Even if you’re not a fan of McDonald’s burgers, fries, or food offerings of any kind, you have to admit the fast food chain knows how to make a pretty tasty shake. Thick and creamy, sipping on a McDonald’s shake can instantly bring back those feelings of happy contentedness you felt as a child, and in Japan part of the reason might be that the experience is designed to make you feel like a baby sucking down a meal of breast milk.
A young Japanese woman suddenly finds herself surrounded by four hot guys, each one vying for her favor. One is tough, another is cool, and the third is going with the soft sell. There’s even a handsome man trying to game her or rule her or neg her, whatever the term is when pseudo-aggressive dudes simultaneously tell a girl that she’s insufferably lame but that they also desperately want to hook up with her.
The woman’s pulse races as she realizes she hold all the cards in this game of love. But this scenario is too good to be true right? Is it a dating simulator video game? A reverse-harem anime?
Nope, it’s the cell phone corner of a Japanese electronics store.
To those not familiar with the scene, cosplay may just seem like older kids and adults playing dress-up, but few realize the time and effort that goes into custom-making the costumes or the attention to detail that really makes the outfits works of art.
For some, just wearing their masterpieces to an anime or comic convention is enough, but others take it a step further, staging beautiful, dramatic, or sometimes even humorous photoshoots, preserving themselves in character and enabling the sharing of their visual pieces online. And today we’ll be taking a look at just that! Here is a collection of the amazing handiwork and photography skills from around the world used to recreate scenes (and create new original scenes!) from the mega-popular anime series Attack on Titan.
In Japan, customer service tends to pretty amazing across the board, but perhaps nowhere more so than in the restaurant industry. Some restaurants may be boisterously friendly and others may be quietly courteous, but you can just about always be assured that everyone on the staff, from your server to the owner, is working hard to ensure an enjoyable dining experience.
But even by those standards, this yakiniku restaurant goes above and beyond the call of duty, with an extensive list of extra special services they’re willing to provide. Of course, courteousness is a two-way street, so the restaurant also has 10 unique requests it in turn makes to its customers.
Dating is hard. No, let’s back that up. Meeting people is hard. We can even go a little further and say talking to someone for the first time is hard. Some of us lack the courage and confidence to approach someone who we like and start talking to them.
It’s a problem that has plagued humanity for centuries, and even though human civilization has shown, through constant population growth, that people are getting things done, it’s always nice to have a little bit of help. While there are plenty of websites and books that offer you tips on how to present yourself, this handy video is much more suited for our busy modern lives, since in just four minutes it tells you how to pick up all the guys.
en though a lot of couples in Japan officially start their relationship with a dramatic and explicit expression of love, that level of passion can be hard to maintain indefinitely. Especially among married couples in Japan, it’s not common to say “I love you” every day, and after a few years as husband and wife, some spouses stop seeing each other as a man and a woman.
But marriage is a long string of small shared experiences, and sometimes couples find a spark that rekindles the flames of their emotions for one another, like in this list of the top 10 times Japanese men fell in love with their wives all over again.
We’ve seen many Studio Ghibli tributes from around the world–some in the form of still artwork, and others in even more ambitious video formats. Today, we’d like to share another fantastic tribute by a South Korean artist that’s sure to please anyone with an eye for some clean graphic design!
At first glance, it looks like a trailer for a new movie or even a documentary about the pressures of beauty, popularity and social media. But in what is one of the most elaborate video commercials we’ve come across in a while, one beauty clinic in Thailand has gone to extreme lengths to advertise its services. Playing on the vulnerability of today’s millennials and modern societal pressures of beauty, they have produced a 14-minute short film which is as compelling as it is a disturbing.
Read More
Kennin-ji is one of Japan’s most historic landmarks. Founded in 1202, it’s the oldest Zen Buddhist temple in Kyoto and its founding monk, Eisai, is credited with introducing the philosophy of zen to Japan. To celebrate the temple’s 800th anniversary in 2002, a pair of dragons were painted inside the Dharma Hall, with instructions from the Abbott that they be “rampaging across the ceiling”.
The beauty and power of these dragons has inspired an experienced collector to commission a timepiece featuring the very same artwork, calling on the expertise of four of the very best master craftsmen in the business to come together in what’s being called the “Kennin-ji Master’s Project”. Helmed by acclaimed English watchmaker Peter Speake-Marin, experts are saying this is one of the most exquisite and ornate watches ever made in the history of the craft.
