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We fall under the spell of life-sized Madoka statue at magical girl anime art exhibit

For many years, fans of magical girl anime tended to be from the same demographic as its principal characters: little girls. The genre of young girls using mystical powers to fight monsters saw its potential broadened, though, in 2011 with the television premiere of Puella Magi Madoka Magica, which cast an unflinching, unsentimental eye at the physical and psychological dangers of tasking middle school girls with battling extradimensional entities.

Madoka went on to become such a hit that its original 12 episodes were retouched and repackaged into a pair of theatrical releases. This month a third film, Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Rebellion opens in Japan, and a special exhibition of Madoka artwork and statues is being held in Tokyo.

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I think I speak for all men, and a good number of women as well, when I say we’d appreciate more direct communication in our romantic relationships. For most of us, there comes a point, usually sometime around when we finish school, where our tolerance for doubletalk and subterfuge from the person we’re dating drops off dramatically.

No one really enjoys playing mind games in their quest for love. Especially, as some people in Japan are showing, action video games like Capcom’s Monster Hunter can be a much better way of finding your soul mate.

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Haters gonna hate! Writer conducts experiment, discovers that responding to internet dissing is futile

Maybe you wrote an article, a story or a novel. Perhaps you created a website, blogged, put a video up on YouTube, or you’re an actor, fashion designer, musician, film maker… Whatever you’re doing, you’re putting yourself out there creatively and daring to make something new and explore. And then your work is uploaded onto the internet and exposed to the merciless gaze of millions of potential viewers…

If your work attracts any interest at all, next thing you know, the haters are all over you, getting up in your face. “I can’t BELIEVE you killed off Mr Darcy, what were you thinking?!” “Your eyes are too far apart,” “Why don’t you eat makeup, so you can be beautiful on the inside,” Or even, “Drink petrol and die.”

Japanese writer Sebuyama from comedy news site Omocoro recently carried out a social experiment aiming to demonstrate just how useless it is to respond to haters on the internet and use reason. He tried to find out why they were hating, and discovered three different flavors of hater!

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Intergenerational fashion show celebrates the beauty of ages

Grandchildren’s Day (Mago no Hi) was on 20 October this year, and is a date when grandparents may officially shower gifts upon their children’s children. However, you can’t have grandkids without grandparents, so a unique fashion event was held two days prior, bringing together models from both these generations, and aimed to celebrate and bring out the beauty in their relationship.

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Bullying has become a major concern in Japan over the last few years. As even elementary school students increasingly communicate and connect with their peers through technology, evidence of these instances of child-on-child cruelty is often stored electronically. Unlike in previous generations, bullies today don’t have the option of simply denying any wrongdoing took place once a victim comes forward with records documenting the incident.

Of course, there’s still the need to track down the evidence in the first place. This depressing yet necessary task often falls to Hirotaka Abe, a private investigator who specializes in helping parents when their child is victimized by hateful peers.

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Hamamatsu train station unveiled in miniature form

There’s no denying that the world looks a whole lot cuter when it’s scaled down to miniature form, and even ordinary train stations are no exception to the rule. Hamamatsu station, in Shizuoka Prefecture, has been given the mini-me treatment, thanks to one of its renowned residents, award-winning modeler Takuji Yamada. On display in the city centre, people from all over Japan are gushing at the model’s remarkable quality and it’s amazing likeness to the original.

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Who would the U.S. back in a Japanese-Korean war? South Korean netizens debate

If Japan and South Korea were on Facebook, there is no doubt that their relationship status would be “it’s complicated.” Between territorial spats, historical disputes and arguing over a pop star’s table manners, these two countries have a lot of uncomfortable diplomatic moments. But they do have one very major thing in common—mutual defense treaties with the United States. Although we doubt (and very much hope) that Tokyo and Seoul never resort to war to solve these issues, some South Korean netizens recently took to the Internet to ponder who Uncle Sam would back in such a fight.

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Video shows karate ref flipping out and defeating both fighters

Karate is a martial art which takes a high level of discipline and training to master. Those who make it to the highest ranks of the fighting technique deserve all of the respect and honor that comes along with such a position.

That being said, watching an official karate tournament on TV tends to rank somewhere around pro-bowling and bass fishing in terms of excitement. This is why seeing a video like the one on YouTube titled “Karate referee gets into the fight” is too good to be true!

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Carbonated tomato juice makes a reappearance in stores across Japan

Hate tomato juice? Maybe you’ll like sparkling tomato juice.

Kagome, a Japanese manufacturer of fruit and vegetable juices, has just announced the sale of Tomash, a carbonated tomato beverage. The drink is made from a combination of tomato juice mixed with lemon and ginger ale, and believe it or not, it’s back by popular demand.

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Weird toothpaste mascot is a big hit with women in Japan

A recent appearance by a new mascot in Tokyo’s Shibuya ward saw young women flocking to take commemorative pictures. When our reporter encountered the mascot, officially named “Mr. T Stain,” women were following it around with squeals of delight, making the surrounding men extremely jealous. But why is Mr. T Stain, who could be in the running for weirdest mascot, so popular with the ladies? It has something to do with a toothpaste commercial featuring a very eccentric pop star.

