Bringing you yesterday's news from Japan and Asia, today.
The Tokyo Game Show for 2014 closed its doors this past weekend, and a record number of game companies showed up to display four times as many titles as last year. As always, the ever popular cosplay was a big hit and thousands of people came to buy the unique goods sold there. But what about the show itself? Was it the best attended TGS in years? Did it smash attendance records all around the world?
Cat cafes have established a pretty solid foothold in the Japanese dining scene. That said, some of them deliver more on the “cat” than the “café” part, with pretty unimpressive interiors and menus.
That’s not a problem at Monta, though, a cat café which recently opened up in Tokyo’s Asakusa neighborhood. With stylish and colorful furnishings and delicious food, we’d be tempted to stop by even if it didn’t have a half-dozen cats running around inside.
Those cute kitties, though, sure helped seal the deal and get us through the door, though.
When you stop and think about it, designing squirt guns is actually a pretty hard job. In an era where people have smartphones, video games, and the wonders of the Internet to keep them entertained, how do you get people to seriously consider shooting tiny sprays of tepid water at one another a viable entertainment option?
One idea is to go for a unique design, like the company that decided to model its guns after bears and leopards. That’s playful, unexpected, and eye-catching right? Unfortunately, guns and four-legged animals ordinarily have very different shapes, and in this case, trying to mash the two together meant the trigger ended up in a place you really shouldn’t touch a grizzly unless you’re looking to get mauled.
Burger King recently launched two new hamburgers in Japan that feature black buns and cheese with matching squid ink black sauce. Ads, like the one above, made the burgers look pretty unappetizing. But the burgers, known as the Kuro Diamond and Kuro Pearl, look even worse in reality.
Here are some examples:
The traditional Japanese kanzashi hairpin is usually an elaborate affair meant to be worn in the hair when donning a kimono or yukata. Intricately detailed and beautiful, they’re like Japan’s answer to the corsage. But these particular kanzashi may just be too beautiful to ever wear at all on account of directing all the attention away from your kimono.
Sakae, a kanzashi specialty manufacturer, makes each kanzashi by hand from colored glass that’s been melted down and coated in resin to prevent breakage – and lord knows you wouldn’t want one of these shattering into a thousand pieces in your hair.
Who doesn’t love brightly colored and irresistibly soft objects that you can jiggle, poke and burst, right? Well, once again, the lovely ladies at our Japanese sister site Pouch have found a delightful item to share with you, and this time, it’s something that’s not only fun to look at and touch, but cleansing as well — quite literally.
It’s the colorful Hiruan-dama soap ball that comes packaged in a small balloon which you have to burst to take out the soap, and the jelly-like texture is as hard to resist as the softness of a newborn baby’s cheek!
The use of vocaloids, artificial singers programmed on a computer, has created its own niche in online art. Thousands share their individually crafted songs using one of the dozens of synthetic voices available posting them to sites such as Niconico for the fun and entertainment of all.
Their popularity has risen to the point of vocaloids getting adopted by highly acclaimed musicians and artists. The figurehead of vocaloids, Hatsune Miku, has collaborated with Louis Vuitton, Lady Gaga, the Japanese Self Defense Force’s Central Band, Pharrell Williams, and Isao Tomita to name a few.
This time, however, artificial performers of the present will be merged with artificial performers of the past in Vocaloid Opera AOI with Bunraku Puppets. I love it when a name perfectly explains what something is so I don’t have to, so let’s get right to looking at trailer for this human-free opera.
The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus went on sale last Friday, and we were pretty psyched. In fact, our very own Mr. Sato was so excited about the launch that he was, once again, first in line to get his hands on the latest version of Apple’s smartphone, and we’re sure others in the U.S. and Hong Kong felt just as happy with their new purchases.
Not everyone in the world got to be in on the fun, though. Apple is staggering the launch of the iPhone 6, and while Japan was lucky enough to be in the first batch of territories where it has become available, mainland China wasn’t. This has led to some extra cash for iPhone resellers, as well as customs officials who spent the weekend steadily confiscating smuggled iPhones.
The lawyer for the family of Darrien Hunt, the 22-year-old man allegedly shot and killed by police officers in Saratoga Springs, Utah last week, said that the family believes Hunt was cosplaying an anime character when he was shot. In particular, the family’s attorney Randall Edwards said that they believe Hunt was dressed as the character Mugen from the anime Samurai Champloo, with a Japanese-style katana sword on his back.