Whether rightfully or not, Chinese products are much maligned for their supposed lack of quality. Even the Chinese people themselves are often critical of their own country’s products, criticizing everything from Chinese news to rice cookers.
But are they really that bad? Our Japanese reporter Meg recently went on a trip to China and brought back a Chinese rice cooker to test it out. She had a couple of surprises along the way, involving everything from getting the rice cooker to even work, to the taste of the final product, so read on to see how it all turned out!
Calbee’s Jagariko is among the tastiest snacks in Japan, if you ask us. The little cups of potato sticks come in a variety of flavors, including cheese, butter, and salad. There are also some seasonal flavors, like yuzu-shio, or yuzu and salt, available now! If you haven’t tried Jagariko yet, this is definitely a great introduction to one of the best snacks in Japan!
Not too long ago, we reported on Pico Cassette, a new device which will allow you to play retro video games on your smartphone via a cartridge which you plug into the headphone jack.
Since we absolutely love all kinds of gadgetry here at RocketNews24, and since we’re also big retro gaming nerds, we made a point to visit Pico Cassette’s booth at this year’s Tokyo Game Show in order to try it out for ourselves!
Every country has its own set of rules and customs that visitors may not initially be aware of. To meet the demands of the growing tourism industry, many governments have opted to implement multi-lingual signs and websites. Sometimes, however, the translations cause much more confusion than they prevent, like with this list of jobs foreigners aren’t allowed to do in Thailand.
Recently a similar goof occurred in India, this time due to some curiously mistranslated signage posted inside the Chennai International Airport, leaving visitors both amused and confused.
In Japan, going on a trip often means you’ll be coming back with about twice as much luggage as you left with, as you are almost always expected to bring back souvenirs for your friends, family, coworkers, teachers, neighbors…pretty much everyone you’ll run into at some point after returning from your trip, even if it’s just a weekend getaway.
The plus side of this? Pretty much anywhere you go in the country, you can find local treats available only in that specific area, and sometimes also limited to the seasons as well. Tokyo is no exception, and today we’re going to be taking a look at some rare, special eats that you’ll only find within the terminals of Haneda Airport.
You can find canned coffee almost anywhere in Japan. First invented and introduced to the Japanese market in 1969, canned coffee sales really started taking off in the 1980s. Admittedly my first canned coffee experience left me wondering what all the hype was about, but now, perhaps as a result of better production methods or acquiring a taste for it after living here so long, I have to admit nothing beats the satisfaction you feel sipping on a warm can of coffee from the vending machine just as the weather starts getting chilly.
Of course, when it comes to coffee, many people think of Italy. Along with pasta and pizza, coffee is a huge part of Italian food culture. In fact, the country has over 160,000 small cafes serving coffee, drinks, and light eats from morning to evening. So how exactly would Japanese canned coffee fare with Italian locals with a refined taste for excellent coffee? RocketNews24 decided it was worth making the trip over to ask.
Even if you haven’t been with us for very long, it’s not hard to see that we here at RocketNews24 love cats. Big, small, fit, fat, even stretchy, cats of all shapes and sizes win our hearts! We even love them when they’re wreaking havoc on small towns of people, like the devilish little cutie in this feline remake of a man versus monster flick…
While sniffing out the most interesting things on offer at this year’s Tokyo Game Show 2015, we came across one game that was making quite a splash with its bizarre theme and crazy advertising. How could RocketNews24 resist talking to the guy in a bright yellow bodysuit with a poo hat on his head?!
I took the opportunity to talk with Dice Creative, the developers of new poo-themed mobile game PooPride, and I was impressed by just how much passion and excitement they have for excrement.
Idol singers exist in an extremely specialized, and often contradictory, corner of the already specialized Japanese pop music industry. Successful idols are expected to walk the fine line between having a polished, attractive appearance and an approachable, unassuming aura. Even more ironic is that while their songs’ lyrics are often focused on love and devotion, it’s practically unheard of for an active idol to openly be in a romantic relationship.
Every now and again, though, word gets out that an idol secretly has a boyfriend, or had an illicit liaison with a guy. The revelation is usually followed by a solemn apology to fans, and often the offending member being removed from the group. But this time the story of an idol’s amorous activities coming to light has something we’ve never heard about before: a court-ordered fine equivalent to several thousand dollars for breach of contract.