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While most of us use YouTube to upload homemade productions and watch funny cat videos, much of Japan still turns to their domestic video sharing site, Nico Nico Douga.

Yet whereas YouTube sees content from users across the world, Nico Nico Douga has remained primarily an exclusive club for Japanese speakers since it began in 2006. An English language beta website, Niconico.com, was launched in early 2011, but failed to generate interest even among foreign users of the Japanese site, due in part to the separation of Japanese and English videos between two domains.

Perhaps realizing that they’ll never be able to attract a sizable userbase from YouTube, Nico Nico Douga has shifted its strategy away from encouraging original English content to making its Japanese content more accessible to English speakers, replacing the English website with an English interface for the Japanese domain, nicovideo.jp.

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Japanese Man Takes Customized Street Legal Porsche 962C for Sunday Drive, Goes to the Convenience Store

The Porsche 962C was the premier car of the 80s, winning back-to-back 24 Hours of Le Mans in 86 and 87 along with a slew of other series during that decade.  It was an inspiration for one Japanese man, whose dream was to own one himself.

So he purchased one of the very few street legal Group C Porsche 962’s in existence. And he allowed us a peak at a simple afternoon drive behind the wheel of one of the greatest race cars ever.

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Whichever way you look at it, life in Japan is expensive.

As well as Japan’s food, drink and fuel ranking among the world’s most expensive, compared to many western countries, land in particular is sold at a premium, meaning that accommodation can be costly, and even those with enough capital to consider purchasing a car often abandon the idea when they realise that they cannot afford to buy or rent the necessary parking space.

CNN’s “World’s Most Expensive Places to Live 2012” placed Tokyo and Osaka first and third, respectively, and thanks to the strong yen and weak dollar/euro/everything, coming to live in Japan has never been more financially challenging.

With this in mind, budgeting expert Yoko Hanawa at Yahoo! Japan shares some ways in which Japan’s businessmen and women tackle everyday life in this tough financial climate, and introduces a few ideas of her own that are worth paying attention to.

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Those of you fortunate enough to have been introduced to Studio Ghibli’s animated feature films will know that they’re of the highest quality and easily rival Disney’s own productions.

Back in my native UK, comparatively few people have met with Ghibli’s heart-warming animated creations, with some people, in fact, falling into the trap of thinking that anything foreign and “a bit manga” is probably not for them. Thanks to the UK’s relative reluctance to embrace the movies, it was not until I was 15 years old when, one rainy Sunday afternoon, My Neighbor Totoro was shown on cable TV that I first became aware of Hayao Miyazaki’s work. At the time, I had no idea what I was watching, but have been a huge fan ever since.

Over in the studio’s native Japan, however, Studio Ghibli has become something of a national treasure since its establishment in 1985, with the studio’s near-annual releases always eagerly awaited, and usually met with both an abundance of praise and mounds of cash.

For most Japanese, Ghibli characters like My Neighbor Totoro’s Satsuki and Mei, Spirited Away’s Chihiro, or broomstick-riding Kiki from the movie of the same name, form a part of their childhood or are attached to fond memories, perhaps even more-so than Mickey, Donald and pals are toWesterners.

So when one hawk-eyed Twitter user suggested that perhaps certain Ghibli characters have cropped up in more than movie without us realising it, internet users understandably paid attention…

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How to Organize Zen? Japanese Buddhists’ Adapt to Western Views of Their Religion

What do you think of when you hear the word Zen?  For most people, “organized religion” probably isn’t a phrase that pops up immediately.  This can be a bit of a predicament for Zen Buddhist missionaries working in places like Europe and North America.

The word, which comes from a Japanese translation of the Chinese word chán, literally means meditation, and has developed a romantic sense of being purely in the moment and devoid of all thought.  This concept has been focused on by various artists in Western culture like Jack Kerouac, with a diminished emphasis on the less sexy doctrines and worshiping of Buddha that are very much a part of the whole religion.

This image dichotomy is something that the Headquarters of Missionary Work for the Soto School of Buddhism in Europe has to deal with all the time.

Excite News Japan recently went to interview them on the state of modern Soto Zen Buddhism abroad. Check our rundown of their findings below!

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Let’s play a little game, shall we?

You’re walking down the street one day when you stumble across a watch on the ground. On closer inspection, you realise it’s a rather swanky gold Rolex, and it looks genuine. You look around for the owner, but no-one is in sight, and there are no residences or open stores nearby.

What do you do?

Pocket the watch to sell later or make your own, or hand it in at your nearest police station? Be honest now…

How about if, instead of finding a watch on the street, you discovered a small stack of cash, sitting unattended beside an ATM? And it’s no paltry sum either- about US$2,000. Would you take it or leave it behind?