On September 10, two officers confronted Hunt while he was carrying the sword near a credit union in Saratoga Springs. After one shot was fired near the credit union, Hunt was shot and killed about 200 yards away near a Panda Express restaurant.
Do you remember seeing the photos of Japan’s jaw-dropping “Lady of Eternal Youth” Masako Mizutani? Or how about the unbelievably young-looking 42-year-old grandmother Kazuko Inoue? There’s no denying that these two ladies look vastly younger than they actually are, but if the following photos are anything to go by, they may want to make some room for a new challenger.
As featured on The Dailypedia, 41-year-old Zhang Tingxuan is the latest youthful-looking woman making a splash on Asian social media sites. A mother of two, Zhang even looks more like an older sister than a mother when posing next to her son. Check out the pictures after the jump.
There are a lot of questions fans of anime and manga mega-hit Attack on Titan want the answers to. Where did the series’ naked, man-eating giants come from? What did protagonist Eren’s father hide away in the locked cellar he gave his son the key to? And when are we going to see the next portion of the story adapted to animation (in more specific terms than “eventually”)?
But series creator Hajime Isayama did reveal something a lot of fans want to know, as he recently told reporters his personal estimate as to when Attack on Titan’s manga serialization will end.
Ah, the wonders of learning a second language. There’s much to be said for the sense of satisfaction and achievement that comes from communicating effectively in another tongue. There’s also much to be said about the head-scratching and sense of humility that comes from tripping up and sounding like a buffoon.
We’ve found 10 tweeted tales of confusion from Japanese people who’ve had amusing encounters with foreigners in Japan. Some strike such a chord with Japanese that they’ve been retweeted and shared hundreds, sometimes even thousands of times.
So what is it that we foreigners do that’s so amusing?
Ice cream is one of those foods that is so delicious, people tend to eat it year round regardless of the plunging temperatures around them. So for the past 15 years, Häagen-Dazs has been releasing special fall/winter flavors in Japan, such as the extremely popular rum raisin. But this year, the beloved ice cream maker has an azuki bean-flavored variety coming out in early October, and Japanese netizens are already clearing out space in their freezer to stock up.
They feature so prominently in our Saturday morning cartoons and Charlie Chaplin movies that mankind has simply taken it as gospel that stepping on a banana peel will cause you to comically slip and fall with such a force that birds and stars will circle your head.
But did you know that until recently this was only a theory, unproven by a peer-reviewed scientific study? Thanks to the hard work done by Kiyoshi Mabuchi and his team at Kitasato University who were able to apply a frictional coefficient, we can unequivocally say that banana peels really are slippery when you step on them. Little wonder the group was awarded the 2014 Ig Nobel Prize in Physics.
There are so many things you can learn about someone simply by observing them. You don’t have reach out of your comfort zone and ask them directly because so much can be learned by their fashion, their posture, their body language and the way they cut their nails. This is especially handy in Japanese society when being direct can be seen as extremely rude.
So how do you find out about really personal things? Certainly the best way to acquire hidden information is by asking innocuous questions that reveal way more than they should! Take the latest tip from an elite business man, who says you can guess about how much a man earns in Japan by asking him one simple question: “What kind of sushi do you like?”
When it comes to science fiction technology made real, 3-D printing is one of the most exciting. While we might all say we wish we had jet packs, the fact is that 3-D printing had 96.6 percent fewer leg burn injuries in a direct comparison that we just made up and is totally not real. But putting fake statistics aside, 3-D printing not only enables for cheap, efficient manufacturing, it also allows us to make figures out of nearly anything we want with little more than photos and some software.
And to prove it, Ima Topic and DMM.make, the web-based 3-D printing division of web-retailer/video-on-demand company DMM, are offering what can only be described as a horribly awesome campaign: A chance to win a figure of Setsu, the gorgeous, blue-eyed house cat who looks like roadkill when she sleeps. This is one contest you will almost certainly regret winning!
When it comes to iPhones, our Japanese writing team might be the biggest fans on the planet. Or at least the strangest. And while Mr. Sato had a busy week waiting for and getting the first iPhone sold in Japan, the rest of our Japanese writers haven’t been sitting around wasting time.
Nope, they’ve been testing vital features like the new iPhone’s hand-shake compensation and security features. We already know what happens when you tape an iPhone to a massage wand…but what happens when you try to lock and unlock it with your nipple?
While Sailor Moon’s first four companions, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, and Venus, get most of the attention, the lunar heroine also picked up a few more allies in her 200 anime episodes. The Sailor Moon B-team has been getting a lot of love from merchandiser Bandai recently, including their own sets of lingerie.
