Bringing you yesterday's news from Japan and Asia, today.
Hello Kitty has been quite the busy cat celebrating her 40th birthday. Earlier this year, she was making rounds at theatres in Japan dressed as characters from Rurouni Kenshin, and now she has crossed the ocean to make an appearance at McDonald’s in Korea. This time, she’s cosplaying as some of her fellow Sanrio mates. Check out the cute kitty after the jump!
Earlier this week, we looked at popular baby names making the rounds this year in Japan and now we’ve discovered some data on what Japanese named their pets in 2014. The little guy above may be right to look concerned because almost every name on the list is food-related…
The serialized nature of manga means booming success can really sneak up on artists and publishers alike. When Masashi Kishimoto turned in his pages for the very first chapter of his new series Naruto back in 1999, he probably didn’t know he was about to create one of the most popular manga ever, but that’s exactly what he did.
Kishimoto didn’t just earn himself 15 solid years of steady work, though, but also the continual march of tight deadlines that come with writing and drawing a hit manga. Despite being one of the biggest names in the industry, Kishimoto had only found time to give one TV interview during Naruto’s serialization, but now that the series has finally come to a close, he’s appeared before the camera again, in a special interview held in the studio where he put pen to paper and brought one of Japan’s most beloved comics to life.
For the most part, cookies in Japan are crunchy little things. One very notable exception, though, is confectioner Fujiya’s Country Ma’am line, which are soft, chewy, and also absolutely delicious.
What makes Country Ma’am cookies so good is how moist they are, and now confectioner Fujiya is taking that one step further by turning them into a drink! We got our hands on a few cans of this miraculous beverage, and while it’s still early in our relationship, we think we may be in love.
Japan tends to be a very drug-shy country. Most people you talk to will say that they’ve never gone anywhere near substances like marijuana, and according to a Public Library of Science survey, 98 times out of 100 they’re telling you the truth.
And yet you might be surprised to hear that there is an abundance of cannabis growing wild all over the northern island of Hokkaido. But before you go booking a ticket, you may want to learn why.
After 40 years of hard work, Japan’s precious Hello Kitty character (affectionately known as Kitty-chan in Japan), has brought Japanese “kawaii” to all corners of the globe. It hasn’t been all fun and games for her though; she has had to work really hard to keep her parent company, Sanrio, afloat.
But now, thanks to Kitty-chan’s popularity overseas and her success branching into other markets, Sanrio isn’t just floating, it’s positively surfing on waves of international profit.
It will come as a surprise to many that the biggest online shopping day in the world is not Cyber Monday, but November 11.
China’s Singles Day, held on a date made up of auspicious number ones, has evolved into an online shopping bonanza for retailers (remember the guy who chose to declare his love by buying 99 new iPhones?). And Singles Day spending keeps going up and up: this year, Chinese consumers spent a record-breaking 57.1 billion yuan (US $9.3 billion) with Alibaba Group in 24 hours.
Not everyone was happy with their purchases, though, as disgruntled shoppers took to social networking sites to post sad selfies of clothes that weren’t quite as fabulous as they were expecting.
One of the first things every new pet owner learns is to never feed your furball at the table. You only have to give in once, and you’ll spend the rest of your days fending off kitty with a fork and spitting fur out of each mouthful as your adorable pet gets a little overinvolved in your meal times. In my house it’s got to the stage where I can’t even butter a slice of bread without one of my kitties attempting to lick the knife, and I’ve had to remove the other cat’s head from the refrigerator before closing the door so many times it’s beyond a joke. But what are you supposed to do when your pet looks up at you with those big, round eyes and begs you for a treat? Just see if you can watch this video of kitties begging for fishy snacks without melting!
Quick, what is the geekiest thing you can imagine ever possibly happening? Is it four grown adults dressed like Mario characters dancing a Mario-themed, choreographed dance to classic Mario music, on a stage replete with several thousand-dollar Mario-themed props, in front of a crowd that is only passively aware of the Mario franchise at best, plus those guys from Duck Dynasty and some shirtless guy?
Well, if you were thinking of that oddly specific scenario, you are way off base, because one couple on Dancing with the Stars just made Mario-themed dancing about the coolest, most mainstream thing around with a beautifully choreographed routine that is proving a major YouTube hit.
The Japanese news site Gadget Tsuushin has unveiled its choices for the Anime Ryuukougo Taishou 2014, or the “Great Anime Buzzword Awards.” The winners are:
North Korea has put together a secret army of computer hackers that it uses to disrupt South Korean military options and break into US military computers.
It might seem strange that North Korea has a dedicated cyber-warfare army unit. After all, only a few hundred people in the country even have access to the internet. But the country has worked to establish an elite group of hackers.
