I kid you not, dear reader, someone in Japan just paid tens of thousands of dollars for a single one-yen coin–a tiny disc of aluminium whose ordinary street value is just US$0.009.
While living in Tokyo, or any of Japan’s big cities, it’s hard not to want to get away from the crowds every once and a while. Of course the countryside offers a considerable amount of extra breathing room, but we know you’ve no doubt day dreamed of being alone on your own private island as you were sandwiched between two sweaty salarymen on the rush hour train. For those unable to tolerate the constant congregation of city-dwellers, this list is for you. Take a look at five uninhabited islands for sale right now in Japan and start to plan your life of solitude.
Japan is famous for “crazy” vending machines that are fabled to encase bizarre products and inappropriate wares. But for the most part, Japanese vending machines just spit out cans of cold or hot beverages, and sometimes soup. But this particular one found on a rarely traveled road in Tokyo could be a first as it seems to contain a giant beetle for sale.
Job hunting is a concentrated, intense process in Japan. In general, major companies all do their recruiting during the same, single stretch of the year, which runs through winter and early spring. Most college students try to line up a job roughly a year before graduation, and those who fail to have a doubly difficult road ahead, as not only will they have to wait a year to try again, being a year or more older than other candidates is considered a black mark against an individual.
With so much pressure on them, job hunters should be happy to learn of what may be a new secret weapon they can implement in trying to land their dream job: make it completely clear that they love idol singers.
As cute and fun as it is, there is not as yet a tremendous amount to do the PlayStation Camera, the motion-sensing add-on device for PlayStation 4. Every one of Sony’s new consoles comes with a copy of The Playroom, a collection of augmented reality (AR) games which, with a camera plugged in, combine real-time footage of players in their living rooms with computer-generated images to give the impression of sharing the same space. But once you’ve vacuumed up robots with your controller and played a few rounds of AR air hockey with a pal, you’ve seen most of what’s on offer.
Thankfully, Sony has just announced some additional content for The Playroom in the form of NINJA BOTS, which will be available later today and completely free. And it actually looks kind of fun.
Among the many Japanese tales of heroes of justice battling giant monsters, Ultraman may just be the most popular. Since its television debut in 1966, hardly a year has gone by without a new Ultraman TV series or motion picture.
The franchise’s longevity means that many long-time fans who started watching when they were young kids are now full-grown adults. On the one hand, growing up means more responsibility, but it also means more freedom, including the freedom to knock back a few cold beers at a new dining and drinking establishment where Ultraman’s monstrous foes take center stage.
Hirofumi Watanabe cites jealousy as motive & vows to kill himself when released
Hirofumi Watanabe, the suspect in the Kuroko’s Basketball threat letter case, admitted to all the charges in his first day in court on Thursday. He added that he will accept the court’s judgment and any punishment without appeal.
The Tokyo Metropolitan Police arrested the 36-year-old Osaka temporary worker on December 15 and accused him of sending threatening letters to convenience store chains and other establishments linked to Tadatoshi Fujimaki‘s Kuroko’s Basketball manga.
Many of our readers may be aware that Japanese consumers are quite fond of unique and creative Kit Kat products and flavors. But now, Nestle Japan has come out with what could be described as not just a new flavor but a new “species” of Kit Kat. And why are we calling it a new species? Well, it’s because you’ll need to do just a little bit of cooking to fully enjoy these Kit Kats. Yes, Nestle Japan’s newest Kit Kat offering, the “Bake ‘N Tasty Mini Kit Kats Custard Pudding Flavor” (Kit Kat Mini Yaite Oishi Purin Aji) is a Kit Kat that you heat in a toaster oven before eating! After hearing that, the only question we had was, of course, “How soon can we get our hands on some of these?”
It’s well-known that China’s struggling with some serious air pollution, but perhaps less talked about is the toll being taken on their rivers. According to a recent survey conducted by Chinese media, 96% of respondents felt that not a single river around them was clean enough to swim in. And judging from these photos, anyone who did decide to risk a dive would probably come out looking worse than the Creature from the Black Lagoon.
It’s hard to get an idea of how truly massive Tokyo is without seeing it from the sky. Unfortunately, most international flights come into Narita Airport, which is over an hour away from downtown, and we haven’t quite been able to convince our bosses that RocketNews24 really needs a company helicopter.
Thankfully, the newly upgraded Yahoo! Maps lets us take an aerial tour of the city even while we’ve still got both feet firmly on the ground.
