Featured

Internet wishes Attack on Titan’s Reiner a happy birthday, things get just a little weird

While some may dread their birthdays, we like to think everyone deserves the chance to have their existence celebrated. Heck, even if you’re not a real person, you still deserve to have a happy birthday, right? Especially if you’re a shape-shifting titan!

That’s right, in case you missed it, August 1 was none other than Reiner Braun’s birthday! And considering how popular Attack on Titan is, it’s no surprise that adoring fans pulled out all the stop to celebrate. Though we have to admit, we think they probably could have left a few stops in place…

Read More

Step into a different dimension in this breathtaking life-sized kaleidoscope

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to walk into a human-sized kaleidoscope? If the thought has crossed your mind but there is nothing of the sort to be found in your neighborhood, you can now live vicariously through the following photographs.

Introducing Wink Space, a work of art made by a pair of Japanese designers at an arts festival last year. Wait till you see its exquisite design–it’s absolutely spellbinding!

Read More

Creepy creatures from the seabed that you can eat!【Taste Test】

Although Japanese food is known the world over and Japanese restaurants can be found in almost any major city these days, many people may not be aware of a few of the finer Japanese delicacies–such as the creepy creatures from the bottom of the sea–that you can eat.

When you think of the seabed, if you think of a place that is dark, murky, and full of scary creatures such as giant squid and sea monsters, then perfect! Because today we’re going to meet some of those guys’ roommates.

Join our not-so-intrepid island reporter who prefers to pass when it comes to dining on the low-life relegated to the muck on the seabed. She skips out on the taste tests and instead grabs an unsuspecting foreign visitor to try out some of Japan’s more esoteric treats.

Read More

And the most popular video game developer in Japan is…

Whether you’re an avid gamer with over 100 titles in your library or you prefer to buy only new installments of your favorite series, chances are you have a favorite video game developer or two in mind. In an attempt to draw out the most popular names, one recent internet poll asked 500 Japanese men and women to share their opinions about their favorite game developers.

Can you guess the top three in the correct order? 

Read More

No water, no cooking oil, no yogurt: The new strict bus rules in Urumqi, China

With an ever-expanding list of banned items and never-ending security lines filled with personnel and machines bent on examining every inch of your body, air travel seems destined to eventually become one giant cavity search. And while you think you are safe from this kind of annoyance when you are on ground-based transportation systems, the Chinese city of Urumqi recently proved that they can make traveling by bus just as terrible when they banned liquids onboard. To enforce this already hated ban, local authorities have assigned at least two security guards at every bus stations along the more than 100 bus routes in the city.

Read More


  • Aug 3, 2014

In the mood for a little meat? We try “manga meat” chicken from Family Mart!【Taste Test】

One of the manga/anime items that has long caught the fancy of the Japanese public is, interestingly, a kind of meat that has come to be known as “manga meat” (manga niku), or sometimes also as “primeval meat” (genshi niku). From the mammoth meat that appeared in the 1970’s anime First Human Giatrus (yes, the story was set in the stone age and it was supposed to be actual mammoth meat!) to meats appearing in more recent anime such as Dragon Ball and One Piece,  the image of the manga niku has captivated us, making us fantasize about taking a chewy bite of the fictional fare.

Well, Japanese convenience chain Mini Stop is currently offering a product that to a certain degree lets you fulfill that fantasy. It’s the Hammer Chicken Primeval-style Meat with Bone  (Hone-tsuki Genshi Niku fu Hammer Chicken) which went on sale just this week, and as you might expect, we hurried over to a Mini Stop to get a taste.

Read More

Hello Kitty and Chicken Ramen figures can talk, tell fortunes, and even play a game with you

Tasty as it may be, instant ramen isn’t usually the sort of thing you eat at social gatherings. More often than not, you’ll find yourself reaching for a cup of noodles when you have no one to eat dinner with, and speed and convenience are what you’re really after.

Still, it can feel a little lonely sitting quietly at your kitchen table as you wait for the boiling water you just poured into the cup to do its thing. If only there was someone you could talk to, who’d also remind you when the three minutes were up.

