Bringing you yesterday's news from Japan and Asia, today.
As someone whose singing voice sounds like a baboon trying to speak English, I am always amazed by people who can just belt out a solo without even a piano to back them up. But I’m doubly impressed when that person is a little kid selling rice cakes on the side of the road!
Who would have thought the world of limbo skating would be so competitive? Also, who would have thought limbo skating was a thing that exists?
Limbo skating is the sport of using old-school roller skates – we presume there’s some kind of rule about them having to be in pastel colors – to project yourself across the ground while staying as low as possible. Sometimes, limbo skaters can squish their bodies down to about the same height as a Coke bottle while bending their ankles at seemingly impossible angles to keep the roller skate’s wheels on the pavement.
So, since we went ahead and told you that limbo skating is a thing, we might as well also tell you that a 6-year-old just broke the previous limbo skating world record by limbo skating under 39 cars like it was nothing.
As you may already have heard, blood type is kind of a big deal here in Japan. As well as being asked about your age, hobbies and family, it’s not in the least bit unusual to be probed about your blood type during welcome parties, dates or mixers. This isn’t because any of the attendees are sick and hoping to leech your life-giving fluid, but because there is a set of commonly held beliefs that blood type determines personality, and knowing whether someone is blood type A, B, AB or O can act as a shortcut to getting to know them. Or at least that’s the theory.
Today, we bring you a morning exercise routine devised especially for those who are blood type B. In case you hadn’t already guessed from the above GIF, the moves you’ll be performing here are made for those people who give up on things quickly, absolutely hate being told what to do and who aren’t afraid to show it.
Just a few weeks ago, When Marnie Was There, the newest anime movie from Studio Ghibli, hit Japanese theatres. Marnie is actually the second Ghibli release since legendary director Hayao Miyazaki retired from the company, but the first with a general, mainstream target market, as 2013’s The Tale of Princess Kaguya was a much more experimental, avant-garde film in visual style and tone.
Just as Miyazaki has stepped away from feature films, Ghibli producer and co-founder Toshio Suzuki is easing into retirement, and so many anime fans have been watching Marnie while looking for clues as to where Ghibli’s films would be going from here. Judging from statements made by Suzuki, though, the better question isn’t what kind of movies Ghibli will be making in the future, but whether the studio will be making any at all, as he feels that maybe it’s time for the Ghibli production team to close up shop.
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…
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!
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!”
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
Komachi Shokudo: Japanese mum’s-style cooking for breakfast, lunch and dinner in Tokyo
Virtual idol Hatsune Miku redesigned with look that adds new elements and brings back old ones
The top 10 graduation songs in Japan as chosen by current Japanese high school students
Is this Japan’s most extreme cherry blossom viewing? Leap, cycle and climb through 2,500 sakura
Starbucks Japan opens new Kyoto store in Place of Scenic Beauty
Studio Ghibli adds anime aircraft from Laputa: Castle in the Sky to its merchandise shop in Japan
Made-to-order onigiri rice ball hotel breakfast buffet in Tokyo is open (and awesome) to all
Pizza Hut’s new coriander pizza contains more cilantro than ever before!
Is Daiso’s microwave Japanese rolled omelet maker worth your time and money? [Taste test]
These creative, fanciful post boxes from Japan will delight you in so many ways【Photos】
Studio Ghibli releases Catbus pullback keychain that runs like the anime character
Nine great places to see spring flowers in Japan, as chosen by travelers (with almost no sakura)
Starbucks Japan releases a new Cream Puff Frappuccino for a limited time
Starbucks Japan opens new cafe and art gallery in top Tokyo tourist neighbourhood
Is Japan’s Crab-shaped Cup Ramen Timer worth the hype?
Pizza Hut Japan teams up with creator of one of the country’s best kinds of ramen for ramen pizza
Starbucks Japan unveils new sakura cherry blossom collection for hanami season 2026
Silicone testicle covers banned from Japanese sauna following cups being left behind and on shelves
Japanese government planning higher ticket prices for foreign tourists at Tokyo National Museum
Pikachu and Eevee become handmade Lladró porcelain sculptures to celebrate Pokémon’s 30th birthday
Starbucks Japan releases new sakura goods and drinkware for cherry blossom season 2026Starbucks Japan unveils new sakura cherry blossom collection for hanami season 2026
Super-salty pizza sends six kids to the hospital in Japan, linguistics blamed
Starbucks Japan unveils new sakura Frappuccino for cherry blossom season 2026
Foreign tourists in Japan will get free Shinkansen tickets to promote regional tourismStudio Ghibli releases Catbus pullback keychain that runs like the anime character
The 10 most annoying things foreign tourists do on Japanese trains, according to localsNine great places to see spring flowers in Japan, as chosen by travelers (with almost no sakura)
Naruto and Converse team up for new line of shinobi sneakers[Photos]
Take a trip to Japan’s Dododo Land, the most irritating place on Earth
Survey asks foreign tourists what bothered them in Japan, more than half gave same answer
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
Studio Ghibli releases Kodama forest spirits from Princess Mononoke to light up your home
Japan’s newest Shinkansen has no seats…or passengers [Video]Starbucks Japan releases new sakura goods and drinkware for cherry blossom season 2026
Major Japanese hotel chain says reservations via overseas booking sites may not be valid
Put sesame oil in your coffee? Japanese maker says it’s the best way to start your day【Taste test】
No more using real katana for tourism activities, Japan’s National Police Agency says
Studio Ghibli adds anime aircraft from Laputa: Castle in the Sky to its merchandise shop in Japan
Made-to-order onigiri rice ball hotel breakfast buffet in Tokyo is open (and awesome) to all
Pizza Hut’s new coriander pizza contains more cilantro than ever before!
Is Daiso’s microwave Japanese rolled omelet maker worth your time and money? [Taste test]
These creative, fanciful post boxes from Japan will delight you in so many ways【Photos】
Visiting Japan’s one-and-only, and only-for-a-limited-time, Dragon Ball noodle restaurant[Photos]
Taste-testing Japan’s real-world Dragon Balls and Senzu Beans at Marugame Seimen
Studio Ghibli releases Catbus pullback keychain that runs like the anime character
Japan Extreme Budget Travel! A trip from Tokyo to Izumo for just 30,000 yen [Part 2]
Psychological horror anime gets new T-shirt line, and even the fabric is meant to be unsettling
How to properly eat a traditional Japanese tonkatsu meal
Is this Tokyo government office still one of the best places in the city for a curry rice lunch?
Self-Defense Force member arrested for carrying two screwdrivers
Everyday Japanese names that make English speakers chuckle