Featured

Sailor Pluto muscles in on Sailor Moon’s slice of the high-end anime accessory market

Producers of the upcoming reboot of classic anime franchise Sailor Moon have been frustratingly tight-lipped with fans. Originally set to premier this summer, its premiere has now been pushed back to winter, and to date, not a single piece of art from the new series has been released.

Merchandising giant Bandai, on the other hand, has been putting out a steady string of new goodies for Sailor Moon fans as part of the series’ 20th anniversary. New Sailor Moon-themed accessories were released in June and July, and the company has now made it three months in a row with two new necklaces plus a new pair of earrings that went on sale this month.

Read More

Livescribe smartpen: Notes of the future!

While we do effectively live “in the future,” some days it can feel like we’re no more advanced now than we were 60 years ago. We still have to go to the store to buy food instead of having it materialize in little cubbyholes at the command of “Tea. Earl Grey.” Your car can’t fly, and, despite advances, we’re still not able to surf the Net with our brains. Heck, even just sitting in class or in a meeting, you still have to take notes by hand—and if you miss something important, well, that’s that. Try to write faster next time.

But one company is aiming to bring us into the future and revolutionize note-taking at the same time!

Read More

We’re already thoroughly excited about the launch of Sony’s newest home console, the PlayStation 4, but news reaching us today suggesting that the Japanese electronics giant has yet another trick up its sleeve has set us buzzing anew.

Since the PS4’s grand unveiling earlier this year, Sony has been keen to push the fact that the console will be fully integrated with its portable platform, PlayStation Vita, ensuring that all developers make their PS4 games fully playable remotely via Vita. It would seem, though, that rather than just a cool extra feature, Sony is planning to make PS4/Vita crossplay a cornerstone of the PS4 experience, with industry sources suggesting that a special PS4/Vita bundle will be made available for US$500 by the end of the year.

Read More

Real-life Nausiccä’s Möwe glider makes first powered flight

A decade after the OpenSky project began, Kazuhiko Hachiya and his team of engineers and artists can finally give themselves a well deserved pat on the back. Their dream of creating a working version of the glider seen in Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (named Möwe) has come to fruition.

On 31 July, Hachiya uploaded the video titled “OpenSky3.0 trailer,” which shows the jet engine equipped M-02J taxi and take to the sky by its own power.

Read More

The importance of the hand luggage inspection area at airports simply cannot be underestimated. Sure, they’re time consuming and can be an irritating experience for frequent fliers, but without them it would be impossible to ensure the safety of passengers on board aircraft. However, despite procedures becoming ever more stringent in recent years, it hasn’t stopped some passengers looking for ways to slip prohibited items past security. At one Chinese airport, for example, one man recently tried a quite bizarre tactic to smuggle his pet turtle onto the plane: pretending it was a hamburger.

Read More

Taiwan’s Gravity Max – Quite possibly the scariest roller coaster in the world

“Whatever that thing is in front of us is, I really hope it can hold all of our weight,” says roller coaster aficionado Robb Alvey as the car he is sitting in reaches the end of the track. And it literally is the end – just a couple of feet ahead of where the train has come to a halt, the rails suddenly stop and there is naught but blue sky.

This is the Gravity Max roller coaster in Taiwan’s Discovery World theme park, a ’tilt coaster’ built by Dutch thrill rides designer Vekoma which features a section of track at the top of the chain lift that slowly tilts from horizontal to vertical before clicking into place and releasing the safety lock to drop the train down. Provided, of course, that the rails line up…

Read More

Minor earthquake brings laughter, bikini girl to Japan

At 12:30 p.m. on Sunday, August 4, Northeastern Japan started to shake. On the Japanese shindo scale, the quake measured between 3 and 4 (overhead lights sway and objects rattle, but some people who are on the move may not notice it) in most areas, a ‘low-5’ at its strongest. Thankfully, there are thought to have been no casualties as the tremor was relatively short-lived, and with the quake of March 2011 and weeks of resulting aftershocks having been far stronger, the people of Tohoku are now fairly hardened when it comes to smaller rumbles.

Curiously though, no sooner had the earthquake passed than a few jokesters began sharing the above image from the Japan Meteorological Agency, along with messages of “LOL” and ‘Why do I suddenly feel like I want to go to Northeastern Japan?”

Read More

There are both good and bad things about being a single woman later in life, though living free is not always the lady’s choice. Years and years may pass, and relationships fail to find us. That doesn’t mean we don’t want companionship, it just hasn’t happened to us yet. Often, the time and place just never feel right for establishing that love connection, or maybe a worthy companion has yet to appear.

Regardless of the circumstances, there’s one thing that single women never want to hear, and that’s relationship advice. Sure, it’s fine if we ask for it, but otherwise, do us all a nice favor and keep your opinions to yourself. Your intentions may be noble, but your assumptions and attempted assurances are really just reminders of exactly how lonely we single women are. Trust me. Whatever you have to say, we’ve heard it all before. Here’s a list of 30 things you really shouldn’t say to a single woman, as told by the lovely ladies over at our Japanese sister site, Pouch:

Read More

I’m sure I’m not alone in loving my smartphone but always wishing the battery would last a little longer. For many of us, not knowing whether our mobile phone’s battery will make it through the day can be a real problem. While mobile technology has improved in leaps and bounds in recent years, improvements in the batteries that power them have been rather more sluggish.

Thankfully, all this could be about to change. Japan’s Shin-Etsu Chemical Co. Ltd recently announced that it has developed a new material for use in lithium-ion batteries that boasts capacities roughly 10 times the current standard, and is about to shake up the entire industry.

Read More

Old-timey Japanese women are not ones to be messed with

A photo surfaced on the internet recently which shows us a typical day at the office for a couple of ladies a long time ago in Japan. They look almost bored as they unload 300 kg (661 lbs) of rice each on their backs.

