Totoro and No-Face come out to play in the rain on Ghibli umbrellas that change patterns when wet

Unless you’ve got a bitter aversion to the cold, odds are you’ll find early summer to be the least pleasant time of year in Japan, weather-wise. Not only is it hot and muggy, it’s also the country’s rainiest period, and just about any time you’re stepping outside you’ll want to carry an umbrella with you.

Thankfully, there’s a way to make the rainy season a little more enjoyable, as a new line of Studio Ghibli-themed umbrellas means a summer squall is just the beginning of a Totoro hunt as the beloved forest spirit magically appears on the umbrella’s fabric when it gets wet.

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Super Mario Maker gets an official release date, will be playable at Best Buy soon【E3 2015】

Nintendo has announced that Super Mario Maker, its extensive Mario-themed level creator software for Wii U, will go on sale from September 11 this year. A new Amiibo figure and level designer’s guide book are also scheduled for release.

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U.S. baseball player joins Tokyo’s Yomiuri Giants, but it’s his wife that’s getting the attention

People really love sports, don’t they? If, like me, you grew up lacking the gene that makes watching a bunch of strangers whack balls around somehow fascinating, then it sometimes seems like a whole alien world. Still, I can appreciate that televised sports bring a lot of excitement to people’s lives. What I can’t understand, however, is when people get all excited about sports players’ wives and girlfriends.

Miles Mikolas, a baseballer from the U.S., joined the Yomiuri Giants for the 2015 baseball season and it seems that a lot of people in Japan are much more interested in his beautiful, blonde wife than in him. And this is a guy who apparently ate a lizard whole during a game.

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Gigantic girls take over your favourite Tokyo tourist spots 【Videos】

As a tiny island packed with millions of people, Japan knows all about the small things. From compact serving sizes to tiny houses on narrow streets, everything here is designed for convenience to help cope with the stress of overcrowding and the real possibility of stepping on someone else’s toes.

Now, as Japan throws itself into the 21st century, it’s looking towards the bigger things: its place in the wider context of Asia and the Pacific Region; the 2020 Olympics and, why not; gigantic girls.

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Nintendo announces “Star Fox Zero”【E3 2015】

Japanese video game giant Nintendo has announced that Star Fox Zero, a brand new game for Wii U, will be released at the end of this year.

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Some Japanese gamers aren’t liking the “shockingly ugly” Cammy in Street Fighter V 【E3 2015】

With all of the big news coming out of this year’s E3, video game developer Capcom has sort of an uphill battle getting people to talk all that much about Street Fighter V. Sure, a new numbered installment in the most popular fighting franchise ever is a big deal, but the game itself was announced months ago. With Square Enix unveiling the long-awaited Final Fantasy VII remake, The Last Guardian rising from the dead, and Shenmue seeking funding to do the same, does Capcom really have any chance of producing a response merely by adding two new characters to the Street Fighter V roster?

Sure it does, if gamers in Japan decide that returning challenger Cammy suddenly looks ugly.

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We try Tom Yum Pizza, the new Domino’s pizza that tastes just like the soup 【Taste Test】

Our reporter P.K. Sanjun is something of a tom yum goong fan. In fact, P.K. believes this spicy/sour Thai/Lao soup is one of the three great soups of the world (the other two are bouillabaisse and shark fin soup, since you asked).

So when P.K. heard that Domino’s Pizza in Japan was launching a tom yum goong pizza, he was somewhat skeptical. “They don’t even have tom yum pizza in Thailand!” he points out. But in the interests of investigative journalism, P.K. put aside his misgivings and ordered one spicy soup-flavoured pizza. And boy, did he love it.

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Sony is bringing back classic gamepads for its new game console

It may not look “modern” anymore, but the flat greys of Sony’s early PlayStation hardware brings wide smiles to those of us who grew up playing classics like Resident Evil and Final Fantasy.

Though years of play wore down the originals, Sony’s issuing original PlayStation-themed gamepads and headphones in honor of the orig nal console’s 20th anniversary. They look like this:

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Steal this umbrella and be cursed for life! Japanese Twitter users’ creative anti-theft measures

Japan is known for having one of the lowest crime rates in the world, making it a safe and comfortable place not only for its citizens, but for foreign tourists as well.

But there are still minor cases of theft that bug the local residents, especially when the rainy season comes showering by. Instead of expensive items such as wallets and cars, what’s getting taken are things such as umbrellas, which are inexpensive but highly valuable when it is raining cats and dogs. To fight such petty crime, the citizens of Japan have come up with their own unique ways of fending off such petty thieves. Check them out after the break!

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Tekken Project’s ‘Summer Lesson’ VR demo now has an English-speaking girl

Bandai Namco Entertainment posted an English-language video to preview Tekken Project’s technology demonstration “Summer Lesson,” which Sony will showcase at its E3 booth this week. The video includes a cameo at the end.

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The Last Guardian lives, will hit PlayStation 4 next year【E3 2015】

The Last Guardian, the spiritual successor to the beautiful and hugely emotive PlayStation 2 titles ICO and Shadow of the Colossus, first stepped into the daylight all the way back in 2009. Ever since then, however, the game has become virtually the stuff of legend, missing both the peak of PlayStation 3’s development cycle and the launch of the PlayStation 4. With good reason, perhaps, many believed that the game was done for, trapped forever in development hell, and that Sony would one day be forced to announce that it had been canned.

