Bringing you yesterday's news from Japan and Asia, today.
Beginning on Friday, May 22, 7-Eleven stores across Japan will finally team up with the wildly popular Attack on Titan franchise to bring you a special lottery with all sorts of winnable prizes! Be sure to check out the details as well as an amusing new promotional video after the jump.
You wouldn’t name your anime fashion company Super Groupies if it wasn’t staffed by some pretty big fans of Japanese animation, and the clothing retailer’s product catalogue speaks to its comprehensive love of the art form. Not only are recent hits and long-time favorites alike represented, Super Groupies is totally comfortable working both sides of the iconic magical girl street.
So while lovers of Naoko Takeuchi’s Sailor Moon recently got their fix with some sailor suit-style clothes to wear around the house, now the fans of manga creative team Clamp’s magical girl series are getting their turn with two sets of Cardcaptor Sakura pajamas.
Our love of the Studio Ghibli film My Neighbor Totoro has truly blossomed during the month of May. Just when we thought things couldn’t get any better after we heard about Totoro’s Forest in Saitama Prefecture, complete with a house for black dust bunnies known as Kurosuke no Ie, it seems there’s even more reason to celebrate, with an exact replica of Mei and Satsuki’s house open to the public in Aichi Prefecture.
Despite a rather weak track-record for its hamburgers with patties of noodles, fast-food chain Lotteria is back at it with the Moko Tanmen Burger. This time around they’ve also come up with the Moko Don Burger which uses a wad of rice as the patty. Good thing Dr. Atkins isn’t around to see this.
They say the definition of “insanity” is doing the same thing twice and expecting different results. We’re not sure what to call RocketNews24 reporter Mr. Sato then, because he is returning to Lotteria for a fourth time to try these noodley sandwiches in hopes of some redemption.
Oh the realities of getting older. One minute you’re feeling fine, the next you’re shopping for adult diapers. It’s a fact of life that transcends language, culture, and bladders all over the world.
Yoshio, one of our RocketNews24 Japanese-side writers, has recently joined the ranks of the incontinently impaired himself. To celebrate his newfound misery, he composed a 28-part list describing a typical day in his new, significantly wetter life.
Take a read and commiserate along with him, or see what you have to look forward to when parts of your own body start turning against you.
Everyone is trying to get in great shape for the summer season and everywhere you look there is a new exercise or diet craze that guarantees quick and easy weight loss in only a month. Most of these are too good to be true, but some of them might just work for you! Introducing the “Chef Lawson Diet,” which involves eating only at the Lawson convenience store for an entire month. Actual user testimony guarantees* you will lose five kilograms (11 pounds) in just one month!
* On second thought, RocketNews24 doesn’t actually guarantee anything.
Last week, we took a look at a set of fluffy Sailor Moon pajamas. But no matter how comfortable they may look, eventually you’re going to run out of food, manga, or some other class of household essentials and need to leave your home. But when you do, you can still keep the theme going with these Sailor Moon-themed tote bags to carry your supplies home in, plus sailor suit-style pouches and T-shirts.
There are many ways that data is transferred these days, be it fiber optic cables, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 4G-LTE, and a whole slew of other brand names and acronyms the meanings of which I don’t care to learn.
Now Panasonic has come up with a way to send and receive data that’s easy for everyone to understand: light. Actually it uses light emitting diodes (LED) to be exact, but that’s about as technical as this explanation needs to get, I promise.
It seems like every time you look, there’s some sort of new fad diet or superfood, all purported to be the best thing you can do for your health or to improve your natural beauty. But the good news is, this one’s actually fun to partake in.
Researchers at a university in Japan have now put sweet Japanese sake to the test, and have found it to have a number of positive beauty benefits, including improvement to under-eye health!
YouTuber Aura Puffs assigned themselves a seemingly impossible task: using only one SNES controller simultaneously play through Megaman X and Megaman X2. The limitations also include no save states, pausing one game while playing another, or anything else that would take most of the challenge out of the process.
Parenting in the internet age is a whole lot more difficult than it was before our world was taken over by machines. Back then, the scariest conversation you had to have with your kids was about the birds and the bees, but now it’s the birds and the bees and the creepy old guy pretending to be a high school girl in an online chatroom.
One Japanese mom posted the conversations on Twitter that she’s recently had to have with her nine-year-old son, and they’ve been getting a lot of attention online. Read them for yourself and you’ll crack up over both how true and how hilarious they are.