Now there is, with a talking timer shaped like the beloved Chicken Ramen mascot, who’ll not only keep you company, but even play games with you, too.

Read More

What’s that emoji? Let’s take a look at Japanese culture with these texting emoticons!【Part 2】

In Part 1 of this article, we learned some fun facts about three iconic foods so beloved by the Japanese that they, yup, became icons—how an old lady and a samurai gave birth to the first rice cracker; what it means to be called a pudding-head in Japan; and how a classic 1960s manga cemented the way oden would be illustrated for decades to come.

So get ready for Part 2, in which I’ll attempt to sift through millennia of history and get you further acquainted with three more emoticons!

First we’ll look at the mythical tengu, a complex, multifaceted creature that in modern times pops up in things like Digimon and the Mega Man series. Then we’ll check out a New Year’s decoration that may have originated from taketaba, a shield made from bundled bamboo that became necessary once firearms were introduced. To close, we’ll explore the customs and lore surrounding the Tanabata festival, including the romantic legend of Orihime and Hikoboshi, who are both star-crossed lovers and actual stars in the sky.

Read More

Singapore’s Home for Hope Campaign finds homes for shelter dogs…at IKEA!

After reading this, you’ll have even more reason to love IKEA.

Since May, IKEA and other home goods stores in Singapore have been partnering up with local animal rescue groups to raise awareness about dog adoption. To achieve this goal, IKEA has placed photo cutouts of actual shelter dogs within the sample rooms along with information about the process of adoption. The effort has proved incredibly rewarding so far, with many homeless dogs finding themselves a loving family and a brand new life. 

Read More

Attack on Titan stamp rally perfect for Japanese-speaking train fans, probably sucks for everyone else

A stamp rally, a promotional event in which you rush, saunter or dawdle around a local area collecting rubber stamps from checkpoints, is a popular summer activity in Japan. It often takes the form of a themed rubber stamp chained to an inky board that can be found at each station along a railway line, thus encouraging kids (and their accompanying, ticket-buying parents) to visit a bunch of places by train during the summer holidays.

Rubber stamps aren’t just for kids, though. Adults are welcome to collect the stamps in a book to keep for themselves, or if you catch ’em all on the promotional leaflet and hand it in to the organisers, you can sometimes win some cool prizes or goods relating to the show or characters being promoted. And this summer, Attack on Titan attempts to bring the stamp rally kicking and screaming into the 21st century, with a railway rally entitled Attack on Chichibu. The twist: it’s a stamp rally where there aren’t any stamps.

Read More

“Terrible, amazing things my teacher said”: Tweets from the Japanese classroom

Did you used to think that your teachers all lived in the school on the weekends? Lots of kids are shocked to discover one day that their teachers have private lives, families, and even friends outside of school. This collection of tweets are all from Japanese students – whose sometimes-cynical, sometimes-exhausted, pretty-much-always-awesome professors probably just wanted to remind them that teachers are people too.

That’s right – it’s time for a snappy little segment which we’ll be entitling, in honour of its Japanese hashtag equivalent, “This devastatingly amazing thing my teacher just told me!”

Read More

New app will find you a bath on-the-go in Tokyo

With blistering temperatures over the past week and record cases of heat stroke, just getting around Tokyo for business or pleasure can leave you dripping with sweat and a little—okay, A LOT—stinky. It’s enough to make you want to bathe several times a day.

But what if you are dying to clean up but don’t want to go all the way back to your home or hotel? That’s when a cheap Japanese bathhouse, or sentou, can come in very handy. For a few hundred yen, you have a place to take a bath, grab a snooze on a bit of tatami, and put your game face on again. These little places used to be hard to locate, but as with most things these days, now there’s an app for that.

Read More

We fly straight to Tokyo’s newest Buffalo wing and craft beer joint

Back in high school, one weekend I went to eat at Denny’s with a group of classmates. One of them ordered Buffalo wings, and even though that’s exactly what the waitress brought him, he immediately sent them back, protesting, “Hey, these are chicken wings!”

