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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.

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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.

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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…

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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?”

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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:

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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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…

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Children’s shows are generally the weirdest things you can find on TV. We don’t really know why, though our assumption is that the writers and illustrators come up with ideas by pointing at random words in the dictionary. Either way, it seems that the weirder a show is, the more fans they have, and that means more toys! Which, of course, is scary for parents and their ever-shrinking wallets.

But sometimes those toys are enough to scare kids too…

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Giant robot design from Mobile Suit Gundam transformed into the manliest of man bags

One of the first major adjustments I had to make after moving to Japan was making a habit of carrying a bag with me whenever I go out. Having grown up in L.A., it took me a while to overcome the notion that bags were strictly for students and people with a double set of X chromosomes, but eventually I saw the light. If you live in an urban area of Japan, you’re reliant on public transportation. Without a car and a trunk to haul stuff in, a bag is really the only way to carry anything you can’t fit in your pocket but don’t want to hold in your hand all day.

Of course, my resistance might have broken down a lot quicker if I’d known about the upcoming man bag that makes you look like a giant robot.

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Capcom PlayStation 4 graphics technology more lifelike than a rich otaku’s robot girlfriend

We already know Sony’s PlayStation 4 is going to be great. We’ve already reserved a space for it under our TV and earmarked a couple of our old consoles for sale in order to pay for it. But this new footage from Capcom’s PS4 game engine has us eying our firstborns, wondering if it’s really worth hanging onto them when we could sacrifice them to Dark Lord Taro Aso to have him spirit us a brand new PS4 ahead of launch.

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