Read More

After being completely suspended in 2012, it seems like plans for the Akira live action movie are finally moving forward again. The Warner Brothers movie will be a Hollywood retelling of the 1988 cult anime classic, with original writer and director Katsuhiro Ohtomo acting as executive producer. This will perhaps assuage some fans’ fears that Hollywood will turn the dark, complex narrative into just another generic guns-and-explosions blockbuster.

Read More

20th Century Fox to officially apologize for Napoleon Dynamite’s crappy Japanese title

For foreigners living in Japan, looking through DVDs can be a chore. You generally have a 50 percent chance of the title being the same, leaving you scanning through the cover designs to find what you’re looking for the other half of the time.

Sometimes the new titles that are bestowed in Japan give more insight to the film. For example, Jerry Maguire is given the less romantic but more concise title of The Agent. However, translation and localization often leaves people making judgment calls that could easily backfire. Take the DVD version of Napoleon Dynamite which Japanese cinema lovers have deemed “Japan’s worst changed movie title.”

Read More

When setting up shop around famous landmarks, it never hurts to blend in. Especially in Japan, where tourism accounts for roughly five percent of the GDP. You wouldn’t want to destroy the tourist attraction by ruining the ambiance, right?

On the other hand, there’s not really very much that’s “traditional” about Family Mart convenience stores, so we had to wonder what kind of disguise would get slapped on their store near Ise Grand Shrine…

Read More

The 10 convenience store candies that are perfect for summer (we hope you like salt)

We’re pretty sure the last time someone went out of their way to eat hard candies when perfectly good ice cream and chocolate bars were available nearby was the 1930s or those tin candy scenes from that heartbreaking anime, Grave of the Fireflies.

But in Japan, candy comes in so many crazy flavors, colors and varieties, you’d be remiss not to at least try the convenience store greatest hits. Unfortunately, doing so would probably give you adult onset diabetes, so we’ve gone ahead and tried all the candy on offer because we’re already gross and diseased anyway. Here are our top 10 picks for the greatest hard candies on offer at Japanese convenience stores.

Read More

Lettuce farmers of “Miracle Village” looking for love – benefits include cute dogs and a six-figure salary

Kawakami Village in Nagano Prefecture is considered Japan’s premier lettuce producing village. Located near Tokyo and with just the right conditions for farming, residents have been able to pull in a good chunk of cash from their own brand of lettuce, earning it the nickname “Miracle Village”.

Bumper crops such as their Chinese cabbage are booming so well that the village’s 4,759 people boast and average annual income of over 25,000,000 yen (US$252k). However, all work and no play makes Jyoji a dull boy, so the mayor of Kawakami is sending the call to all Japan that some eligible bachelors may soon be hitting a ski-slope near you!

Read More

After the explosion at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant back in 2011, the subject of nuclear power has become a very delicate and complicated issue for the Japanese. While there is an element of danger associated with the creation of nuclear energy, many towns have also benefited from the large sums of compensation, known as “nuclear money”, that have gone into creating jobs and strengthening the prosperity of areas that have agreed to home such power plants.

Despite pressure from surrounding groups and the mainland, a small island off the coast of Yamaguchi Prefecture has for years refused to have anything to do with nuclear money, and has firmly opposed plans to build nuclear power stations in the area. But all that may be about to change.

Read More

It wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that smartphones and mobile technology in general have changed our lives in ways that we might never have imagined even 10 years ago. Communication between people on either side of the globe has become almost instant, with a wealth of information quite literally at our fingertips, and we now have more processing power in our back pockets than the PCs that took up most of our desks in the late 90s.

But is it possible that we are becoming a little too obsessed with making our data-loving life as streamlined as possible? What we’re talking about here are the mobile versions of websites that users are often redirected to when trying to visit a website on their smartphones. Often, these smartphone-friendly sites help us navigate more easily and avoid having to pinch to zoom or pan around the screen to read their contents. But due to their simplicity, many mobile versions lack many of the features of their PC-version brethren and we spend time trying to find what we really want.

A survey conducted by Kenrei Takuchi, CEO and Management Consultant for Iroha Ltd, suggests that a significant number of smartphone users in Japan have a fond dislike of the mobile versions of popular websites and wish they’d disappear back up into the sky where they came from.

Read More

2,000 figures ready for their close-ups at toy exhibition in Ikebukuro – and oh, admission is free!

Kaiyodo is one of Japan’s largest figure makers. Aside from being the manufacturer behind the Revoltech line that’s a hit with hardcore anime fans, over 130,000,000 of Kaiyodo’s Choco Eggs, toy animals, bugs, and tanks hidden inside an edible chocolate shell, have been sold, cementing the company’s spot in mainstream popular culture.

To celebrate its 30 years in the business, the Kaiyodo Figure World exhibition is being held in Tokyo’s Ikebukuro district. Roughly 2,000 figures are on display, admission is free, and as if that wasn’t enough, photography is completely unrestricted. Visitors are free to snap as many pictures of any figures they like.

Read More

The principal of an elementary school in Osaka recently resigned under pressure from the city’s board of education after using physical violence as a disciplinary measure against seven of the school’s students for enacting and concealing the event of a knife threat within the school.

Read More

Members of the Korean media have come under fire this week after they filmed a man who warned via his Twitter account that he would jump from Mapo Bridge-a known suicide spot-and made good on his promise.

There staff on the scene made no effort to intervene and have been arrested as accomplices to the man’s suicide.

Read More

  2. 1
  3. ...
  4. 1560
  5. 1561
  6. 1562
  7. 1563
  8. 1564
  9. 1565
  10. 1566
  11. ...
  12. 1671