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Anime idols going abroad as Love Live! movie announced for release in U.S., 12 other territories

Not so long ago, being a Japanese idol singer was purely a domestic gig, with even the biggest stars of the genre remaining more or less unknown outside their home country. But thanks to the spread of Japanese pop culture around the world over the last decade and a half, that’s not really the case anymore. These days, it’s not uncommon for J-pop idols, especially those with an anime connection to boost their foreign exposure, to make appearances overseas.

Now, in a case of animated art imitating life, the high school idols of Love Love!, Japan’s biggest current idol anime hit, will be heading abroad as the upcoming Love Live! theatrical feature has been announced for international release.

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Last Week Tonight tackles Japan’s mascot craze and the results are glorious【Video】

Emerging from the cocoon that was The Daily Show, John Oliver has carved out a brilliant spot for himself with his own talk show Last Week Tonight. He has produced some amazing pieces on net neutrality, Edward Snowden, the Miss America Pageant and the NCAA. Viewers tune in each week to find out what subject close to their hearts is being roasted or promoted on HBO. Japan has gotten a couple of mentions on the show before, but this past week brought the insanity that is Japanese mascots to the attention of his viewers. Surely Japan’s mastery of the subject can teach the rest of the world something.

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Following several years of building dependable, affordable, yet almost utterly soulless automobiles, Toyota is trying to get back to creating and market cars with a sense of joy and playfulness. After all, it’s a waste to treat driving as just going from Point A to Point B in the dullest way possible instead of the fun journey it has the potential to be.

That’s why in its newest commercial, Toyota is invoking the spirit of adventure with a fleet of yellow hybrids running about the countryside with the musical accompaniment of one of the most instantly recognizable pieces of Final Fantasy music ever composed.

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7-Eleven teams up with Attack on Titan to bring you new video short, prizes galore!

Beginning on Friday, May 22, 7-Eleven stores across Japan will finally team up with the wildly popular Attack on Titan franchise to bring you a special lottery with all sorts of winnable prizes! Be sure to check out the details as well as an amusing new promotional video after the jump.

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Cardcaptor Sakura won’t be outdone by Sailor Moon as she gets her own cozy anime pajama line

You wouldn’t name your anime fashion company Super Groupies if it wasn’t staffed by some pretty big fans of Japanese animation, and the clothing retailer’s product catalogue speaks to its comprehensive love of the art form. Not only are recent hits and long-time favorites alike represented, Super Groupies is totally comfortable working both sides of the iconic magical girl street.

So while lovers of Naoko Takeuchi’s Sailor Moon recently got their fix with some sailor suit-style clothes to wear around the house, now the fans of manga creative team Clamp’s magical girl series are getting their turn with two sets of Cardcaptor Sakura pajamas.

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Celebrate May with a visit to Mei and Satsuki’s house from Ghibli’s My Neighbor Totoro

Our love of the Studio Ghibli film My Neighbor Totoro has truly blossomed during the month of May. Just when we thought things couldn’t get any better after we heard about Totoro’s Forest in Saitama Prefecture, complete with a house for black dust bunnies known as Kurosuke no Ie, it seems there’s even more reason to celebrate, with an exact replica of Mei and Satsuki’s house open to the public in Aichi Prefecture.

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Lotteria continues to try making burgers out of noodles, this time they brought rice to the party

Despite a rather weak track-record for its hamburgers with patties of noodles, fast-food chain Lotteria is back at it with the Moko Tanmen Burger. This time around they’ve also come up with the Moko Don Burger which uses a wad of rice as the patty. Good thing Dr. Atkins isn’t around to see this.

They say the definition of “insanity” is doing the same thing twice and expecting different results. We’re not sure what to call RocketNews24 reporter Mr. Sato then, because he is returning to Lotteria for a fourth time to try these noodley sandwiches in hopes of some redemption.

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28 realities of being a 30-year-old Japanese man who constantly pees himself

Oh the realities of getting older. One minute you’re feeling fine, the next you’re shopping for adult diapers. It’s a fact of life that transcends language, culture, and bladders all over the world.

Yoshio, one of our RocketNews24 Japanese-side writers, has recently joined the ranks of the incontinently impaired himself. To celebrate his newfound misery, he composed a 28-part list describing a typical day in his new, significantly wetter life.

Take a read and commiserate along with him, or see what you have to look forward to when parts of your own body start turning against you.

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Lose five kilos in one month with a super easy convenience store diet!

Everyone is trying to get in great shape for the summer season and everywhere you look there is a new exercise or diet craze that guarantees quick and easy weight loss in only a month. Most of these are too good to be true, but some of them might just work for you! Introducing the “Chef Lawson Diet,” which involves eating only at the Lawson convenience store for an entire month. Actual user testimony guarantees* you will lose five kilograms (11 pounds) in just one month!

* On second thought, RocketNews24 doesn’t actually guarantee anything.

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Sailor Moon totes, smartphone pouches, and T-shirts are here to help you stay Sailor all day long

Last week, we took a look at a set of fluffy Sailor Moon pajamas. But no matter how comfortable they may look, eventually you’re going to run out of food, manga, or some other class of household essentials and need to leave your home. But when you do, you can still keep the theme going with these Sailor Moon-themed tote bags to carry your supplies home in, plus sailor suit-style pouches and T-shirts.

