells the story of survival after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The copies were removed at the request of Izumisano mayor Hiroyasu Chiyomatsu for what he says are “many expressions in the manga that impact human rights,” including derogatory terms for beggars and the unemployed.
If you happen to be a fan of cats, have a penchant for ridiculously cute Japanese idol culture, and will be in Tokyo later this week, then there’s an event you simply have to check out! Sanrio Puroland, an indoor theme park dedicated to the characters of Sanrio (think Hello Kitty!), will be hosting a “Neco 1 Grand Prix” on Saturday, March 29 focusing on “necogirls.”
The necogirls (neko = cat in Japanese) are a group of young women who express their love for cats in their adorable and quirky fashion style, which you can bet will always include a pair of cat ears. This event will serve as PR for the girls and will include a special contest held onstage. You can even interact with them and take cutesy pictures together. Just be ready to dodge the hordes of Japanese girls screaming kawaiiiii (cuuuute!) at the top of their lungs!
With just days left until Japan’s consumption tax jumps from five to eight percent, we’ve resigned ourselves to having to suddenly pay a little bit more for, well, just about everything. So it’s nice to know that this week brings one last hurrah for budget-based pricing, as for two days Subway is cutting us all a break by knocking the price of two of their most popular sandwiches down to almost half of what they ordinarily go for.
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