Japan’s version of the widely popular online video streaming site, Hulu, has just announced that starting this summer they will be making themselves available on the Nintendo 3DS and 3DS XL. Not long ago, Nintendo announced its intention to branch out and turn their 3DS systems into an eBook reader. Now, they are expanding into the streaming video market as well, by pursuing a kid-friendly collaboration with Hulu Japan. The app’s release is scheduled for mid-August. Read More
Japan (Page 1619)
In any military, no matter how fancy your drones or how snappy your fighter jets, people are still the driving force. You’ll always need a few more good soldiers, which makes recruitment an essential and very important part of armed services.
The Japan Self-Defense Forces, or JSDF, are no different, and eagle-eyed people can spot posters pretty much anywhere. As you may expect, the JSDF in various prefectures also have Twitter accounts where they can post recruitment information and interact with potential service members.
Recently, the Miyagi area recruiter garnered Internet attention by crafting a tweet based on a scene from the school girl anime, Love Live!
After our extremely delicious hot steamed bun tip for keeping cool during the brutal Tokyo summer, we decided to follow up with an iced drink recipe to accompany those sweet, soft buns. We’re still talking about bread, right?
The only problem was we spent all day snacking on steamed buns and experimenting with other ways to keep cool and we had to hurry up and make something or risk missing happy hour. So we settled for the old standby of throwing a few things from the fridge together in a bowl. Would you believe it turned out great!
It wasn’t so long ago that everywhere you looked in Japan there were ads for Korean pop groups, cosmetics and health drinks. More people than ever were snapping up Korean language textbooks and, despite territorial squabbles and a few extreme-right noise makers, Japan was positively leaping on anything prefixed by the letter ‘K’.
Recent reports, however, suggest that all is not well in the K-Pop (Korean Pop music) camp in Japan, with major Korean record label and talent agency S.M. Entertainment reporting losses of more than 70 percent compared to the same period last year. Has the K-Pop bubble finally burst in Japan?
It would seem that Japan is experiencing an upswing in men who like to wear bras. I had no idea until reading a story on the website My Navi that claims this is so. Sure enough after searching Japanese online shopping site Rakuten, there were six pages of bras designed specifically for men on sale.
My Navi‘s bra-wearing woman reporter went to gather evidence of this phenomenon to find out why more and more men a looking to strap on a brassiere.
Launched in 1983 in Japan, Nintendo’s Family Computer, or Famicom as it is more fondly known, quickly became a household name thanks to titles like Donkey Kong and Mario Bros. Strikingly different in design to its Western counterpart, the NES, the Famicom’s low profile with its multitude of buttons and ridges and docking slots for a pair of gold and burgundy controllers is now considered to be an iconic piece of video game hardware, frequently bought and sold at auction or at used game stores.
While many gamers would no doubt quite like the idea of picking a Famicom up for themselves and reliving a few 8-bit classics, we’re not entirely sure how many people would be in the market to buy 1,000 of the things all at once…
In Japan, there’s a saying that goes: “Japanese people are born into Shintoism, get married as Christians and die as Buddhists.” Usually it’s meant to be a comment on Japan’s laissez-faire attitude towards religion. However, having experienced all three of these life events in Japan, it’s a surprisingly accurate aphorism.
In the case of birth, after one month it’s common practice in Japan to take the baby a Shinto shrine for its Hatsumiyamairi (literally “first shrine visit”) often shortened to Omiyamairi. Like weddings and funerals, these ceremonies can differ greatly depending on the region, so I thought I’d share my own recent experience at an Omiyamairi to shed some light on this lesser-known Japanese tradition.
I used to have a co-worker who, on the hottest of summer days, would drink a pint of hot water through a straw and claim it helped cool her down. Naturally, everyone thought she was insane or belonged to some weird religion, or both, and would try to avoid working a shift alone with her.
But it looks like her weird sect of Scientology or whatever it was may have been onto something, as our Japanese reporter swears by eating microwaved steam buns to cool off in the summer.
Business district by day, at night Akasaka in Tokyo transforms into an area of dazzling nightlife, a hip and happening place where the local execs can easily spend their hefty paychecks. But among the trendy neon-lit clubs, there’s one café that doesn’t quite fit in: The Android Idol Caffe.
There are certain trappings to the ideal vision of high school in Japan. A schoolhouse with surprisingly lenient rooftop access policies is one. A bevy of beautiful, earnest coed equipment managers cheering you on in the big game is another. And no set of rose-colored school days is complete without a kind, patient, nurturing school nurse.
