Just how clean are Japan’s high-tech public restroom bidet-equipped toilets?

After cars and video game consoles, fancy toilets just might be Japan’s best-known technological achievement. In a society that prizes cleanliness, it’s no surprise that being able to push a button and have a warm stream of water wash your backside has become one creature comfort many can’t do without.

As such, just about everyone in Japan is happy to have a washlet, as bidet-equipped toilets are called here, in their home. Some people can’t help but wonder, though, if they’re spraying someone else’s fecal matter back up on themselves when they use a washlet in a public restroom.

Read More

Honesty experiment in China ends with losses of 20 percent for participating convenience stores

Two stores in China trialled unstaffed shops this week, in an experiment to see whether customers would pay up without being prompted.

Convenience stores in Beijing and Hangzhou were temporarily replaced with automated payment systems and advertised as “completely unstaffed”. Sadly, the experiment was not an unqualified success. While most customers proved to be honest, some chose to pay only a fraction of their bill, and in some case nothing at all.

Read More

Store your captured cards and other belongings in these Cardcaptor Sakura handbags

Being in elementary school, Sakura Kinomoto, heroine of magical girl anime and manga franchise Cardcaptor Sakura, can cram everything she needs for the day into her randoseru, the boxy backpack kids across Japan start wearing when they enter first grade. But assuming you’re not a primary school student (or Hollywood actress Zooey Deschanel), odds are you want something a bit more mature to hold your belongings.

That doesn’t mean you have to give up on sporting some Sakura style, though, as two new Cardcaptor Sakura handbags are being offered from anime fashion company Super Groupies.

Read More

Japanese Internet users amused by CIA Twitter feed, led there by United States Forces

Public programs and government agencies are going out of their way to reach and connect with people as much as possibly, creating mascots and getting on social media like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. The United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) joined Twitter a year ago, and while many may fear the agency, the CIA saw this #Twitterversary as the perfect occasion to reach out and try to find common ground with the people of the Internet. So, they compiled a list of five reasons why you should be following them on Twitter, and it didn’t take long for Japanese users to find the tweets! Can you guess which one caught their attention and got them all aflutter?

Read More

Who needs fast food? Tokyo restaurant has awesome cutlet lunch sets for less than five bucks

Given Tokyo’s reputation as one of the most expensive cities on the planet, you might think that dining out in Japan’s capital requires either a large fistful of yen or the fortitude to put up with a growling stomach after an undersized meal that leaves you only half-full. That’s not always the case, though, and it’s not like budget dining restricts your options to Yoshinoya or 7-Eleven, either.

We recently found a restaurant right in the heart of Tokyo that has filling, delicious lunches that are so cheap, we sort of felt guilty eating there.

Read More

Samsung invented a crazy mirror that can show you how clothing looks on you before you buy

In the future, Samsung wants your mirror to act as a virtual fitting room.

At an event in Hong Kong, the company unveiled a new type of mirror that also functions as a screen with cameras inside.

The mirror would likely be aimed at retail stores, enabling shoppers to potentially view information about the product they’re trying on or digitally try on items before they purchase them.

Read More

Japan has a pill to cure your pre-speech jitters, and it’s got carrots in it

Agaranzai is a new Japanese herbal medicine which claims to lessen headaches and anxiety brought on by public speaking. Basically, it’s marketed as a cure for the jitters. The makers suggest taking it before making a speech at a wedding, giving an important presentation at work, or going to a job interview. But what’s in it, anyway? And should we buy it?

Read More

Well, we didn’t ask for it, anyway. But it’s here, so somebody probably did. Was it you? It was you, wasn’t it?  You and your bizarrely specific fetishes, you big weirdo. Now you’ve gone and opened the Pandora’s box of erotic manga parody, sexy Crayon Shin-chan‘s arrival is only a matter of time.

Nozoemon is a new manga series which replaces Nobita-kun with a horny high school kid and Doraemon with a cyborg from the future who takes the form of a very young girl. Just wait until you read about the hijinks they get up to.

Read More

Can you spot what’s wrong with this picture? One young salaryman couldn’t

There’s a Japanese phrase, yutori sedai, that you’ll hear in just about any established company after the new hires start showing mid-spring. The term refers to people who’ve grown up in Japan’s modern, less strict educational system (which is still stricter than those in many other countries), and while yutori sedai literally translates as “relaxed generation,” it’s real meaning is closer to “damned kids today,” as it’s almost always used in a derogatory sense by an older worker who’s exasperated at a younger employee’s lack of proper manners, business acumen, or just plain common sense.

A lot of times, the people muttering under their breath about the yutori sedai do so out of a combination of stubbornly resisting change and convenient memory gaps that don’t include any of the many mistakes they made in their own youth, but this experienced salaryman may have a point, given that his yutori sedai coworker can’t seem to grasp the finer points of how to hang up a phone.

Read More

Now you can take a virtual 3-D tour of Gunkanjima, Japan’s “ghost island” 【Video】

Hashima, also known as Gunkanjima, “Battleship Island,”  is an uninhabited island off the coast of Nagasaki which James Bond fans may recognise as the spooky deserted island of bad guy Silva in Skyfall. Access to Hashima, which has been abandoned since the 1970s, is highly restricted – tours do run to the island, but visitors are only permitted to access certain viewing points, and are not allowed anywhere near the crumbling buildings for safety reasons.

But now that researchers from Nagasaki University have created a stunning digital 3-D model of the entire island, you can explore the area from the comfort of your own armchair! The team used camera drones and laser scanners to capture 28,000 images of the site, splicing them together to render the island, and you can check out the results below!