Now, for everyone who wants to show your love for the Outer Sailor Senshi without showing off their undies, Bandai is releasing a five-piece set of smartphone earphone jack accessories, including accessories used by Sailors Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto.
7-Eleven Japan now offering baked-in-store pizza by the slice with two very different topping sets
Starbucks Japan releases first-ever gacha capsule toys, featuring iconic menu items as plush coffee charms
7-Eleven Japan adds new cold soup smoothies to its convenience store drinks range
New Studio Ghibli washi tape adds anime flair to Japanese stationery
Starbucks Japan opens new store inside historic seaside quarantine station near Tokyo
Japan’s foreign resident population hits record high as Japanese population hits record low
New service lets Tokyo tourists display their faces on giant screen at Japan’s busiest intersection
Studio Ghibli releases new Spirited Away earrings featuring mysterious anime bathhouse character
Okayama man arrested for catching butterflies in central Japan
Tokyo subway installing new ticket gates that don’t accept payment through Suica or other IC cardsTokyo subway installing new ticket gates that don’t accept payment through Suica or other IC cards
Japanese Shinkansen becomes an overnight hotel for three nights this summer
Giant Evangelion Spear of Longinus to be installed at Japanese train station with Eva art trains
Face lettuce appears in Japan, with the face of Death Note’s Light Yagami, but why?
Starbucks Japan releases a miniature display rack so you can create your very own store at home
99-year-old woman rescued while attempting to climb Mt. Fuji
Pokémon Card Stores requiring facial recognition scans for entry in Japan in latest anti-scalper move
Kyoto receives more foreign tourists than ever before, but fewer visitors say they’ll return
Family Mart’s new Famima flagship in Tokyo has a hidden gem that most visitors miss
Starbucks Japan unveils exclusive new Frappuccinos limited to three regional areas
Studio Ghibli has a new anime out, and there’s only one place in the world where you can see itTokyo subway installing new ticket gates that don’t accept payment through Suica or other IC cards
Salomon releases Japan-exclusive Mt. Fuji hiking gear that doubles as an amazing souvenir
Japan now has human refrigerators inspired by Japanese vending machines
Hatsune Miku collaborates with Hokusai’s art in new Vocaloid ukiyo-e illustration series [Pics]
New Shinkansen luggage drop-off system begins in Japan, making train travel even easier
Japan triples departure tax, foreign tourists and locals now must pay more to leave country
Studio Ghibli releases anime T-shirts that pay homage to one of Hayao Miyazaki’s most personal films
Family Mart opens new “Famima” flagship store in Tokyo that’s like a tourist attraction
Uniqlo looks back to the very start of Pokémon with new black-and-white pixel art T-shirts[Pics]
Japan 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 TokyoStudio Ghibli has a new anime out, and there’s only one place in the world where you can see it
Starbucks Japan releases new drinkware and goods for Valentine’s Day
Starbucks Japan releases new sakura goods and drinkware for cherry blossom season 2026
Japan’s newest Shinkansen has no seats…or passengers [Video]Tokyo subway installing new ticket gates that don’t accept payment through Suica or other IC cards
Japanese ninja certification exam attracts 131 candidates from Japan and abroadSalomon releases Japan-exclusive Mt. Fuji hiking gear that doubles as an amazing souvenir
Put sesame oil in your coffee? Japanese maker says it’s the best way to start your day【Taste test】
Japan’s foreign resident population hits record high as Japanese population hits record low
New service lets Tokyo tourists display their faces on giant screen at Japan’s busiest intersection
Studio Ghibli releases new Spirited Away earrings featuring mysterious anime bathhouse character
Okayama man arrested for catching butterflies in central Japan
Tokyo subway installing new ticket gates that don’t accept payment through Suica or other IC cards
Studio Ghibli Laputa figure looks like it’s really flying thanks to cool visual trick
Studio Ghibli adds new Ponyo glassware to its anime lineup for summer
Sanrio’s newest item looks like dog butt, exactly like it’s supposed to [Photos]
Kyoto receives more foreign tourists than ever before, but fewer visitors say they’ll return
Katana of one of Japan’s most famous swordsmen goes on display to help Kumamoto earthquake victims
Starbucks Japan unveils new coffee drinks… for people who don’t drink coffee
Life-size Legendary Pokémon Mega Rayquaza digitally greeting travelers at Tokyo train station [Vid]
Cup Noodle unveils first-ever cold-water instant ramen in Japan
Kumamoto Castle left illuminated all night long as symbol of hope for earthquake victims