China is known as an industrious nation and, after pictures surfaced of one Chinese teacher who built a phenomenal “Iron Man” Hulkbuster replica in his garage, it seemed like the right time to take a look at some of the country’s most impressive home made inventions.
From full size, working airplanes to wooden, yet electronic cars, the Chinese have spent anything from a couple of months to several years, knocking up some pretty impressive modes of transports and robots.
Many Japanese animation fans can rattle off a list of the animation directors or character designers they admire, but the visuals are only half of the way anime stimulates the senses. For everything that you’re hearing during your favorite show, you can thank the sound director.
It’s a role Kazuhiro Wakabayashi has been filling for decades, and we recently sat in on a talk the industry veteran gave about the unique challenges a sound director faces, what it’s like to work with some of the biggest names in Japanese animation, including Studio Ghibli’s Hayao Miyazaki and Ghost in the Shell’s Mamoru Oshii, and the surprisingly deep human element of creating the audio environment for a fictional world.
Japan is home to 110 active volcanoes, 47 of which are monitored continually by the Japan Meteorological Association (JMA). Japan also holds seven percent of all the active volcanoes in the world.
Last year, Mount Ontake in Nagano Prefecture exploded without warning, killing over 60 people, many of them hikers. Mount Hakone in the hot springs resort town near Mount Fuji is on level-2 alert. Mount Fuji itself, a dormant volcano and World Heritage site is being looked at with a wary eye by many and authorities are advising hikers to wear helmets, dust masks and goggles when climbing. The volcano that most appears in the news, however, is Sakurajima, located off Kyushu, which is also one of the world’s most active volcanoes.
“Dutchsinse,” a self-proclaimed “News Personality” who has a cult following on Facebook and YouTube gives a near daily video update of volcanic and earthquake activity around the world. He recently highlighted Japan’s volcanoes and earthquakes and warns that pressure building in the region of Sakurajima, along with other multiple large eruptions in the Pacific region, could be a sign of something bigger to come.
The cicadas are chirping, the sun is shining, and we’re starting to get sweaty – it can only mean one thing: summer is coming! And with it all kinds of delicious treats like ice cream, ice cream, and, oh yes, ice cream.
But when you only really want to cool down and don’t want to consume too many calories, shaved ice is a much lighter alternative source of summer snack. But why rely on others to do your shaving for you? Why not shave it yourself in style with this awesome retro shaved ice maker?
Tetsuya Nomura is the mastermind behind this upcoming Batman figure, the likes of which you’ve never seen before. The 44-year-old video game artist/designer/director of Square Enix fame (he’s a veteran of both the Final Fantasy series and Kingdom Hearts) personally designed this version of the Dark Knight, and if you’re a fan of both his work and DC Comics, you’d better ready your wallet now!
On a recent trip to Shikoku, we heard about a small town tucked away in the Iya Valley called Nagoro. Like many small rural towns in Japan, the human population has dwindled to almost nothing in recent years. Unlike other towns, though, Nagoro doesn’t look empty. That’s because it’s populated by hundreds of scarecrows.
Of course we had to go check it out.
Happy Saturday, everyone! We hope you got through the week with all your bits and pieces still connected and without getting fired. But before you go off and start being nice to people now that you have a day off, let’s argue about food.
This week we’re talking about soy sauce-based ramen and miso-based ramen – two firm favourites in the world of delicious, soupy noodles and each with legions of fans. But of course, as Sean Connery and Christopher Lambert told us in the 1986 film Highlander, there can be only one, so pick a side and make your click count.
While dogs remain one of Japan’s favorite pet choices, you can actually get much of the same enjoyment from a pet turtle or tortoise. For example, we’ve seen that with enough patience, you and your shelled friend can enjoy going for walks together. And just like dog owners might one day experience the joy of coming home and finding a litter of puppies, so too can those with a turtle feel blessed when it lays a bunch of adorable little eggs.
As a matter of fact, the latter might even be the better of the two, since turtle eggs are far easier to cook than puppies. What’s that? You say you wouldn’t eat your animal companions’ eggs? Then you’re clearly operating under different thinking than this pet owner in Japan.
Usually, lingerie maker Triumph International Japan takes about half a year between announcing its innovative and unusual concept bras. So since it’s been about six months since we saw the company’s paired Close Sisters Bras, we figured the its next design highlighting a social trend was just about due.
Sure enough, this week Triumph showed off its newest creation: a bra that’ll give you verbal pep talks and also help you snap selfies.
