The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is considering changing the design of the pages of Japanese passports in time for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
Literally, COZENI is a series of iPhone home button stickers which come in the shape of any of Japan’s many coins. At first weren’t sure why anyone would need a miniature coin in place of a home button, but on closer inspection we were actually pretty impressed at how cool they looked.
To test out these cute little 3-D stickers, we went ahead and purchased the entire series of COZENI and found that they are more multi-purpose than you might think!
Just about a month ago, the Japanese Internet got all aflutter over something that’s been coined the “low-cut turtleneck.” If those two terms sound contradictory to you, perhaps you’ll find the term we used, “boob shirt,” to be more descriptive.
But fashion trends don’t last forever, and it seems some designers are already moving on from the original design. While the initial boob shirt provided a window for the top of the bust to peek out of, the newest version spruces up a woman’s breasts by combining it with the other thing the Internet can’t seem to get enough of: cute kitty cats.
Valentine’s Day is fast approaching and shops around Japan are already getting out their red and pink goods. Not white though, those are saved for a whole other day. Candy and flowers are usually the items of choice for this romantic day, but if your Valentine has less of a sweet tooth and finds flowers uneventful, we have the perfect substitution for you: LOVE Kitsune udon!
From the super-efficient bullet train cleaning team that whizzes in and out in a seven-minute turnaround, to stories of entertainingly brilliant station customer service, there are heaps of things to love about Japan’s rail system, which ranks amongst the cleanest and most punctual in the world.
One other cool thing about Japanese trains – or perhaps about Japanese society in general – is that if you lose something, you stand a pretty good chance of getting it back again. Even valuable items like smartphones or wallets often end up handed in to lost property and returned to their original owner.
Today, though, we bring you a collection of some of the more unusual items left on trains around Japan – things that made other commuters go “Huh? Why’d someone have that on the train anyway?”
You know the feeling: you’re a busy Japanese salaryman going on a business trip overseas, waiting for your international flight at Narita Airport, when suddenly you realize that you forgot to buy a present to take to the foreigners you’re going to visit.
Thankfully, now there’s a solution to that problem: sushi t-shirts.
You would think that a country like Japan, rich as it is in both traditional culture and technical innovation, as well as plenty of weird and wacky things you’ll never see elsewhere, would be a huge hit with tourists. But as it turns out, Japan is actually not such a popular destination for people traveling abroad. Join us after the jump to find out why.
Late last year shower specialists Oxygenics released sets of shower heads featuring the faces of Disney characters Mickey and Minnie Mouse. They were warmly received by moms in America, who immediately saw them as a way to get kids motivated for bath-time and praised their easy water-pressure controls.
People in Japan saw the character shower heads quite differently, however, with some even going as far to call them “demeaning” and saying that “I don’t know if this is appropriate for children.”
Japan sure loves its parfaits, and while they all come with tasty toppings, the most highly regarded come crowned with fruit. But what if you turned the concept on its head, and instead took a piece of premium produce, then added a cone’s worth of ice cream on top?
You’d have our newest dessert infatuation: the fresh melon soft serve.
Cardcaptor Sakura is in the midst of a revival right now. We’re not sure what’s sparked the renewed interest in creative team Clamp’s magical girl franchise, as we’re still a year away from the manga’s 20th anniversary, and three years from that mark for its anime adaptation.
Still, plucky elementary school student and protagonist Sakura Kinomoto seems to be popping up more and more these days. A recent poll of anime fans named Cardcaptor Sakura the series they most want rerun on TV, and just last month we saw the release of a collection of cosmetics based on it. Now, in the latest round of new goodies, you can pair your manga makeup with some cute and stylish Cardcaptor Sakura shoes.
Cleaning is not a fun task, but it’s not so bad if someone else does it for you, right? One little fluff-ball of a hamster does not agree. When Mochitaro’s owner opened his cage to give it a little scrubbing, Mochitaro was in despair.
