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London-based makeup artist wows us with her eye-popping lip art! 【Photos】

We’ve previously witnessed the gender-bending, face-changing prowess of makeup on several occasions. With some technique, even a man can transform into a glamorous chick. Taking makeup to a whole new transformation level, London-based makeup artist Laura Jenkinson takes on a slightly different approach with her technique, using her skills not to cover imperfections, nor to turn monolids into double eyelids. With vivid colors and artistic flicks of her makeup brush, she transforms her lips into lively, adorable characters! How many of these can you recognize?

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Flappy bird creator releases his next creation on the world, world productivity plummets

Nguyen Ha Dong, creator of Flappy Bird, has been teasing his second game recently and it has finally been unleashed upon us! The game, called “Swing Copters“, shares many of the same gameplay elements of his first game, but might be even more annoyingly difficult than Flappy Bird! Is Swing Copters going to become the next Flappy Bird? Is it “fun” enough to warrant your time? Find out with some hands-on impressions!

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It opens next year?! We go to the Shanghai Disneyland site, find a lonely river in a field

“Um…is this Disneyland?” our reporter asks a construction worker. “Sure is!” he replies.

She looks around. The first Disney park in mainland China, Shanghai Disneyland is scheduled to open next year. But all our reporter, a writer from our Japanese sister site, can see is a dirty river and barren land. No rides, no hotel, no lake, no scaffolding for Cinderella’s castle … Can this really be Shanghai Disneyland?

Join us after the jump as we go on a photographic journey to Shanghai’s version of The Happiest Place on Earth (If They Ever Finish It).

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Sailor Moon getting another sequel, this time to its lingerie line

While the entire franchise gets collectively called Sailor Moon, the anime version of Japan’s most successful magical girl saga is technically divided up into a string of year-long sequel series. The initial 1992 season, Pretty Solider Sailor Moon, led directly into Sailor Moon R, Sailor Moon S, Sailor Moon SuperS, and finally Sailor Moon Sailor Stars, before the whole thing was rebooted with this year’s Sailor Moon Crystal.

So really it’s only natural that the now sold-out line of Sailor Moon lingerie is now getting a follow-up, with upgrades for the core cast of five Sailor Senshi and what appears to be a few new friends joining them.

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Singing Love Songs to Angels? No Tomorrow for Us? More movies that got weird Japanese titles

Regular RocketNews24 readers will know doubt have seen our articles documenting some of Japan’s weirder translations of Western movie titles (Malkovich’s Hole, anyone?), or perhaps caught our collection of English movie posters remade using their Japanese titles. But today’s list of 10 adapted movie titles was nominated by none other than Japanese movie watchers themselves, who felt that the new names their country had given to these feature films were actually pretty cool.

Let’s take a little look, shall we?

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Japanese CEOs take on the ice bucket challenge

The ice bucket challenge has gone viral this summer with everyone from your average Joe to celebrities and business moguls such as Oprah, Charlie Sheen, and Bill Gates getting on board. Now it’s even spread across the pond to Japan, and started circulating among the business bigwigs over here. Yesterday Toyota President Akio Toyoda took on the challenge with a brave face, while also keeping the charitable spirit alive.

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For the most part, Japan is an extremely safe country. Still, that doesn’t mean the country is completely crime-free, with convenience stores being one of the most likely targets of individuals who’ve been driven to extreme measures by their desire for cash (or a light snack).

Occasionally these crimes are diffused by clerks who are quick-thinking, daring, or possibly deliberately obtuse. On the occasion that a robbery does go down, however, victims in Japan do have one last resort: chucking a giant paint ball at the criminal.

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Two members of the Goat Weeding Corps believed to have been abducted in Gifu while on duty

On the morning of 10 August, two goats working with the Goat Weeding Corps disappeared suddenly while on duty in Minokamo City, Gifu. The Goat Weeding Corps (GWC) is an elite team of 20 goats employed by the city to eat weeds in parks and woodlands. The managers of the GWC at Gifu University are treating this as a theft and have reported it to the police.

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Hiroshima, 1958: Everyday life captured on camera 【Photos】

The French actress Emmanuelle Riva is best known for her role in Alain Resnais’s Hiroshima, Mon Amour, an innovative 1959 drama that explores memory and loss against a background of the after-effects of the Hiroshima bombing. While filming on location in Hiroshima, Riva also took these striking photographs of the city and its people, which provide a fascinating peek into everyday life in Japan back then.

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Toronto Film Festival to host North American premiere of Princess Kaguya, Ghibli documentary

The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) will host the North American premiere Isao Takahata‘s The Tale of the Princess Kaguya and director Mami Sunada’s The Kingdom Of Dreams And Madness documentary about Studio Ghibli next month. Princess Kaguya will premiere with English subtitles on September 5 with Takahata present for the screening. The Kingdom Of Dreams And Madness will premiere on Monday, September 8.

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We try colorful macarons at a McDonald’s in Shanghai

McDonald’s joints all around the world have some of the most interesting items. There’s of course Chicken Curry Rice in Thailand, American vintage burgers in Japan, and ramen at one McDonald’s in the US (of all places!). But we’ve never seen anything quite this fancy at a fast food restaurant anywhere, so we sent one of our reporters to check out the colorful macarons at a McDonald’s in Shanghai.

