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Think you’ve had every type of tempura? Not until you’ve eaten deep-fried maple leaves

Casey Baseel
Oct 6, 2014
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Autumn is a great time of year in Japan. The sticky humidity of summer is gone, but it’s still warm enough to enjoy spending time outdoors. Best of all, there’s the spectacular show of the leaves changing to vivid reds and dazzling yellows.

For me though, fall comes with one major drawback, which is that for the whole season, it seems like the mixed tempura set at every restaurant I go to is packed with mushrooms. If you’re a fan of Japan’s many types of edible fungi, this is a major plus, but if you can’t stand the things, you might be feeling a little left-out.

Take heart, though, because there’s still a way to form a deep-fried connection to autumn with tempura maple leaves.

Feast your eyes on these Disney princess oil prints fit to be hung in a real castle

Krista Rogers
Oct 6, 2014

While we here at RocketNews24 often feature articles relating to Japan’s beloved Studio Ghibli, it’s no secret that we also have a soft spot for good old Disney animated films. Of course, the hallmark of Disney is its Disney Princess franchise, and we never shy away from sharing any interesting princess-related news that we find floating around the web.

This time around, we’ve stumbled across some absolutely gorgeous Disney character-inspired paintings by oil artist Heather Theurer. If you’ve got a love for Disney girls and are looking to spruce up your walls, then bibbidi-bobbidi-boo, these prints could be the perfect solution for you!

Sapporo police speechless after discovering one man’s creative use for a bomb: a door stopper

Scott R Dixon
Oct 6, 2014

In this age of mass consumption where wasteful packaging is overused and people pour perfectly clean water over themselves for attention on the Internet, one of the best ways to counteract our increasingly wasteful society is to simply reuse items that would otherwise be headed for the dump.

But one wannabe environmentalist in Sapporo may have taken his pledge to save the earth a little bit too far when he “recycled” an old Japanese Imperial Army bomb into a rustic, and extremely dangerous, door stopper.

New UFO caught on tape at Hong Kong protest may spell the end of UFO videos as we know them

Master Blaster
Oct 6, 2014

As protesters in Hong Kong continue fighting to have a thin veil of “democracy” offered by the mainland Chinese government replaced by a slightly better veil enjoyed by other countries around the world, another story has emerged.

It appears that a UFO has been caught on tape hovering above the massive demonstration. Sure, we’ve seen videos of mysterious moving lights in the sky before, but this one may really change the way we look at UFO videos from here on out.

(Self) Attack on Censorship! Gruesome titans skip humans and eat fast food in Tokyo station ads

Scott R Dixon
Oct 6, 2014

If you’re a fan of the wildly popular manga and anime series Attack on Titan, then you’ll be more than familiar with the violent and jarring scenes of gigantic monsters biting off and chewing human heads, arms and various other body parts. But while you might expect such gruesome images in your comic books, commuters riding the Tokyo subway might not appreciate seeing such gory poster images on their way to work every morning.

So when advertising a new Attack on Titan exhibit opening next month at a Tokyo museum, the poster designers decided to creatively self-censor their own work with some very cleverly placed food items.

Catch a film in Laputa, the Tokyo movie theater inspired by Studio Ghibli’s classic animation

Preston Phro
Oct 6, 2014

Usually all we look for in a theater is comfy seats, a decent sound system, and good movies. If you’re really picky, you might even seek out places with a beer menu, cheap tickets, or a unique schedule. Probably the last thing on your mind would the architecture of the building–but if you’re a fan of Studio Ghibli, you’ll definitely want check out Laputa, a cinema in a building inspired by the legendary Castle in the Sky!

Tetsuya Nomura draws Sora for Kingdom Hearts -HD 2.5 ReMIX- release

Anime News Network
Oct 6, 2014

Square Enix began streaming a video on Thursday of Kingdom Hearts series director Tetsuya Nomura drawing Sora to promote the release of the Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 ReMIX game. The game shipped for the PlayStation 3 in Japan on Thursday.

Confusion as bizarre mass pants-ripping occurs at Chinese military reserve training

Mike
Oct 6, 2014

Chinese media is abuzz with serious concerns about the combat effectiveness of China’s military as it was revealed that, at a recent college military reserve training session, over 100 reservists’ camouflage pants simultaneously ripped out of nowhere.