North Korean defectors say that the country actively searches for schoolchildren who display mathematical talent, and then trains them up in elite universities to become experts in hacking.
If you grew up in the ’90s, chances are the original PlayStation was a part of your life. Arriving on the console scene long after rivals Nintendo and Sega, PlayStation was an altogether different kind of beast. Its games shipped on CDs, it boasted spiffy three-dimensional graphics, and one of its flagship titles even featured music by abrasive electro pop group The Prodigy. It may have been a dull grey slab of plastic, but PlayStation was the console that all the cool kids wanted.
By some cruel trick played on us by the forces of nature, Sony’s original PlayStation turns 20 years old today. This makes us feel tremendously bitter and old, but at the same time we thought this would be a good opportunity to look back at some of the great games that came into being through the console, and also to revisit the surprisingly dramatic tale of how PlayStation was born.
Two decades ago, Sony had displayed about as much skill in producing video games as Nintendo had Hollywood movies. Sure, Sony had published games sporadically under its Sony Imagesoft brand, but it’s hard to build much consumer goodwill with such a small catalogue of titles, especially when most of said titles are terrible.
Then, on December 3, 1994, the company launched the original PlayStation. While the 3DO and CD-i of fellow electronics manufacturers Panasonic and Phillips would both end in ignominious failure, Sony would go on to slice itself a very large piece of the pie in its new industry, dominating two generations of console gaming and remaining competitive ever since.
Of course, hardware isn’t worth much without fun games to play on it. Thankfully, Sony’s systems had plenty of hits, as shown by a poll of Japanese gamers’ 20 favorite PlayStation games.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then how much is a pixel worth? We guess that really depends on how many pixels are in a piece of art. The following works by @1041uuu certainly capture more than your ordinary dots of color. You are going to wish your life was as fantastic as these nostalgic, creative and inspired GIFs capturing everyday life in Japan.
It’s hard to believe that 13 years have passed since Hayao Miyazaki’s classic Spirited Away, otherwise known as Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi, first came onto the world scene. The film holds a special place in my heart for being the first, and to this day favorite, Studio Ghibli film that I ever saw.
So imagine my delight when all these years later, a Japanese web user uploaded an excerpt from an interview with Miyazaki in which he sheds further light on one of the final scenes in the movie–the one in which Sen/Chihiro is given one chance to pick out her transformed parents from among a group of pigs to break the curse on them once and for all. Exactly how does she know that none of the pigs are her parents?
In celebration of 2015, Baskin Robbins Japan has created a special flavor inspired by sheep, this year’s animal according to the Chinese zodiac. And while it may not actually taste like lamb, it has enough imagery inspired by the woolen animal to make you say, “BAA!”
You may think choosing a name for your kid is hard, but in the West, we have it easy. All we have to choose is the name. Here in Japan, parents-to-be also have to choose what characters they want to write it with, a decision that has to take into account the relative auspiciousness of the number of strokes it takes to write, how well-known a particular reading is, and even if the government will accept the name they finally settle on!
Like trends for particular names, there are trends in the use of particular kanji or Chinese characters, too. Insurer Meiji Yasuda has just published the most common names this year and the kanji used for them, so read on to see what the hippest babies are sporting.
One of the biggest buzzwords of the year in Japan has been kabe-don. A staple of girls’ comics in Japan for years, kabe-don, literally “wall-pound,” has traditionally been the domain of guys clumsily expressing their feelings while leaning against the wall and fencing in the object of their amour with their outstretched arm.
We live in an age of increasing gender equality, though. Today, woman govern nations, helm corporations, and are highly capable of wreaking terrible violence upon their targets with their bare hands. As such, it’s only natural to assume that women are gradually shattering the barriers that have made the world of kabe-don practitioners a boys’ club until now, and as proof, we present these 10 videos of women flipping the script and showing off their kabe-don skills.
Everyone who has young children and iPhones has probably plucked it from a pair of little hands at one time or another and found that it was completely locked down for one minute because of too many invalid PIN entries.
For most it’s a reasonably minor inconvenience, but for one man in China it became a lifelong commitment as he was asked to wait about 45 years for his next chance to remember his personal identification number for his iPhone 4s. Really though, if he can’t remember it by then, it’s safe to say he never will.
One of Japan’s most popular cooking shows is Three-Minute Cooking. Broadcast by Nippon TV and sponsored by condiment maker Kewpie, the program does exactly what it promises, teaching people to make quick, tasty meals that take just three minutes of cooking.
Three-Minute Cooking started in 1963, though. In the busy 21st century, who can afford the luxury of spending that much time in the kitchen? It’s time for a faster, more modern way to cook dinner, which is where this video comes in with its demonstration of how to cook fried shrimp in just three seconds.