I’m still baffled by his reaction. Did he really think there was some rare breed of buffalo, which not only had sprouted wings, but was being sourced for side orders at one of the cheapest restaurants in America? For everyone else at the table, the fact that we’d been attending San Dimas High for years and still hadn’t had any Bill and Ted-style time-travelling adventures had already hammered home the fact that life isn’t always filled with magic and wonder, but apparently our finicky friend’s dreams wouldn’t die so easily.

For that matter, shouldn’t everyone be able to get excited about a plate of chicken wings? The RocketNews24 team sure can, which is why we recently checked out a new Tokyo eatery, Buffalo Wings & Smile Tokyo.

Read More

Put your washing machine to better use – cook Chinese soup with it!【Video】

There are all sorts of electrical household appliances designed to make cooking easier these days. Multi-functional microwave ovens, bread makers, noodle makers, you name it. Advertisements make these kitchen gadgets look so easy to use, they tend to make us forget that these machines were created to help people who actually cook. They’re probably not going to turn folks who don’t usually cook (microwaveable food doesn’t count!) into instant chefs.

This might sound crazy, but your washing machine might just be the fool-proof cooking appliance! Not convinced? We weren’t either, until we saw this Chinese guy cook soup with his washing machine!

Read More

Don’t judge a cat by its back, it’ll catch you unaware and send you into a giggling fit!

When we were young, most of our parents or teachers probably taught us not to judge a book by its cover. Well, here’s the continuation that we didn’t see coming. Don’t judge a cat by its back.

The HOTAC (Heart of Taiwan Animal Care) recently chanced upon a really unique cat that made their staff burst out in laughter. Are you curious to find out why? Photos of the funny feline after the jump!

Read More

Beautiful when she’s angry? TV series features model yelling at the camera, and nothing else

Japanese media seems to be run on the principal that adding attractive women to anything makes it better. Commercial for beer? Cast a high-profile actress. Serious news program? Let’s make a former bikini model the co-host. Posters encouraging people to fill out their census forms? We think they’ll be more effective if we use 75 percent of the space for a picture of a girl with a cute smile.

A new TV program seems set to carry this strategy to its illogical conclusion. Instead of enhancing the appeal of something men generally like or feel indifferent towards, broadcaster TV Tokyo’s idea is to create a miniseries that’s nothing but a good-looking girl chewing out the camera.

Read More

Japanese man goes missing at sea for 20 hours, then gets rescued by a lucky lifebelt

While there’s nothing quite like a dip in the ocean on a hot summer day, this man’s quick swim-turned missing person’s case will serve as a great reminder why you should always be careful in Mother Nature’s swimming pool.

Earlier this week, a 29-year-old man from the city of Kobe was enjoying some sea-side bathing with his friends when a strong wind came, sweeping him far from the coast. His friends acted quickly, called the local police and a search ensued for 20 hours until the missing man turned up on a beach 40 kilometers to the south thanks to an incredibly lucky discovery.

Read More

Moon prism power-up your balloon art with Princess Serenity and Queen Elsa

We’ve all seen our fair share of balloon art—dogs, mice, maybe a princess hat or two. But Sailor Moon fan and self-proclaimed balloon artist Robin Trout is giving the craft a royal makeover, successfully twisting balloons into two familiar princesses.

Read More

Digital-age robber epically owned by analog granny at convenience store in Fukuoka

What started off as a basic robbery attempt turned into a mortifying experience for one wannabe robber in Fukuoka Prefecture. Seriously, either the konbini gods were conspiring against him or he met his ultimate match in an old woman, but either way, his attempt at crime was completely foiled thanks to an unusual series of events.

Read More

A while back, we dissected a list from blogger and internationalist Madame Riri about three things Japanese women do that scare off foreign guys. Love is a two-way street though, which means the romantic roadblocks run in both directions.

Today, we’re taking a peek at Madame Riri’s latest batch of bullet-pointed suggestions, which focuses on her top four tips for Japanese women looking for a successful relationship with a man from overseas.

Read More

  2. 1
  3. ...
  4. 1353
  5. 1354
  6. 1355
  7. 1356
  8. 1357
  9. 1358
  10. 1359
  11. ...
  12. 1642