The explosive rippage was apparently triggered when around 4,500 reservists – both men and women – were commanded by a drill instructor to sit down. We can only assume the drill instructor was the Chinese equivalent of R. Lee Ermy, as some of the reservists apparently took his command so seriously that they sat down with enough force to utterly destroy the stitching in their standard issue pants.

Eating soufflé and hanging out in hammocks at Cafe Asan

Preston Phro
Oct 6, 2014

Tokyo is practically overflowing with great places to eat–being one of the largest metropolitan areas in the world has to have some benefits, right? While rush hour traffic might be test the patience of even the most benevolent Buddhist monk, at least you can find a good place to eat without too much effort. Of course, not every eatery is going to be excellent, and some places tend to rely on gimmick as much as their culinary skills to pull in patrons, like hanging hammocks inside the dining area. Can you really enjoy a nice meal will swinging from the ceiling like a lazy Tarzan?

Well, we stopped by Cafe Asan in Ueno and sat in their hammocks to find out! Read on to see if you should add the cafe to your Tokyo itinerary.

Top 10 food disasters prepared by Japanese wives who have extraordinary talent in the kitchen

Joan Coello
Oct 6, 2014

So, a week or two ago, we saw this video of a Japanese woman explaining why she thinks Japanese women great girlfriends or wives, and one of the reasons she stated was that Japanese women care a lot about cooking. That’s a wonderful thing. I mean, there’s even a saying that says the best way to win a man’s heart is to first win his stomach.

However, caring about cooking and having the talent and taste buds for cooking are two entirely separate issues. Sorry to burst your bubble if you were thinking that all Japanese girls make fantastic home-cooked meals, because among the Japanese, there is a group of women collectively referred to as meshimazu yome, which means “wives who make unpalatable meals”. A survey by Goo Ranking reveals the top 10 shocking meals made by Japanese wives with… unique tastes. Are you in for a treat?

We try eating insects — they don’t taste like chicken

Amy Chavez
Oct 5, 2014

Insect cuisine is popular in Thailand, where insect farms are booming as farmers try to keep up with demand by breeding cricket snacks and ant-egg omelet meals to satisfy this growing market. And, lucky you, the bug-eating trend is going international!

Who’d eat insects, you ask? Me, of course!

Don’t act so surprised. Japan has a history of devouring insects and other fun fare, referred to as getemono or, inferior foods. While most Japanese people will turn their noses up at such “delicacies” they probably won’t deny that restaurants, called getemonoya, were once common and that during war times, eating such food was often necessary. The good news is that Jiminy Cricket actually tastes pretty good! And, he’s nutritious.

Join our vegetarian, insect-eating reporter as she crunches and munches her way through some of Japan’s finest insect cuisine that we promise you won’t find in the Michelin Guide.

Not sure if zombie outbreak affecting only cute college girls or found weird niche fetish site

Mike
Oct 5, 2014

Here’s something to make “Not Sure if…” Fry’s head explode out of sheer confusion. It looks like there may or may not be a zombie epidemic spreading throughout Tokyo which affects only young, college-aged girls.

…Or it could be a strange, niche soft porn site for lonely Japanese lovers of horror and very cute girls.

Honey, granola and soy — a match made in Starbucks Roppongi!

Kay
Oct 5, 2014

We’ve all grown to expect seriously enticing beverage offerings from Starbucks by now, haven’t we? Some of them even had customers forming long lines and selling out by noon, like the fresh banana Frappuccinos that they sold for a limited time earlier this year.

Well, according to buzz on the Japanese Internet, it seems Starbucks has done it again with another sweet-sounding Frappuccino, this one combining two already very popular ingredients: granola and honey. But this time, the tempting drink is only available in one area of Tokyo, the Roppongi Hills complex, which meant only one thing — we had to head off to Roppongi and try their new creation ourselves!

Tempura, anyone? Prank at sushi chain involving deep-fried scissors lands part-timers in hot oil

Megumi Matsuki
Oct 5, 2014

In 2013, Japan saw a meteoric rise in internet photos that depict part-time workers’ silly and sometimes idiotic antics while on the clock (remember the freezer diving phenomenon?). Though the term “bakattā” (a portmanteau word that’s not restricted to part-timers and combines baka, or idiot, and tsuittaa, the Japanese pronunciation of Twitter) was coined back in 2010, it gained even more popularity last year and took fourth place in the 2013 Internet Buzzword Awards, sponsored by the Tokyo company Mirai Kensaku Brazil.