One of Japan’s most beautiful hot spring towns announces new limits on number of day trippers
Ghibli’s Princess Mononoke teams up with Foxfire for outdoor apparel collaboration【Photos】
The Japan Poop Society is making movements to protect people’s health
Flying dango: Unique tourist site where Japanese sweets are flown to you over a gorge
Made In Japan Fender Limited Edition Hello Kitty Stratocaster now on sale in Japan
History’s highest sumo wrestling and geisha dance to take place at Tokyo Skytree observation deck
Samurai ritual suicide contest cancelled by organizer in west Japan
The oldest tunnel in Japan is believed to be haunted, and strange things happen when we go there
Clever and cute cat keyhole bra is only one-fourth of lingerie set’s feline charms 【Photos】
Haunted hospital near Mt Fuji re-opens after renovation at Fuji-Q Highland, and it’s terrifyingOne of Japan’s most beautiful hot spring towns announces new limits on number of day trippersGhibli’s Princess Mononoke teams up with Foxfire for outdoor apparel collaboration【Photos】
Japanese job-quitting service contacted by other job-quitting service because employee wants to quit
After cancelling Halloween, Tokyo’s Shibuya neighborhood cancels New Year’s Eve too
Mario Kart Happy Meal toys arrive at McDonald’s Japan, and SoraNews24 has the whole set!【Photos】
Sanrio and magical girl anime PreCure join forces for new merch line【Photos】
Tokyo park’s sea of clouds, nighttime illumination, and cosplay days make now perfect time to visit
Beautiful Japanese garden green tea crepes waiting in Tokyo’s historical Asakusa neighborhoodSamurai ritual suicide contest cancelled by organizer in west Japan
American jackass tourist arrested after carving name into gate at Tokyo’s Meiji Shrine【Video】
Nintendo’s controller capsule toys are so cool, even the machine you buy them from is awesome【Pics】One of Japan’s most beautiful hot spring towns announces new limits on number of day trippers
Tokyo Disneyland loses top-attendance crown for Japanese theme parks for second year in a rowGhibli’s Princess Mononoke teams up with Foxfire for outdoor apparel collaboration【Photos】
Ghibli Park debuts first winter illumination display with Howl’s Moving Castle theme
Pringles releases a limited-edition sweet flavour in Japan
What’s the deal with akebi, the perfectly purple, alien-like fruit that’s in season now in Japan?Sanrio and magical girl anime PreCure join forces for new merch line【Photos】Japanese job-quitting service contacted by other job-quitting service because employee wants to quitAfter cancelling Halloween, Tokyo’s Shibuya neighborhood cancels New Year’s Eve too
McDonald’s new Happy Meals offer up cute and practical Sanrio lifestyle goods
Foreign tourists on Shinkansen bullet train break suitcase etiquette, angering local passengers
[Deleted] Article written for April Fool’s Day 2018
Japanese government to make first change to romanization spelling rules since the 1950s
Foreigner’s request for help in Tokyo makes us sad for the state of society
Ghibli founders Toshio Suzuki and Hayao Miyazaki contribute to Japanese whisky Totoro label design
Japanese convenience store Family Mart announces abolishment of eat-in spaces
Princesses, fruits, and blacksmiths: Study reveals the 30 most unusual family names in Japan
Life-size vibrating Legend of Zelda Master Sword for sale from Nintendo【Photos】
Studio Ghibli releases free-download board game — Here’s how to play it without reading Japanese
History’s highest sumo wrestling and geisha dance to take place at Tokyo Skytree observation deck
Samurai ritual suicide contest cancelled by organizer in west Japan
The oldest tunnel in Japan is believed to be haunted, and strange things happen when we go there
Clever and cute cat keyhole bra is only one-fourth of lingerie set’s feline charms 【Photos】
Haunted hospital near Mt Fuji re-opens after renovation at Fuji-Q Highland, and it’s terrifying
Japan’s new frozen sushi DIY kit – Great foodie fun, or cold-hearted abomination?【Taste test】
Tokyo’s famous Lost in Translation hotel is closed
New Ghibli papercraft kit gives you a little Princess Mononoke forest on your desk【Photos】
An overnight trip on the Sunrise Izumo, Japan’s awesome Tokyo-Shimane sleeper train【Photos】
Spice up your undergarments with fashion cues from the feline world in cute new cat lingerie
Do bears strike first with their left paw when attacking people? Japan wants to know
DJ Pikachu and DJ Gengar to pump up the volume at Universal Studios Japan’s Halloween Show 2023
Sanrio and magical girl anime PreCure join forces for new merch line【Photos】