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North Korea establishes its own time zone in order to stick it to “wicked Japanese imperialists”

Were they granted the ability to manipulate time and space, we’re fairly certain that most world leaders would choose to go back in time in order to benefit their own country somehow, replaying disastrous moments in their history and righting wrongs that would later cost them dearly. (One can only imagine a world in which the likes of Katie Hopkins and Donald Trump were never put in front of a camera…)

But today, totalitarian dictatorship North Korea declared that it would be turning the clock back by just 30 minutes, thus establishing “Pyongyang Time”, in order to mark its independence from the “wicked Japanese imperialists” who meddled with their clocks to begin with.

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We try dessert sushi (with a French twist!)【Recipe】

Sushi has become well known and loved the world over. Granted, a lot of what you’ll find in your home country is altered from “traditional” sushi to cater to local tastes (and would have ol’ Jiro shaking his fist), but what food doesn’t go through a bit of change when it crosses borders?

The only thing this dessert sushi has in common with its namesake is that it contains rice. But that doesn’t change the fact that it looks absolutely delicious and that you should get in your kitchen and go try making it right now!

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Live-action Attack on Titan director teases Godzilla plans

Coming off mixed reviews of his live-action Attack on Titan film, fans may recall that Shinji Higuchi is also tasked with directing TOHO‘s upcoming Godzilla film with fellow tokusatsu lover Hideaki Anno. Helming the first Japanese Godzilla film in 12 years is no small feat. In fact, Higuchi almost turned down the offer because of the sheer amount of pressure that comes with directing such an iconic monster.

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Exquisitely blown Japanese beer glasses create serene landscapes while you drink

Everyone knows that the best way to drink beer is either from a bottle or poured into a glass, yet more often than not you will find beer packaged in a can at the store. Cans make economic sense since they are cheap, can be crushed down to save space and they float in water if you happen to drop them while you are out having fun. However, all beer drinkers know that drinking from the can tastes horrible compared to drinking from the glass.

There are plenty of beer glasses to choose from, but a beautiful glass strangely makes the beer taste even better, and one Japanese crystal company has some of the greatest glasses for your summer drinking. Fired by the Joetsu Crystal Glass Company, the Tsukiyono Kobo line features fantastic glasses that cast your beer drinking in a much more beautiful light.

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As in most countries, magazines aimed at young adults in Japan spend a lot of time talking about the opposite sex. Just as publications aimed at men often wax poetic about their image of the ideal woman, so too do women’s magazines write up collections of traits of desirable guys.

But one recent list has Japanese Internet users scratching their heads over its oddly specific list that includes such minutiae as foot size and social media preference.

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If you’ve ever spent the summer in Japan, you know that it’s not the heat, but the humidity that makes many people want to take refuge indoors with the air conditioning blasting. But the silver lining to this cloud is the clouds themselves, as all that moisture in the air can turn Japan’s summer skies into a stunning puffy white landscape.

On the evening of August 5, skywatchers in the Tokyo/Yokohama area that turned their eyes to the west saw a towering, lightning-spitting thundercloud so powerfully majestic it immediately drew comparisons to one of Studio Ghibli’s most beloved anime.

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70 years ago today: The moment the US deployed the most powerful weapon known to man

Released from B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay on August 6, 1945 at 8:15 a.m. (Japanese time), the world entered the unprecedented atomic age with the deployment of the most powerful weapon known to man.

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Evangelion lingerie is sure to help your otaku partner get into Beast Mode

No anime in history has generated the amount of discussion that Evangelion has, as audiences have now been debating the finer points of the franchise’s content and production for two decades. Was the TV series’ unorthodox ending strictly a case of budgetary constraints, or is it the purest version of Eva’s true message? In the closing scenes of End of Evangelion, has protagonist Shinji accepted or rejected the rest of human existence? Is creator Hideaki Anno ever going to actually make that fourth, and supposedly final, Rebuild of Evangelion theatrical feature?

For today, though, let’s brush aside those nebulous issues, and instead look at a question that has a definite answer: What would official Evangelion lingerie look like?

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Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection ‘F’ earns $1.97 million to rank #6 on U.S. opening night

Box Office Mojo reports that Funimation‘s limited theatrical run of the Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection ‘F’ film earned US$1,967,626 on its opening night on Tuesday. That gives the film a per-screen average of US$2,198, the highest among the top 10 movies playing in the United States on August 4.

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Let the rejoicing begin: Someone has made a sumo musical and the trailer is amazing! 【Video】

Adding “musical” to the end of any idea is an easy but effective way to come up with concepts for new creative properties. Foul-mouthed muppets plus musicals gave us Avenue Q and anime plus musical has given us a surprising number of stage productions! But one combination we’d never even dreamed of has now seen the light of day: A sumo musical.

Titled Dosu Koi Musical, this sumo musical isn’t actually a stage production, but it does star none other than Taiwanese singer Lin Yu-chun, whom you might remember killing it on America’s Got Talent in 2010. Maybe if we’re all good boys and girls, this will be turned into the next Broadway hit starring Lin and Neil Patrick Harris!

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Microsoft’s Windows 10 ads inadvertently ruffle feathers in Korea with… a bad choice of font?

American tech giant Microsoft apparently has some explaining to do to Korean Windows users.