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NASA and JAXA team up to deliver amazing new satellite, promotional video

Space is awesome. There’s no one who can disagree with that. It’s a simple fact of reality! Spaceflight, satellites, astronauts and all that jazz are just some of the coolest stuff on the planet…uhh…in the universe!

Helping to make all that coolness a reality are the amazing government agencies NASA (from United States) and JAXA (from Japan), who are devoted to the exploration of the great dark void that surrounds our planet. They’re also great partners, often working together to bring missions to fruition, like the GPM (Global Precipitation Measurement) mission, for which JAXA developed something called the DPR (Dual-frequency Percipitation Radar).

And while their program is awesome, there’s actually something even more sweet to come out of this partnership: A gorgeous anime promotional video!

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Anime fan and pet owner recreates Attack on Titan’s epic opening shot by shot – with cats! 【Video】

This year’s breakout anime hit Attack on Titan snuck up on a lot of people. Sure, previews for the TV series made it look like a fun adventure, but is wasn’t until sometime after it premiered that the franchise became the international success it is today, despite the comic it’s based on having been around since 2009.

Why didn’t more people, from the very beginning, realize just how much entertainment Attack on Titan has to offer? Maybe the story’s antagonists, naked giants who look like anatomy textbook illustrations, were just too repugnantly grotesque. Maybe, being creator Hajime Isayama’s first serial, the artwork on its heroes was a little too rough around the edges. How much more immediately accessible would Attack on Titan have been if they had all been replaced with a more traditionally pleasing aesthetic, like a bunch of cute cats?

Thanks to this feline-infused recreation of the show’s opening animation, now we know.

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Couple holds intimate, romantic wedding ceremony on Tokyo’s busiest rail line

Out of all the rail and subway lines crisscrossing Tokyo, the most well known and heavily used is the Yamanote Line which encircles downtown Tokyo. Stations along the Yamanote serve some of the city’s busiest business, education, and entertainment districts, and the result during rush hour is train cars that are so packed it’s comical (for everyone except the passengers themselves, of course).

This month, however, the Yamanote Line was the site of a gathering quite a bit more intimate than its usual pressed mass of sleeping white-collar professionals, as a couple held their wedding ceremony onboard one of its trains.

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Nagano police bust up cannabis tempura camping party

Late last month 51-year-old resident of Azumino City, Nagano Prefecture, Kazuhiko Shirasaka, allegedly called together a camping party with around 30 other people including 62-year-old Naofumi Katsuragawa who lived in nearby Ikeda Town. Little did they know, these young rascals would be cooking up the makings of an after-school special, if late-middle-aged people still went to school.

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The future of smoking: USB-powered Jii Lighter is here! (And it’s kind of insane)

If you’ve been hanging around the Internet as long as we have, there’s a good chance you’ve seen it all–or almost all. From sleepy cats to pandagators, it sometimes seems that there’s not much left to surprise us, and then a Japanese commercial comes along and proves us wrong!

Jii Lighters aren’t particularly revolutionary in design–they’re just electric lighters that can be charged via USB–but when it comes to marketing, we think they may be light years ahead of the competition.

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Japan under siege by broken umbrellas

Japan is a country that loves their umbrellas. Rain or shine, lolita or businessman, everyone enjoys the security of a swath of plastic or cloth above their precious head. However, this time of year poses a particular problem for parasol lovers, when mother nature flings typhoons at East Asia like so many spitballs at a blackboard of the Pacific Rim.

The result for most pedestrians is a nasty combination of heavy wind and rain where one wrong turn of the corner can instantly result in your umbrella becoming the world’s largest and most depressing shuttlecock.

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Xperia sales are up! Thanks to Japanese Internet’s newest crush?

Over the summer, Sony saw quite an increase in their operating profits thanks in large part to excellent sales of their Xperia smartphone line. And while we’re sure that many people bought Xperias because they loved the technology or the design, there might be another factor that you won’t find in the company’s annual reports: Sayumi Tsuchida, the Japanese Internet’s newest crush!

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Pitch black sesame garlic ramen at craft brewer’s restaurant stirs our hearts while filling our bellies

When dining out in Japan, there is a commonly accepted truism that you get the tastiest example of a particular type of food by eating it in a restaurant that specializes in it. For example, if you want good ramen, you go to a place that serves that and little, if anything, else.

Speaking of Japan’s favorite noodle dish, popular wisdom also holds that the dingier the ramen restaurant, the better-tasting the food.

So imagine our surprise when we discovered that the Yona Yona Beer Kitchen, a classy restaurant with a full menu in Tokyo’s swanky Nagata-cho neighborhood, can also whip up a bowl of ramen that’s as delicious as it is visually striking.

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Period pain? There’s a comic for that!

There’s a five-frame comic doing the rounds on Twitter that’s got all the ladies talking. Called “The day of period pain”, it’s being praised for authentically depicting that dreaded time of the month and proves that, in Japan, there really is a comic about everything.

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Disney’s Rapunzel as Sailor Moon is the best thing we’ve seen this week

Disney princesses get to have fun sometimes, right? When they’re not saving the day or being saved by their handsome prince, we’re sure they find time to kick back with their friends and celebrate holidays. The following is what a few of the most popular Disney princesses might wear on Halloween as envisioned by artist Isaiah K Stephens. And of course strong princesses like Pocahontas, Jasmine, and Merida would dress as their favorite female superhero or heroine.

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