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Dragon Ball theme park, bigger than Tokyo Disneyland, announced, but not for Japan【Video】

Dragon Ball Theme Park will be built in a different part of the world from where the global anime/manga hit was born.

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Our Japanese reporter falls in love with “Lebanese-style gyudon”【SoraKitchen】

”It’s super easy and soaked with umami!”

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What do Indian people think of Japanese curry? We investigate with the power of Pikachu

How will this instant curry fare in India, the country with some of the best curry in the world?

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Mr Sato steps inside the Embassy of Afghanistan in Tokyo【Photos】

A number of embassies in Japan are opening their doors to the public for a limited time. 

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Jumpei Yasuda also explains why he said he was a South Korean man named Umaru in a video filmed by is captors.

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Iran becomes first country to completely ban Pokémon GO

Sorry, Pikachu, but the Middle Eastern nation doesn’t choose you.

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Syrian children using Pokémon Go to bring attention to their situation

These honest pleas for help have caught all of our hearts.

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New “species of snake” discovered purring in desert?【Video】

Could the long, twitching piece of fur belong to the body of a snake or some other cheeky animal?

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And now, a transgender Indian version of Pharrell’s “Happy” 【Video】

Dubbed “India’s first transgender band,” the Brooke Bond Red Label 6 Pack Band’s first single shows just how happy the hijra community can get with an Indian-flavored take on the Pharrell Williams hit of 2014.

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New school in Iraq to provide a Japanese-style education

Impressed with Japan’s ability to quickly rebuild after the Second World War, some educators in Iraq are looking to instill similar values in their own youth.

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Famous Kuwaiti actor is “too handsome”, arrested for causing public disturbance

People may think that being beautiful has no downsides; you’re popular, you get drinks for free, you look good in all your clothes.

But believe it or not, being beautiful isn’t always easy! Just ask Kuwaiti actor Abdul Aziz Al Kassar, who was recently arrested in Saudi Arabia for upsetting public order by being “too handsome”.

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Japan’s rags-to-riches Nepalese restaurant “Daisuki Nippon” closes doors after five years

November marks five years since Vikas Pradhan sent out his first tweets in broken Japanese describing the hardships of starting a restaurant. In response and a heartwarming show of support, the Twitter community rallied behind Pradhan not only online but in actual paid visits to his Nepalese cuisine restaurant Daisuki Nippon, putting it firmly in the black.

However, in a rather sudden turn of events, Pradhan tweeted that as of 31 October the original Daisuki Nippon had closed down.

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Growing up, I spent many a weekend fighting traffic to drive into downtown L.A. or Orange County to check out the manga, magazines, and other publications imported from Japan at one of the area’s handful of Kinokuniya bookstore branches. But Southern California isn’t the only place where you’ll find fans of Japanese pop culture looking for a fix. Over the last few decades, anime and manga fandom has spread around the globe, and travelers to the Middle East are sometimes surprised to find that there’s a gigantic Kinokuniya branch in Dubai helping Arabic and expat otaku keep up to date on all their favorite series.

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Video from India shows fast way to load construction equipment…or die, whichever comes first

If you were charged with the task of putting a mini excavator like to one pictured above onto a flatbed truck in under two minutes, what would you do? If you’re like most people you’d probably find a ramp of some sort.

Or, if you have just that right balance of gutsiness and lack of self-preservation instinct, you might do what these guys in India did. Luckily, they recorded it on video for our enjoyment and as evidence preventing any lawsuit against the makers of the excavator.

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A six-year-old smashed the previous limbo skating record, in case you wanted to know

Who would have thought the world of limbo skating would be so competitive? Also, who would have thought limbo skating was a thing that exists?

Limbo skating is the sport of using old-school roller skates – we presume there’s some kind of rule about them having to be in pastel colors – to project yourself across the ground while staying as low as possible. Sometimes, limbo skaters can squish their bodies down to about the same height as a Coke bottle while bending their ankles at seemingly impossible angles to keep the roller skate’s wheels on the pavement.

So, since we went ahead and told you that limbo skating is a thing, we might as well also tell you that a 6-year-old just broke the previous limbo skating world record by limbo skating under 39 cars like it was nothing.

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Turkish cold snap literally freezes animals where they stand

It appears that Turkey is one of the few parts of the world that gets so cold it’s not an exaggeration to say, “It’s freezing out here.”

The video below depicts some donkeys found in a small village that have cartoonishly frozen in place due to the extreme cold weather and snow – a phenomena we thought only possible in Christmas-time claymation films, and the closest thing we know of to the exact opposite of China’s hellish summer heatwave that caused cars to explode.

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Rare Turkish rose is the most heavy metal flower you’ll ever see

Until now, we never really understood what all the fuss was about roses. Women seem to love them, and men seem to spend inordinate amounts of money to purchase them for their sweethearts. But now that we’ve seen the pitch-black Turkish Halfeti Rose, we’re starting to understand that roses can be not only dangerous, kind of smelly and enchanting all at the same time, they can also be the perfect centerpiece of the most hardcore heavy metal album or low fantasy book cover of all time.

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7 surprising realizations during our Japanese reporter’s trip to Turkey

Turkey! It’s more than just a giant bird. It’s a mysterious country straddling the border between Europe and Asia. Practically everyone has heard of it, for its likeness to the popular holiday dish if nothing else, but it seems that a majority of people know very little about the region’s culture.

Recently, members of our Japanese staff took a trip to the alluring land of Turkey. While they weren’t exactly sure what to expect, they were nonetheless surprised by a number of things on their visit. Here’s a list of seven things that surprised our Japanese staff on their trip to Turkey.

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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.

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Last Wednesday in Mashhad, Iran, a man was sentenced to hang for the crime of murdering a police officer. However, just moments after the sentence was carried out, the bereaved family cried out their forgiveness, demanding that they put a stop to the execution. Read More

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