We here at RocketNews24 love all things Japan and Asia so much that sometimes it comes as a slight shock when the rest of the world doesn’t share our passion. Still, with the advent of the internet and the amount of entertainment Japan exports to the west (Dragonball, Pokémon, Final Fantasy, etc), it’s no huge surprise to find kids in far-flung places who are pretty familiar with Japan and can name at least a few J-pop groups. Still, many teens out there don’t really get much exposure to Japanese stuff, so when they do, the results are pretty amusing to watch! In this video, which has piqued the interest of quite a few people online in Japan, regular American teens watch three J-pop music videos (from groups Perfume, EXILE and AKB48) and give their thoughts.
Apart from cats, girls and geeky stuff, food is another aspect we often cover on RocketNews24, and among the many snacks and delicacies we write about, ramen is definitely one of the more popular recurring topics that has made a presence in our archives. Yes, we’ve seen quite a portion of the endless possibilities the noodle dish has; from canned ramen to black ramen to ramen in donuts, sushi and even yarn, but we seldom zoom in on the many characteristic establishments that provide the delectable noodles we enjoy.
Sure, you might have seen a ramen shop even in your local neighborhood, but they’re probably not as amusing without these quirky sights some Japanese Twitter users have spotted at ramen shops in Japan!
With the hundreds of TV episodes and multiple theatrical features that make up the franchise, for decades fans have had their eyes fixed on Sailor Moon. Now, though, they’re getting the opportunity to turn things around and fix Sailor Moon to their eyes, with a new line of decorative contact lenses from anime’s most successful magical girl series ever.
What happens when you take the merits of both 2-D and 3-D animation and combine them to make a new hybrid form of animation technology? Unfathomable as it may seem, that’s precisely the type of technology that Japanese company Live2D is in the midst of developing. Their latest achievement, known as “Live2D Euclid,” is software that is able to transform your 2-D drawings into a 3-D reality while still retaining the look and details of a pen and paper illustration. In other words, it looks like “a hand-drawn picture that will move in the way you want it to.”
Still confused? Check out the introductory video after the jump to see this new technology that is revolutionizing the way we animate characters in anime and video games!
Plastic modelers revel in the realism; they build their models and then painstakingly paint and alter them to look like the real thing in miniature scale. It takes a keen eye to blend just the right kinds of paint to achieve that dinged up metal look of a vehicle that’s been through real combat. And the right accessories will transform plastic toys into a scene of army veterans hard at work.
Model kits like to include little extras like shelves, tools and other related things you would expect to find. But sometimes the kits include an extra that seems so out-of-place that you call up the company to figure out if they made some sort of mistake. You’ll never guess what was included in this plastic model kit for a German ammo-loading crew from Tamiya. The answer is going to be meowtastic.
The other day while out shopping for computer parts like that-thing-that-connects-an-old-type-iPod-to-a-PC, one Twitter user stumbled upon a truly great deal. For only 200 yen (US$1.70) you can get…um, you know…one of those “things-that-let-you-make-a-USB-into-a-plug.”
Last Monday in Japan was Coming of Age Day, the national holiday which celebrates everyone who’s reached the age of 20, and thus legal adulthood, during the past 12 months. 20 is also the drinking age in Japan, and while safeguards against minors getting boozed up are pretty lax in the country, many people decide to exercise their newly acquired legal right to get as tanked up as humanly possible, which probably had something to do with the childishly inconsiderate behavior and scuffles with the police that broke out during some of the festivities in Okinawa.
Not every part of Japan was marked with lawlessness that day, though. As a matter of fact, a coming of age ceremony in Chiba Prefecture featured a special appearance by Chibatman, who showed that he speaks Japanese in the same extra gravely voice heard in the English versions of his most recent movies.
One of the great things about curry is how versatile it is. The standard way to eat the spicy dish in Japan is with carrots, potatoes, onions, and pork, but you can also toss in chicken, shrimp, beef, or tuna. Things are wide open when it comes to vegetables, too, with some people opting for eggplant, spinach, or tomatoes.
But why limit yourself to just meats and veggies? One curry restaurant in Tokyo feels its menu should be inclusive of the entire food pyramid, and will fix you a plate of curry rice that represents the fruit and dairy groups in the forms of curry with strawberries and even ice cream.
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