That’s because a television commercial announcing the recent release of Microsoft Windows 10, the latest and blessedly less-infuriating edition of the company’s flagship operating system, apparently commits an unwritten faux pas by way of a text font displayed in the ad.

And if you’re as baffled as we initially were about how a simple, commonly used font could be so offensive, well, let us tell you a little story about Japan-Korea relations…

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Chilled, green tea, sweet potato and more mark 40 years of Japan’s Hi-Chew candy

Morinaga’s Hi-Chew is one of Japan’s favorite candies. Its popularity has spread across the world and you can often find different flavors of Hi-Chew at your local store. Fans have gone to great lengths to show their appreciation for the flavorful chewy snack over the years, including our Japanese team who once even created their own giant Hi-Chew, thus disproving the old adage that “bigger is better”.

Now, to celebrate the candy’s 40th anniversary, Morinaga is releasing some special new flavors and an extra-special version of their most popular flavor that will become the first refrigerated Hi-Chew in history.

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The World Cosplay Summit 2015 competition crowned Mexico representatives Twin Cosplay as the Grand Champions at the award ceremony on Saturday. The duo also took home the Minister of Foreign Affairs Award, ANA Prize, and the Tabi Pad Award.

Twin Cosplay‘s presentation was based on Nintendo‘s Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask video game. Between the two, a total of four costume and set transformations take place in three minutes.

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Birds of a feather flock together, so the saying goes. And that concept applies to non-humans as well; it’s not uncommon for pets and their owners to act, and sometimes even look, somehow similar after spending years together. Even in the super popular anime and game series Pokémon, where the aim of the game is to collect as many pokémon as possible, many of the pokémon trainers in the series use pocket monsters that somehow resemble them.

But what the characters of the anime series Free! were pokémon trainers? Which creatures would they have under their well-toned wings? Find out as this Japanese fan puts her imagination to work in a series of awesome Pokémon x Free! crossover illustrations!

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Japanese elves bring us a new snack cake with the great taste of old meat!

Japan never ceases to be the country of making something taste exactly like something it shouldn’t. In the land where you can get kimchi-flavored soft drinks and spaghetti-flavored ice candy, it would seem food companies are really just drunk with power when it comes to what they can and will make stuff taste like.

And now we have “the perfect snack cake for any meat-lover,” Momotan Aged Meat Flavored snacks. It’s in the form of a typical Japanese confection called manju with a cake-like outer coating and sweet been paste filling. However, these Momotan manju are heavily seasoned to make you swear you were eating a morsel of month-old meat instead!

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“Buddhists’ Disneyland” the Pure Land Cave is the trippiest place on earth

In Kaohsiung, Taiwan, there stands a massive Buddhist complex set up by the half-century-old sect Fo Guang Shan. It is a sprawling 30 hectares (74 acres) and contains the nation’s largest monastery, a 36-meter (132 foot) tall Buddha statue, as well as an enormous Buddha Memorial Center in the shape of a pyramid.

However, for our correspondent Kowloon Kurosawa the real action could be found in the Pure Land Cave. It’s an attraction rumored to have been patterned after Disney’s It’s a Small World ride. However, as we’ll soon see, Buddhism is not so much a “small” world as it is a creepy and psychedelic one.

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For a country that’s ordinarily very concerned with not doing anything to shock or offend, Japan can be extremely open about its sexual tastes, in ways that manifest as both perfectly healthy and perfectly pervy. Japan is also pretty open and comfortable with its weakness for cute things, as you’ll often see adults of both genders sporting clothing or accessories bearing the image of popular children’s characters.

But what happens when you have both a sexy anime huggy pillow and a cute Disney stuffed animal in your bedroom, and you leave them alone for a while?

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“Do you want some ramen with those eggs?” Our reporter tries ramen with ALL THE EGGS!

So, you like eggs, but with all the conflicting research about the little balls of protein, it’s hard to decide if you should be eating zero eggs, an egg a day, or as many as you can stuff in you face. Sadly, we’re not entirely certain either, but if you simply don’t care about what’s good for you or not, we’d like you to meet your comrade-in-shells, P.K.

Our clothes-hating Japanese reporter P.K. is a huge fan of the unfertilized bird babies, and he recently read that all that research saying you shouldn’t eat too many eggs is bunk. So he decided to make up for lost time and headed down to Ramen Kagetsu Arashi to get a bowl of noodles with more eggs than a chicken coop. Egg lovers, get ready to hear your stomachs growl!

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The quintessential Kyoto experience: becoming a maiko for the day! 【Pics & video】

They say that it’s rare to see a real maiko walking the streets of Kyoto, since these artists usually work at night and live in their own secluded world, far from the rest of Japanese society. In fact, if you spot a maiko strolling around Gion during the day, there’s a good chance she’s a tourist who’s undergone a fabulously elaborate makeover.

We took our Japan Wish competition winner Ashley to a studio in Kyoto’s Gion neighborhood to have a maiko-over and be transformed in an amazing process that yielded completely stunning results. Ashley was able to choose her own kimono and obi sash, and as part of the deal she was treated to a professional photography session and the opportunity to take a stroll around the streets of Gion in full maiko garb!

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Facial recognition website decides how masculine or feminine you are, suggests famous look-alikes

Ever wanted to know who your celebrity look-alike would be? Wonder no more – there’s a website that will tell you! By uploading a selfie, facial recognition technology will guess your age, gender, and celebrity doppelganger.

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