The craze of bragging about law-breaking or idiotic behavior on social networking sites has thankfully died down, partly due to publicization of the serious repercussions faced by some perpetrators. However, it seems like a couple of young guys working at a major revolving sushi chain had not been watching the news, or were looking to get fired: a photo uploaded on the evening of September 24 with a Tweet that said, “I invented a new menu item with [name deleted] today! Lololol” spread like wildfire, only to reach the head of the company by the following morning. D’oh!

Start planning for next year’s Halloween with this official Majin Buu costume

Anime News Network
Oct 5, 2014

With Halloween just around the corner, enthusiasts are already pouring their hearts and souls into putting together their costume for the year. In case you still need some ideashowever, or are already looking for something to pull in plenty of candy next year, here’s a costume that is sure to get you plenty of treats. In collaboration with Dragon Ball Kai the costume designers at Trantrip have created this official Majin Buu costume.

We raid the new Final Fantasy restaurant on our quest for drinks, desserts, and blue ramen

Casey Baseel
Oct 5, 2014

Earlier this year, we stopped by Artnia, the café run by video game publisher Square Enix, to munch on buster sword chocolates and drink material cocktails. Just as you’d expect from the company behind some of Japan’s biggest RPG franchises, though, there’s now an upgraded sequel, the Eorzea Café, with an even larger menu of Final Fantasy themed foods.

Led by our sense of adventure and gnawing appetite, we journeyed to the strange and wonderful land of Tokyo’s Akihabara to check it out.

Three reasons cats like to bring us dead things, according to Japanese site MyNavi

Fran W
Oct 5, 2014

It may come as no surprise to learn that here at RocketNews24 we are big fans of cats. Whether they’re perched on top of model sushi or roaming the mean streets of Japan, there’s little they can do that doesn’t bring us out in a “awwwwwwwww”.

But just occasionally, even our beloved feline friends can do things that perplex us and make us sad. Like when they break our treasured possessions and show no remorse. Or, when they bring home a still-twitching little creature and expect us to be happy about it. But why do cats do this? It’s often said to be a “gift”, as your kitty shows you they love and adore you. But Japanese site MyNavi News says there’s more to this oddball behaviour than meets the eye…

Halloween lashes from the 100 yen store will add a bit of spook to your eyes

Michelle Lynn Dinh
Oct 5, 2014

It’s already October, which means Halloween is right around the corner. Have you picked out your costume yet? Trick-or-treaters in Japan were treated to some extra inspiration by Daiso, a discount store where everything is 100 yen (US$1), in the form of an impressive variety of Halloween lashes featuring cobwebs, haunted houses, and swirly stars. Early wearers of these accessories have been praising them for their high quality (but really, would you expect any less from Daiso?). Let’s take a closer look at these outrageous falsies!

If you were ever an athlete growing up, this video is going to bring you a swelling of emotions

KK Miller
Oct 4, 2014

Athletes who compete in amateur sports have one of the most difficult tasks. To compete on the world level, these athletes have to train their butts off and since they aren’t paid to compete, have to hold down a job as well. What they are able to accomplish when facing severely stacked odds is pretty spectacular.

With the conclusion of the 2014 Asia Games, Japan has once again had the chance to cheer on their storied athletes. It’s important to see these sportsmen in high level competitions because they inspire an entire generation of young athletes to continue to do what they love. A commercial airing during the television broadcasts for the Asia Games is also showing the incredible hearts of these great athletes. Find out who is giving back and what their special message is after the jump.

Create your very own edible Hello Kitty this Christmas with this “Face Cake” set!

Kay
Oct 4, 2014

Christmas cakes (yes, it’s already time to start thinking about the holidays) come in all shapes and sizes, so it’s not surprising at all to see our favorite feline character and international celebrity Hello Kitty turn herself into one. But this “Hello Kitty Face Cake” requires just a little bit more artistic creativity from you than the average cake. You see, the cake doesn’t come looking like the picture above — you actually have to make it into its Hello Kitty form!