If you’re past your teens, most of these are now out of reach. Contrary to what anime and TV dramas have shown us, Japanese educational institutes don’t even let their own students eat lunch on the roof, much less some random guy trying to turn back the clock. Putting your grown-man strength to use in youth athletics is similarly out of the question.
Thanks to a new website that launched this month, though, it’s not too late to have another chat with that school nurse.
According to a recent Twitter post, a train on the JR Oji line came to an emergency stop after a single French fry broke through a window. The topic has become the subject of great debate online, with many speculating as to how a mere strip of potato could have penetrated solid glass.
This 14 August, Yamagata City will be holding its 34th Yamagata Fireworks show, one of the biggest in the Tohoku area. This year the festivities will be represented by Hanapon, the new yuru-kyara (costumed mascot) on the very crowded block.
A common image of the Japanese city is a concrete jungle of towering skyscrapers, tinting the night sky with the vibrant light from countless neon signs. But while you definitely can find those urban landscapes in downtown districts like Tokyo’s Shinjuku and Osaka’s Namba, take a short train ride into the suburbs and things can be very different.
My own apartment is in the most populous ward of Japan’s second biggest city, but one block away from the shopping arcade there are no sidewalks to be found, and street lights are few and far between. Add in a storm that cuts down visibility even more, and a walk home from the station can be a little unnerving.
Thankfully, PC and cell phone peripheral manufacturer Century has a solution for both problems with their light-up umbrella.
Hot enough for ya!? Despite having enjoyed an extremely mild spring, summer in Japan has kicked off with the ferocity of a right-wing tiger with a bad case of hemorrhoids and a stinging mouth ulcer. If you’re from more tropical climes and currently living in Japan you’re likely wondering why everyone keeps moaning “atsuiiiii” (“It’s hoooot!”) and dabbing their faces with handkerchiefs like politicians struggling to explain cross-dressing photos published online. For the rest of us, though, summer is a sweaty nightmare than can not so much be beaten as endured.
Thankfully, we’re here today to help you out with 10 tips for getting through summer without melting into a sad little puddle. Read on, my sweaty friends.
The dumplings known in Japan as gyoza are typically filled with diced cabbage and pork. Most of the time they’re also packed with enough garlic to make them as dangerous a temptation for office workers on their lunch break as a frosty mid-day beer.
Even though China, Japan, and Korea all have distinct food cultures, being so close to one another on the map means that some things are bound to cross borders. Case in point: all three countries love gyoza, and rightly so!
But while they’re united in their love for the food is universal, it turns out each nation has its own unique way of wrapping them, as our Japanese correspondent living in Germany recently found out.
Summer has come early in Japan this year and everyone’s doing their best to stave off the heat in temperatures that have reached up to 40°C in some parts of the country.
In the midst of all the sweat and suncream it looks like this little guy’s found a novel way to keep cool. The added bonus is that he looks absolutely adorable, but the downside is that, at least to Japanese people, he seems positively edible!
If hell is other people, then the worst thing about driving is other drivers.
Have you ever noticed that? No matter what happened, I guarantee it’s the other drivers’ faults, not mine. If you don’t believe me, look at my driving record! Not a single ticket, citation, or even a traffic stop in Japan! (Okay, I admit, I’ve never actually driven here.)
But what bugs Japanese drivers the most?
Have you seen the movie Pay It Forward? The one where 11-year-old Trevor has an idea to change the world for the better by, rather than repaying a favour like a debt to the person who did you that favour (pay back), the idea is that you “pay it forward” by doing something for someone else just for the sake of it. In the movie, the result of paying it forward was a miraculous chain of giving.
As great as it seemed in the movie, in practical terms it’s difficult to pay it forward and know that the kindness is passed on. But a small restaurant in Tokyo has embraced the idea and allows customers to literally pay their kindness forward to the next guest. Our Japanese reporter headed over to Karma Kitchen to gave it a try!
Meet the Powere Jacket MK3, an elaborate power suit clearly inspired by anime and hitting the market just in time to ride the wave of excitement over Guillermo Del Toro’s Kaiju Vs. Robots monster movie, Pacific Rim.
Though the power suit is far less impressive than the towering robots of the film, according to the below video, it lets you achieve all kinds of superhuman feats, including running at faster speeds, lifting heavy objects, and eating Cheetos without getting orange powder all over your fingers.
Last month a man was caught red-handed groping an innocent office lady on a train in Kyoto, in violation of the region’s laws against causing public disturbances. The man was put under immediate arrest, and while this admittedly unfortunate event may seem a bit too tame to be newsworthy, the offender was none other than the head patrol officer of Osaka’s police force! Apparently, this groping incident was far from the first for this once-respected officer.
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