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Thinking about moving to Nara? Here are eight things that may surprise you!

Preston Phro
Oct 27, 2015
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Moving to Japan from another country can be a bit of a culture shock. Some handle the transition without any problems, and others can find it initially overwhelming. But it’s easy to forget that Japan isn’t one giant monolith, and the various prefectures can be wildly different—so much so that moving to a new prefecture can bring plenty of surprises even for those born and raised in Japan!

A great example is one of our own RocketNew24 Japan writers, Masami, who shares some of the things that surprised her after moving to Nara. Here are nine that may resonate with you!

100-yen water guns get super cool makeovers, make awesome costume accessories 【Photos】

Meg Murphy
Oct 27, 2015

Halloween is less than a week away! Do all of you have your costumes ready?

If you’re still looking to add a nifty additional touch, then you can do as these handy DIY-ers on Twitter did and turn inexpensive, 100-yen (US$0.84) water guns into clever, steampunk-ish accessories. All it takes is some paint and a little creativity!

Adorable animal earrings: The perfect accessory for any nature lover!

Preston Phro
Oct 27, 2015

Do you have ears? Do you wish they were a heck of a lot cuter? If so, we have the perfect product for you: Relax Cling Earrings! Featuring hedgehogs, chicks, and soaring birds, these animal-themed earrings are sure to please any pierced animal lover looking to make their earbuds twice as adorable!

Troll levels still abound in Mario Maker, Nintendo releases another sassy pigeon comic to help

Scott Wilson
Oct 27, 2015

In an effort to help alleviate the massive amount of horrible levels that have made it into the Super Mario Maker universe, Nintendo tasked its pigeon friend/Mario Maker extraordinaire Yamamura-san to show us how to correctly create a level. In the first comic, Yamamura-san literally poo-pooed all over novice-creator Mashiko’s level, and then gave her some homework to help her become a better builder.

But the first comic did little to alleviate the amount of terrible levels online, so Nintendo Japan has put out a sequel comic to try and clean up the mess. This time around, Yamamura-san checks on Mashiko’s homework and continues to offer sage level-building advice.

Does he give her level a star? Or is it an insta-skip? Read on to find out!

Catalogue featuring only “ugly” hair models helps us feel less awkward at the salon

Evie Nyan
Oct 27, 2015

Hands up everyone who hates getting a hair cut! The awkward small talk; the staring at your own mush in a mirror for an hour or more; feeling the need to pretend you love your finished cut even when you’re actually going to put a hat on the second you leave the salon—it’s all too much to bear sometimes.

While some people manage to have fun at the salon, others find it difficult simply communicating to their stylist the look they want. Sure, you could just take a cutout from a magazine with you, but what if the person in the photo is so much better-looking than you are? Cringe!

Luckily, the “Busa hair” (lit. “ugly hair”) catalogue—which features only less-than-good-looking hair models—is here to save you some embarrassment the next time you go for a trim!

Johnson Ting’s vision of the future is full of well-armed, gorgeously illustrated soldiers & cops

Preston Phro
Oct 27, 2015

It’s been a big year for Johnson Ting, one of Malaysia’s most celebrated artists. The concept designer won an award as one of his home country’s top ten young artists and a toy company is even releasing a figure based on his work. Despite all this and working as a designer for numerous high-profile companies, he’s managed to also post a host of gorgeous illustrations, paintings and CG images for the whole world to see. This is work that simply must be shared!

Breaking Fujoshi: Twitter user tries to unlock the code to girls who grow up “rotten”

Master Blaster
Oct 27, 2015

The fujoshi (“rotten girl”) subculture is well-established in Japan with its sizable population of girls and women who enjoy the past time of homoerotic fan art. Its members are often a contentious presence on the internet for their particular passion of sometimes corrupting young men’s adolescent heroes into love interests. Don’t get me wrong, that’s not to say Goku and Vegeta cuddling and making out itself isn’t right. It’s just not right for them.

Depending on your own parenting aims you may want to steer your young girl away from drawing pictures of unrealistically well-groomed samurai lying naked beneath the sheets together, or you may find it a relatively harmless pastime compared to something like airplane glue sniffing and thus want to encourage fujoshi tendencies in your young one.

Either way, one Twitter user claims to have unlocked the environmental conditions (seven in total) that make a young girl go fujoshi and presented it for peer evaluation on Twitter. But do they hold up to the scrutiny?

New Japanese commercial captures high school life with amazing blackboard chalk art animation

Oona McGee
Oct 27, 2015

For students all around the world, the day of a big test is one of the most nerve-racking of the entire school year. And when you’re sitting for your university exam in Japan, it’s like the final step of a long journey after months of solo studying, endless reading and many sleepless nights.

The student’s journey to the final exam has now been beautifully captured in a unique two-minute commercial that features the most fitting of canvases: the humble school blackboard. While students around the country have shown us their amazing talent for creating chalk-based works of art on classroom blackboards, this commercial brings chalkboard art to life with a moving animation that will simply blow you away.

Why does Japan love Halloween so much, and is it celebrating the holiday the right way?

Casey Baseel
Oct 27, 2015

As we’ve seen, Japan is really psyched about Halloween. The holiday has been steadily growing in popularity for the last decade, and with October 31 falling on a Saturday in 2015, this year’s celebration is likely to be Japan’s liveliest Halloween ever.

But how did Halloween become Japan’s second favorite foreign holiday, right after Christmas? And also, is Japan staying true to the spirit of the holiday, or is forcefully pressing it into its own domestic mold, as the country is wont to do with cultural imports?

Anime huggy pillows “walk” down the red carpet at Tokyo International Film Festival 【Video】

Casey Baseel
Oct 27, 2015

The Tokyo International Film Festival, as per its name, hosts luminaries of the movie world from around the globe. Kicking off the event is a gala ceremony in which guests walk down the red carpet to greet their fans and the press.