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Young artist makes stunning Hyrule Warriors art using just coloured pencils

They may look like digital creations, but these stunning illustrations are in fact entirely hand-drawn in coloured pencil. 17-year-old artist Polaara is a young British student who made these painstakingly detailed drawings in between studying for exams.

Join us after the jump for beautifully rendered fan art of Link, Zelda, and other video game and anime characters – plus some videos from Polaara herself showing how it’s done.

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Shimane Prefecture’s shrine-headed mascot is now an adorable rice field

We saw absolutely gorgeous rice field art up in Aomori prefecture just a few months ago, but we’ve never seen rice that looked this cute! Shimane prefecture’s very own mascot character has been turned into a smiling rice field; you’re going to want to take a closer look at this one!

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Limited edition Kirby t-shirts on sale at this year’s Tokyo Game Show

Heading to Tokyo Game Show this year? We certainly are, and with just under a month to go, we’re itching to try out the newest games and watch the exclusive previews that exhibitors are no doubt already preparing. But there’s one other thing (yes, besides the booth babes) that we’re excited to get a look at: the video game merchandise!

And this year, there are a couple of items we already have our eye on: a pair of limited edition Kirby-themed t-shirts, which have just been revealed by makers San-ei Boeki.

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Godzilla…is…BATMAN!! (And Sailor Moon, and Luigi too, apparently) 【Photos】

We have a hard time imagining that anyone but the dimmest Gotham City resident would be especially shocked to learn that mysterious millionaire and occasional shut-in Bruce Wayne was the man behind the Dark Knight’s mask all along, but we doubt anyone saw this coming.

This series of fantastic photos taken by a blogger known only as Gigabeetle features modded Godzilla figures in a variety of hilarious poses. As well as revealing the true identity of the Big G, the pictures show a side to the monster that we never knew existed, catching him dancing around wearing top hats, doing his best Sailor Moon impressions, and, um, indulging in a little bit of nose powder…

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Monsters of Shamisen: New music for an old instrument 【J-Tunes】

When it comes to Japanese music, one of the most iconic sounds is that of the tsugaru-jamisen. We’ve written about musicians playing the folk instrument before, but today we have a group with a traditional, but decidedly unique, approach: the three-man group Monsters of Shamisen.

From heavy metal to traditional Japanese music and throat singing, there’s sure to be something here for everyone!

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Anna and Elsa ready to visit homes in January with Frozen New Year’s osechi meals

In Japan, it’s customary to celebrate the New Year with osechi, meals made of a large number of painstakingly prepared and beautifully presented small dishes. Traditionally, women would prepare all of the osechi for their families ahead of time, setting aside New Year’s Day itself for feasting leisurely.

Of course, the price for that relaxation on January 1 is a frantic bout of cooking at the end of December. Hoping to avoid that, more and more households have begun buying pre-made osechi, either to replace or supplement a smaller quantity of home-cooked food.

Mass-produced osechi doesn’t come cheap, though, so we imagine some people might scoff at the idea of buying Frozen osechi, until you realize that it’s Frozen with a capital F, as in Disney’s runaway computer-animated hit.

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Kichijoji’s Kotori Cafe serves up adorable bird-themed desserts, serenades you with birdsong

Where once felines reigned supreme, themed cafes featuring a wide variety of animals are popping up all over Japan, from countryside hideaways to cafes in high-end shopping districts. So far we’ve seen cat, rabbit, and owl cafes and they are becoming increasingly common sights.

But what if you’re not a fan of those particular animals? Fear not! The latest addition to the cafe scene gives you yet another option – to enjoy your afternoon latte in the company of cute little birds!

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Our Japanese writer discovers a surprising escalator in the US, declares America Best Place Ever

Target is America’s second-largest retailer, and its humongous stores have everything you could possibly need, from food to clothing to household goods. For a Japanese person visiting America for the first time these stores can be a tourist attraction in themselves as they gaze at the enormity of it all, and then leave without buying anything because it’s too overwhelming and they’re scared of doing something wrong.

However, our writer Japanese found something in a Target store that may even surprise Americans too.

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【Exploring Unfamiliar Japan】We stayed in a 120-year-old Japanese home, here’s how you can too

When European writer, Lafcadio Hearn, wrote about Shimane prefecture in 1894, he described a land steeped in tradition and nature. Since then, all of Japan seems to have ignored this sleepy area of the Chugoku region whose most recent claim to fame is having the country’s largest population of the elderly. But if Shimane prefecture is stuck in the olden days, the Oki Islands are lost in time. Lazily floating out at sea in what is technically Shimane, but is actually an entire world of its own, Oki is a forgotten gem tucked in a dusty corner of Japan. Rambling down the overgrown back roads, you’re sure to come across a wrinkled face and a hearty “konnichiwa,” a small experience that seems to have become a rarity in the always busy metropolises of this country.

It is in this uncommon place that we had the privilege of staying in a home that has stood for over a century. Join us as we share our experience staying at the Japanese guesthouse called Tsukudaya.

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