Read More

Wouldn’t it be great to travel back in time to feudal Japan? Eh, probably not, reveals poll

We are pretty lucky to be living in the 21st century with all the mod-cons at our fingertips. Spare a thought for poor Saburo, a character in the TV drama series Nobunaga Concerto based on the manga by Ayumi Ishii, where he finds himself traveling back in time.

The series is a comical depiction of what happens when Saburo jumps from the present day to Japan’s feudal era, but if we all suddenly found ourselves without the modern conveniences we love, would we really be laughing? Probably not, as revealed by a poll of what viewers would hate if they found themselves sent back in time.

Read More

Did you spot the Studio Ghibli cameo in Marvel’s Avengers: Age of Ultron?

With Avengers: Age of Ultron, Marvel and Disney have once again struck gold by putting all of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes in front of the camera at the same time. And really, is it any surprise that’s what moviegoers want to see? After all, who can resist the combination of snarky Iron Man, stalwart Captain America, anachronistic Thor, and hulking Hulk?

Oh, and also the brief cameo by an iconic figure from one of Studio Ghibli’s most popular movies ever.

Read More

There’s a reason why there are fewer green Lego bricks than any other color

Lego building blocks are a fantastic toy for growing kids and adults alike. These snap-together bricks allow you build pretty much anything, regardless of whether you follow the instructions included in the box or throw caution to the wind and build whatever pops into your head. With the success of The Lego Movie and a sequel and spin-off movies in the works, the outlook for this 65-year-old toy has never been better.

But there is an alleged little-known secret hidden in the core of Lego’s sensibility. If you take a random sampling of Lego bricks, you will notice that there are far fewer green ones than any other color. The reason why may surprise you.

Read More

Unexpected, hot summer item for Japanese men is also catching on in Korea

With summer well on its way for most of us in the northern hemisphere, people have begun to break out their T-shirts, sundresses, and shorts, showing off more skin and allowing their bodies to soak up all that vitamin D it missed during the winter months.

But for some people, the increased skin exposure can make them a bit more self conscious, be it about their weight, body shape or pale skin (in my case at least…). For some men in Japanhaving too much leg hair can be a bit of an embarrassment, so before shedding those long slacks and jeans in favor of cooler, airier shorts, some Japanese guys are picking up this much talked-about “Leg-Trimmer“.

People are raving about it online, posting before-and-after photos on forums, and the murmurs have even made their way over to neighboring South Korea.

Read More

Kitty mistakes cat tower for launch pad, tries to blast off for space

You might think that this is a post about cool cat tree for your living room, but take a closer look and you’ll see something even more… interesting.

Read More

30 random things Japanese girls say that annoy Japanese men

Sometimes, girls say the darndest things… but you’d be surprised at the variety of utterances that get Japanese men’s eyebrows twitching in rage. We rounded up some of our Japanese male writers to compile a list of 30 things Japanese girls say that really grind Japanese guys’ gears!

Any guesses what made the list? Trust us, some of these came straight out of left field.

Read More

Eww, what’s that on your ear?! “Kimo-kawa” bug jewellery’s totally in right now!

Kimo-kawa“, or kimo-kawaii, is a particularly interesting little Japanese oxymoronic phrase which means “gross-cute“. And it perfectly sums up these totally disgusting stag beetle earrings from wacky retailer Village Vanguard…

Read More

Japanese man arrested for pimping out partner to over 150 men

It’s unknown to what extent pornography has had an effect on human sex culture, but as the internet has gotten bigger and society has become somewhat more sexually open, the amount of voyeurs getting their jollies watching videos of other people having sex has also increased. For some couples, that means taking voyeuristic fantasies to the next level by watching their lovers have sex with other people.

The problem? When your partner isn’t a willing participant, as is the case behind the recent arrest of a man in Chiba prefecture facing prostitution charges by police for pimping out the woman he was seeing.

Read More

Our Japanese writer tries the “hold a coke with your boobs” challenge

If you spend a lot of time on the internet, like all of the RocketNews24 team does, then you can’t help but notice when a new “do this stupid thing” challenge starts going aroud. Whether it involves chugging cinnamon, blowing up your lips, or scarfing hot peppers, it’s all pretty silly stuff that normally we’re way too sophisticated to have a go at.

But something about the “hold a coke with your boobs” challenge captivated the attention of our Japanese writer P.K. So much, in fact, that he decided to have a go for himself! Warning, this post is potentially NSFW for everyone who doesn’t work in the RN24 office!

Read More

Math-solving phone app is the quickest way to self-study, skip homework, and/or fail your tests

I think we can all agree that math is a pretty handy thing to understand, right? A basic concept of things like fractions and algebraic equivalents is what keeps us from getting taken advantage of by con men who make such tempting offers as trading two of their shiny monies (or even three!) for our one paper money when the latter is actually of greater value.

Still, basic math is all about following the proper procedures to arrive at the one true solution, which is why you don’t get partial credit for having the wrong answer on your math assignment just because you took a novel approach and wrote the numbers with nice penmanship. As such, you can program a machine to spit out the answer in a fraction of a second, and with a new smartphone app, all you have to do is snap a picture of the math problem, and let the app take over from there.

Read More

  1. 1
  2. ...
  3. 1242
  4. 1243
  5. 1244
  6. 1245
  7. 1246
  8. 1247
  9. 1248
  10. ...
  11. 1733