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Panasonic develops data communication using an ordinary light and smartphone

There are many ways that data is transferred these days, be it fiber optic cables, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 4G-LTE, and a whole slew of other brand names and acronyms the meanings of which I don’t care to learn.

Now Panasonic has come up with a way to send and receive data that’s easy for everyone to understand: light. Actually it uses light emitting diodes (LED) to be exact, but that’s about as technical as this explanation needs to get, I promise.

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Kanpai! Japanese sweet sake found to have beauty benefits

It seems like every time you look, there’s some sort of new fad diet or superfood, all purported to be the best thing you can do for your health or to improve your natural beauty. But the good news is, this one’s actually fun to partake in.

Researchers at a university in Japan have now put sweet Japanese sake to the test, and have found it to have a number of positive beauty benefits, including improvement to under-eye health!

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Player uses 1 controller to run through Megaman X & Megaman X2 simultaneously

YouTuber Aura Puffs assigned themselves a seemingly impossible task: using only one SNES controller simultaneously play through Megaman X and Megaman X2. The limitations also include no save states, pausing one game while playing another, or anything else that would take most of the challenge out of the process.

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Japanese mom teaches nine-year-old son the horrors of the internet, posts the hilarious results

Parenting in the internet age is a whole lot more difficult than it was before our world was taken over by machines. Back then, the scariest conversation you had to have with your kids was about the birds and the bees, but now it’s the birds and the bees and the creepy old guy pretending to be a high school girl in an online chatroom.

One Japanese mom posted the conversations on Twitter that she’s recently had to have with her nine-year-old son, and they’ve been getting a lot of attention online. Read them for yourself and you’ll crack up over both how true and how hilarious they are.

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Here are the 15 most amazing home made robots, tanks, and vehicles in China

China is known as an industrious nation and, after pictures surfaced of one Chinese teacher who built a phenomenal “Iron Man” Hulkbuster replica in his garage, it seemed like the right time to take a look at some of the country’s most impressive home made inventions.

From full size, working airplanes to wooden, yet electronic cars, the Chinese have spent anything from a couple of months to several years, knocking up some pretty impressive modes of transports and robots.

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Spirited Away and Ghost in Shell’s sound director talks about the human side of working in anime

Many Japanese animation fans can rattle off a list of the animation directors or character designers they admire, but the visuals are only half of the way anime stimulates the senses. For everything that you’re hearing during your favorite show, you can thank the sound director.

It’s a role Kazuhiro Wakabayashi has been filling for decades, and we recently sat in on a talk the industry veteran gave about the unique challenges a sound director faces, what it’s like to work with some of the biggest names in Japanese animation, including Studio Ghibli’s Hayao Miyazaki and Ghost in the Shell’s Mamoru Oshii, and the surprisingly deep human element of creating the audio environment for a fictional world.

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Predicting Japan’s next big earthquake–should we worry? Probably

Japan is home to 110 active volcanoes, 47 of which are monitored continually by the Japan Meteorological Association (JMA). Japan also holds seven percent of all the active volcanoes in the world.

Last year, Mount Ontake in Nagano Prefecture exploded without warning, killing over 60 people, many of them hikers. Mount Hakone in the hot springs resort town near Mount Fuji is on level-2 alert. Mount Fuji itself, a dormant volcano and World Heritage site is being looked at with a wary eye by many and authorities are advising hikers to wear helmets, dust masks and goggles when climbing. The volcano that most appears in the news, however, is Sakurajima, located off Kyushu, which is also one of the world’s most active volcanoes.

“Dutchsinse,” a self-proclaimed “News Personality” who has a cult following on Facebook and YouTube gives a near daily video update of volcanic and earthquake activity around the world. He recently highlighted Japan’s volcanoes and earthquakes and warns that pressure building in the region of Sakurajima, along with other multiple large eruptions in the Pacific region, could be a sign of something bigger to come.

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Summer is coming! Stay cool with this retro-style shaved-ice maker!

The cicadas are chirping, the sun is shining, and we’re starting to get sweaty – it can only mean one thing: summer is coming! And with it all kinds of delicious treats like ice cream, ice cream, and, oh yes, ice cream.

But when you only really want to cool down and don’t want to consume too many calories, shaved ice is a much lighter alternative source of summer snack. But why rely on others to do your shaving for you? Why not shave it yourself in style with this awesome retro shaved ice maker?

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Pre-order the sleek new Batman figure envisioned by a prolific video game designer

Tetsuya Nomura is the mastermind behind this upcoming Batman figure, the likes of which you’ve never seen before. The 44-year-old video game artist/designer/director of Square Enix fame (he’s a veteran of both the Final Fantasy series and Kingdom Hearts) personally designed this version of the Dark Knight, and if you’re a fan of both his work and DC Comics, you’d better ready your wallet now!

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Valley of the (creepy) dolls: Nagoro has hundreds of scarecrows but almost no people

On a recent trip to Shikoku, we heard about a small town tucked away in the Iya Valley called Nagoro. Like many small rural towns in Japan, the human population has dwindled to almost nothing in recent years. Unlike other towns, though, Nagoro doesn’t look empty. That’s because it’s populated by hundreds of scarecrows.

Of course we had to go check it out.

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