Local artists aren’t excluded from the festivities, though, and this being Japan, a number of high-profile anime works are also screened at the festival. But what do you do when your most recognizable star is a cute 2-D girl?

Simple, you walk down the red carpet holding an anime huggy pillow of her.

Rice, rice baby! Strains of Japanese rice get turned into cute anime girls on new packaging

Casey Baseel
Oct 27, 2015

Japan likes to think of the food it produces as being the highest-quality in the world, and that goes double for rice. As such, many bags of domestically grown rice are decorated with iconic Japanese imagery, such as a crane, the rising sun, or Mt. Fuji.

But in today’s modern age, there’s no surer visual shorthand for Japan than cute anime girls, which is exactly what you’ll find on these bags of rice from Yamagata Prefecture.

Buddhist schoolgirl idol group gets shut down for becoming too popular

Oona McGee
Oct 27, 2015

In Japan, there truly is an all-singing, all-dancing “idol” group for everything. From plus-sized beauties to macho men and octogenarians, if you’ve got a unique message and a catchy tune, there’ll be a niche audience out there waiting to share your next video and dance along with glow sticks at your next performance.

Just when we thought the happy-go-lucky, free-for-all nature of the amateur idol world had no boundaries, it seems there is one line that can’t be crossed: schoolgirls and religion. Meet the “Num-Num Girls”, a Buddhism-based schoolgirl pop group that has been shut down for becoming too popular.

Pigeon cuts in line, casually boards train in Japan【Video】

Oona McGee
Oct 27, 2015

A lot has been written about Japan’s incredible train culture. From carriages dressed up as anime characters to people who band together to rescue a fellow commuter, you don’t even have to get on a train to experience all the action; you can see it all first-hand from the platform itself.

That’s what one commuter found when they stumbled upon this little guy while waiting for the train in Japan. Caught on video, it shows an adventurous pigeon who doesn’t even flinch when the train arrives, instead walking up to the passenger doors, waiting for them to open and then hopping on board to find a seat.

Cardboard arcade cabinets could be the next must-have home furnishing for gamers

Cara Clegg
Oct 27, 2015

The company that brought us the Danbocchi—cardboard sound proof cubicles so you can karaoke to your heart’s content without annoying the neighbors—is back with yet another crazy cardboard creation we can’t help but find ourselves wanting.

Yes, gamers, now you can actually build a retro arcade gaming table in your own home!

Bookstore-styled Tokyo hostel has 1,700 books to read, bunks in the shelves to sleep next to them

Casey Baseel
Oct 27, 2015

Last summer, we heard about what sounded like the perfect place for lovers of travel and literature: a hotel in Tokyo designed like a bookstore and filled with reading material. It might sound like a fictitious flight of fancy, but Book and Bed Tokyo is very much real, and with its grand opening just days away, not only have pictures have surfaced of the unique accommodations, we now know how much it will cost to stay there and a little more about what kind of books it will have.

Nintendo taxis?! Peruvian cabs outfitted with Mario Kart 8 setups for rear passengers to play

Casey Baseel
Oct 27, 2015

Japanese taxis are pretty nice. They’ve got those cool doors that swing open and shut at the touch of a button, and the lace doilies they usually have across the rear parcel shelf add a nice touch of class.

Still, we’re finding ourselves feeling a little jealous of taxi patrons in Peru, where one company isn’t just providing swift transportation, but entertainment with a fleet of cabs equipped with Nintendo Wii U game consoles for passengers to play in the back seat during their ride.

That amazing Raiden cosplayer from Tokyo Game Show is back with a full video!【Video】

Preston Phro
Oct 27, 2015

You probably remember that incredible Raiden cosplay from this year’s Tokyo Game Show—the one with the moving mask that wowed pretty much everyone on Internet. We were always a bit bummed there wasn’t more to all the videos and photos, but now Masazi, the cosplayer behind the amazing outfit, has released a minute-long video showing off her suit in action!

Halloween parade invaded by the Dark Side with marching band stromtroopers and Star Wars floats

Preston Phro
Oct 26, 2015

Kawasaki Halloween is one of the largest Halloween celebrations in Japan, with numerous events towards the end of the month. Of course, the main draw is the parade, which was held just this past Sunday.

But this year’s parade featured something special, with cosplayers dressed as their favorite Star Wars characters. The Aomori Star Wars nebuta floats were even there, making their first appearance in the Kanto area! But the perhaps the coolest part was the stormtrooper marching band! Check out all the awesome photos below!

Official Nintendo comic has sassy pigeon explain how to not be a horrible troll in Mario Maker

Scott Wilson
Oct 26, 2015

So we all know that Super Mario Maker for the Wii U is awesome. With everything from music levels to ridiculously hard challenges to millions and millions of other courses in between, you can never run out of things to do.

However with so many levels out there, plenty of them are far from perfect, and some of them outright troll the player. So in an effort to try to educate the gaming populace in the art of not making horrible levels, Nintendo Japan has released some helpful comics to help us all become better builders.

Ready to be educated in the way of making Mario by a pigeon? Then read on!

Get your Christmas caramel toffee fix with sweet Starbucks Japan holiday drinks and goodies

Kay
Oct 26, 2015

It’s that time of year again! Starbucks Japan has announced their line of holiday beverages and goodies! Yes, it’s amazing how quickly a year seems to go by, isn’t it?

This year, the coffee chain will be offering their customers seasonal goodness featuring caramel and toffee (and plenty of whipped cream), and if that’s how they’re expressing their holiday spirit, well, we have to say, “Bring the holiday sweetness on!!!”