Pikachu brings electric style to brand-new Pokémon G-Shock watch featuring every stater trio
Blind Tokyo commuter explains the easiest place for him to stand while riding the train
Taco Spaghetti appears in Japan, and our taco fan rushes to try it[Taste test]
Krispy Kreme Japan releases new fruit doughnuts…that taste better cold
Japanese man’s gross conveyor belt sushi social media prank video gets him a 500,000-yen fine
The adorable, delicious joy of the Totoro cream puff gift box[Taste test]
Starbucks Japan reopens Shinkansen platform store after redesigning it for speed
Family Mart Japan installs red-eyed “Monster Wolf” to keep bears away from convenience store
Beautiful new dangling Totoro socks let the Ghibli mascot sway with every step[Photos]
Japanese ninja certification exam attracts 131 candidates from Japan and abroad
Japan announces sudden 400-percent increase in visa fees for foreigners entering the country
Japan launches first overnight Shinkansen bullet train between Tokyo and Osaka this summerJapanese ninja certification exam attracts 131 candidates from Japan and abroad
Japanese sweets brand creates new drinkable Cigare and we’re totally here for it
Starbucks Japan creates special drink bottle bags, adorable stickers for all 47 prefectures[Pics]Family Mart Japan installs red-eyed “Monster Wolf” to keep bears away from convenience store
Studio Ghibli store Donguri Republic announces opening of first-ever store in America
“Phantom Egg Shop” opens in Japan, with a dozen rare Japanese varietiesStarbucks Japan reopens Shinkansen platform store after redesigning it for speed
Japanese sweets shop sells an ohagi so exquisite it sells out by noonJapan announces sudden 400-percent increase in visa fees for foreigners entering the countryJapanese ninja certification exam attracts 131 candidates from Japan and abroadStudio Ghibli store Donguri Republic announces opening of first-ever store in America
New Japanese overnight train coming to connect Tokyo with Tohoku in sleep-travel styleJapan launches first overnight Shinkansen bullet train between Tokyo and Osaka this summer
Uniqlo reveals third round of massive 100-year-anniversary manga T-shirts for Jump’s Shueisha
Even at twice regular Daiso price, this handy item is still great for summer travel in JapanJapanese sweets shop sells an ohagi so exquisite it sells out by noon
New official Ghibli anime food cookbook will teach you how to make Ponyo’s ramen and more
Forget Tokyo go-karts – there’s a new way to sightsee on four wheels in JapanJapan announces sudden 400-percent increase in visa fees for foreigners entering the country
Japan’s human washing machines will go on sale to general public, demos to be held in Tokyo
Starbucks Japan releases new drinkware and goods for Valentine’s Day
We deeply regret going into this tunnel on our walk in the mountains of Japan
Starbucks Japan releases new sakura goods and drinkware for cherry blossom season 2026
Japan’s newest Shinkansen has no seats…or passengers [Video]Japanese ninja certification exam attracts 131 candidates from Japan and abroad
Put sesame oil in your coffee? Japanese maker says it’s the best way to start your day【Taste test】
Japan reportedly adding Japanese language skill requirement to most common foreigner work visa
Japan’s 5.3 million beautiful Hitachi Nemophila flowers are now in full bloom[Photos]
The adorable, delicious joy of the Totoro cream puff gift box[Taste test]
Starbucks Japan reopens Shinkansen platform store after redesigning it for speed
Family Mart Japan installs red-eyed “Monster Wolf” to keep bears away from convenience store
Beautiful new dangling Totoro socks let the Ghibli mascot sway with every step[Photos]
Japanese ninja certification exam attracts 131 candidates from Japan and abroad
Japan opens shrine for plush toys in Kyoto, offering memorial rites and a resting place for remains
Japanese theme park adding Immersive Death Game with a “bomb collar” you have to wear
Totoro Soot Sprites are here to help keep your organized as adorable paper clips[Photos]
Japan announces sudden 400-percent increase in visa fees for foreigners entering the country
Tokyo cops arrest foreigner for suspected visa violation, don’t know what new residence cards look like
Nintendo’s Animal Crossing crosses over to Baskin-Robbins Japan with special ice cream and merch
Starbucks Japan creates special drink bottle bags, adorable stickers for all 47 prefectures[Pics]
Japan launches first overnight Shinkansen bullet train between Tokyo and Osaka this summer
Studio Ghibli store Donguri Republic announces opening of first-ever store in America