But earlier today, Sony’s Shuhei Yoshida revealed that The Last Guardian is not only alive and well, but that it will be with us fairly soon. Along with a 2016 release date, the company showed off five minutes of gameplay footage in a brand new video. Check it out after the jump.

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After years of waiting, Sega’s Yu Suzuki reveals Shenmue 3… on Kickstarter 【E3 2015】

In a peculiar yet hugely exciting move, Yu Suzuki, creator of the critically acclaimed, yet tragically unfinished, open-world action-adventure game Shenmue has appeared at the E3 trade show in Los Angeles to announce that the final chapter of the story is to see the light of day. But it will be funded by its fans rather than its parent company.

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It’s not the Grand Line, but One Piece has conquered a Guinness World Record

One of the biggest manga hits of the past 15 years is most certainly One Piece. You can talk about ninjas or titans, but the perennial favorite for top manga has been about those pirates of the Grand Line. Of the many treasures they have encountered during their journey, they have now uncovered something that is truly one of a kind, a Guinness World Record. The official One Piece website was happy to announce that author Eiichiro Oda and the manga One Piece are going in the record books as the comic book with the most issues published by a single author.

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Final Fantasy VII remake is officially announced, and the video is right here 【E3 2015】

A video game series doesn’t get to its fifteenth installment without a steady string of commercial and/or critical successes, and you’ll find plenty of both in publisher Square Enix’s Final Fantasy franchise. But even as many gamers are looking forward to the exploring, monster-fighting, and camping of Final Fantasy XV, it seems like just as many have been taking a bittersweet glance back at Final Fantasy VII and wistfully asking if Square Enix is ever going to update its aging masterpiece.

The answer is yes, Final Fantasy VII is getting a modern PlayStation 4 remake, and here’s the official video teaser that proves it.

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Culturally confusing Vietnamese Burger King found selling Japanese food

Recently our Southeast Asia correspondent Kowloon Kurosawa took a trip from his current residence in Cambodia to the neighboring country of Vietnam. Following standard RocketNews24 foreign travel protocol he soon made his way to a Burger King in Ho Chi Minh City.

However, what he found surprised even our cholestorol-hardened reporter. This Burger King has a special combo menu called Rice King. Not only that but it contained a teriyaki tonkatsu combo!

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Is any “fowl” play involved? Nope, Morioka Zoo’s animals just like to sleep in weird positions

Morioka Zoo in Morioka City, Iwate Prefecture has a host of both fierce and cuddly animals on its premises. Among the zoo’s current highlights are opportunities to see a baby giraffe, make dinner for the elephants, and feed raw meat to a lion. Oh, and did we mention that the animals there seem to have a penchant for looking dead while simply taking a snooze? 

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Man arrested for buying beef bowl with bloodstained cash, might also like his steak extra-rare

One unique feature of the Japanese restaurant scene is what’s called the shokken, literally “meal ticket,” system. At a shokken system restaurant customers select their meal and pay in advance at a vending machine near the entrance. The machine spits out a slip of paper which is then handed to the restaurant staff in exchange for the food.

Shokken are especially common at restaurants that specialize in budget-friendly fare like ramen and beef bowls, because they allow the restaurants to operate with a smaller staff to keep costs, and in turn the prices they charge, low. The shokken system eliminates the need for workers to spend time taking orders, ringing customers up, and giving change.

There are other upsides too, in that it’s often speedier and more accurate than placing an order with a waiter. Plus, the reduced amount of human interaction makes it a lot easier to pay with bloodstained bills, at least for a few months until someone catches on and the police haul you in.

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Japan’s 30 best travel destinations, as chosen by overseas visitors

Just in time for the peak summer travel season, website TripAdvisor has released its annual list of the highest-rated spots in Japan from its foreign users. With 30 amazing locations on the list, you’ll want to start your journey as soon as possible if your goal is to see them all, so let’s dive right in and take a look at this year’s picks.

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Pissed-off company president sues building owner for pee splash-back from urinals

Earlier this week, what is being hailed as Japan’s “trial of the century” by many (in our office) has come to an abrupt end. The Osaka District Court handed down some rough justice in the case of a company president who sued the building he was renting office space from to the tune of 840,000 yen (US$6,800).

The president’s claim that the building’s urinals had caused excessive splash-back of pee were dismissed due to several reasons including the president’s own “pee experiments” being deemed inadmissible by the courts.

Was the president a quack who didn’t know how to urinate correctly? Or was he a victim of greedy cost cutting landlords and toilet moguls? This is their story based on court documents.

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Just a photo of otaku taking video of video of people dressed like anime idols to promote movie

Although it’s not necessarily wrong to call Tokyo’s Akihabara neighborhood the anime capital of Japan, that’s actually a little bit of a simplification. Akihabara isn’t only the place to get your hands on the latest animation, but also video games, idol music CDs, printed comics, and a whole array of audio and video electronics.

In other words, Akihabara isn’t just about anime, but about media, and several forms came together when one Twitter user took a photograph of otaku taking videos of another video of real people dressed as anime characters to promote a new movie.

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