In many English-speaking countries, it’s common to name children after a parent or relative. My dad, oldest brother, and nephew all share the same first name, for example, which provides a link through the generations, plus makes it easy for my mom to simultaneously call them for dinner.
This isn’t really done in Japan, though, and not being tethered to the past means that baby name trends can gather or lose momentum quickly. Recently, Japan is seeing more and more kirakira names. Kirakira literally means “sparkly,” and usually either the combination of kanji characters used to write the name, or the pronunciation itself, is flowery and unique.
But as a list of the top 20 for girls shows, kirakira names aren’t always just flashy, sometimes they’re downright sweet.
In tribute of the third anniversary of the Tohoku Earthquake on 11 March, Yahoo! Japan held a charity drive pledging 10 yen (US$0.10) for every person who entered “3.11” into their search engine.
Relying on the data that Japan’s most used search engine was privy to, they hypothesized that a maximum of 5 million yen ($48,000) from 500,000 unique IP addresses would be generated and set a limit at that amount. Boy, were they wrong.
In one of the few instances we can think of in which crime actually does pay, a Chinese bus passenger who spent years “ride-and-dashing” to dodge paying the fare repaid her karmic debt by depositing a total of 800RMB (approx. US$130) into the till boxes of two local buses.
Drivers of both buses apparently tried to reject her offering and have her pay the standard 2RMB fare (US$0.30), but the woman reportedly insisted, telling at least one of the drivers, “You’ve always been kind to your passengers. This is to repay the fare I’ve been skipping out on until now.”
Since mid-January this year, bizarre incidents of vandalism have been occurring in libraries and bookstores in Tokyo. A handful of texts were targeted, but hundreds of copies of The Diary of Anne Frank, which chronicles Jewish persecution during World War II, were found with pages slashed and torn out, leading some to suspect that the acts were part of some political statement.
On 12 March it was revealed the Tokyo Metropolitan Police have arrested a man for the destruction of Jewish themed books in a major book store in Toshima, Tokyo. Authorities also feel there is a strong possibility he is involved in the other 310 books that have been destroyed.
Meet YouTuber Smoukahontas, the girl who became an internet star in a matter of days with her video “What Language Sound Like To Foreigners”. In it, the bespectacled brunette runs through a long list of languages from Arabic to Japanese, blabbering nonsense word combinations in genuinely impressive accents, resulting in something that sounds to the untrained ear just like the real thing.
Chinese authorities have released satellite images which show what they believe could be debris from the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which vanished without trace last Saturday.
For the most part, Japan isn’t really sold on the idea that bigger is better. Sure, you can find giant parfaits and monstrous sashimi bowls, but that’s to be expected, since saying you’d rather have less of either is a sure-fire way to blow your cover to the human resistance that you’re secretly one of their killbot overlords in disguise.
Artistically speaking, though, the generally preferred aesthetic is graceful understatement, which doesn’t really necessitate ostentatious scale. The one major exception to this, however, is images of Kannon, the Buddhist goddess of mercy and compassion.
Giant-sized statues of Kannon can be found at a number of locations in Japan, and now, if you’re lucky enough, you could own one for less than 1,000 yen.
Hot on the heels of McDonald’s Japan’s announcement of its spring-themed Sakura Teriyaki Burger, Burger King Japan has just revealed a new product of its own, and it looks to be quite the mouthful. This, ladies and gentlemen of the cholesterol-loving world, is the King’s Dog (and yes, that’s “dog” without an “n”, boys at the back), which packs in roughly five times the meaty goodness of a regular Burger King hot dog.
This year, the sakura cherry blossoms are scheduled to start appearing in Japan as early as March 20 and will slowly move their way north as the country begins to thaw after a particularly snowy winter. Just one day after the appearance of the actual blossoms, McDonald’s will release a spring-inspired burger that takes a cue from the very sakura that Japan is so famous for. But with a pink-colored bun and sakura mayonnaise sauce, it’s unclear if the odd combination will be as well received as cherry blossoms and beer.
TV Asahi aired the 2013 Doraemon film Doraemon: Nobita no Himitsu Dōgu Museum on March 6 with a censored scene. In the scene, the character Shizuka encounters the secret tool “hyper vacuum,” and the vacuum sucks up the clothes she is wearing, including her underwear. In the TV broadcast version of the scene, lines of light were used to censor Shizuka when her clothes were sucked up by the vacuum (see image above).
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