A middle school vice principle in Kōchi prefecture, Shikoku, decided on the former… Read More

 

As smartphone usage continues to grow in Japan, more Japanese developers are tinkering with the devices to make apps of their own. And since developer tools and information are made available for free online, just about anyone can break into app development so long as they have an idea and the willingness to learn.

In fact, making a smartphone app is so easy, even a grade-schooler could do it— just look at 12-year-old Gaiya Ohara, Japan’s youngest smartphone developer and sole creator of the award-winning iOS app, Math RPG.

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Your Japanese TV Commercial Favourites, All Under One Funky Beat

I think I’ve just found my new favourite YouTube channel.

Thanks to a tip-off from an awesome RocketNews24 reader, I’ve discovered Eclectic Method; audio-visual remix masters and providers of horribly funky beats, whether the sampled videos were intended for musical enjoyment or not.

The video that pulled me in, however, was the group’s fantastic Japanese TV commercial remix…

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Japan’s Gyūdon Giants Launch Pricey New Dishes After Facing Financial Losses

While hamburger chains like McDonald’s Japan may be forever shaving yen off their prices and launching campaigns like free hamburgers and coffee, stores like Yoshinoya and Sukiya, home of the original Japanese fast food, gyūdon, are about to become a little more expensive.

The stores, which have been locked in fierce price wars for years, have, until recently, hoped to attract customers by offering rock-bottom prices and seasonal offers, but are beginning to feel the strain.

Is the businessman’s staple dish about to get a dash of sophistication? Or will the same-old beef bowl simply receive a bigger price tag?

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Cassette to iPod Converter Helps ‘80s Kids Keep Their Tape Collection Alive

We all love new technology, but when the arrival of a new generation of hardware signals the end of another, it can be kind of sad.

Vinyl will always be considered classic, but VHS and audio cassettes have sadly gone the way of the dinosaurs, with MiniDiscs (remember them?), and maybe one day CDs, soon to follow.

While CD quality sound is universally recognised as being superior to MP3 music, and despite MiniDiscs still hanging on in Japan years after the west turned its back on them, highly compressed MP3 is fast becoming the format of choice for millions of people, meaning that more and more of our once-loved possessions are relegated to sitting on the shelf or in a desk drawer somewhere.

So what are we to do with those Backstreet Boys cassettes? What fate awaits forgotten Bon Jovi tapes that rattle around the glove-box of a car whose stereo no longer has a tape deck? Are we destined never again to hear their muffled warbles and grainy beats?

Help is at hand!

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Tokyo Flashmobs Leave Japanese Smiling and Wanting More

It is a seemingly uneventful sunny afternoon in the park filled with the usual kinds of people who come out to enjoy themselves.  Suddenly there is a street performance before your eyes which looks utterly spontaneous as more and more people join in. That’s right! Flashmobs have finally come to Japan! Read More

The word “Bonsai” needs no translation. It is renowned internationally as a beautiful form of art which condenses nature into enjoyable little plants.

Recently, exports around the world of these little trees have increased by leaps and bounds. Hugely popular across Asia, Europe, and America, Bonsai exports to these areas have hit a record high, 10 times what they were only ten years ago.  With the onset of autumn, as exports reach full-scale, people who work in the bonsai business hope that bonsai can regain some of its popularity domestically as well.

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First of all, let it be known that I like meat.

Chicken, beef, turkey, pork; it’s all good. While I’m by no means shy of vegetables or fish, I love to cook, and there are few meals that I enjoy more than a good chicken curry, a classic beef lasagne, home-made hamburgers, or a nice, simple, piece of medium-rare steak.

But when food comes to me with its face still intact, I’m not so happy.

In the past, a few vegetarians have told me “If you couldn’t bring yourself to kill and prepare meat then you shouldn’t eat it.” Personally, I wouldn’t care to chop down a tree and painstakingly make individual sheets of paper, either, but I’m still happy to use the stuff on a daily basis, but even if it makes me a wimp, or immoral, I’m still happy to eat meat so long as I don’t have to get my hands dirty. So long as there are no eyes looking up at me from the plate, and preferably nothing that screams “I used to be alive, you know!”, I’m happy to tuck in.

So when I came across ITMedia writer Wataru Kato’s first-hand experience of eating a whole, roasted rodent, it was with both a curious mind and a slightly churning stomach that I read on, wondering whether, were I presented with the same dish, I could bring myself to eat it, let alone sit with it staring back at me.

The rodent in question is a specially bred Peruvian guinea pig, quite far removed from the kind of creature you might spot scuttling down a dark alley or up a drain pipe.

Nevertheless, we recommend tackling this particular story after you’ve finished your next meal.

Hold on to your lunch…

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  • Oct 15, 2012

 

In this age of global travel and internet communication, meeting and even getting seriously involved with someone from outside your country is a very real possibility. For that matter, how do Japanese women and men rate as romantic interests? Takako Matsushita, a Japanese cabin attendant who has also appeared on T.V. and in magazines, offers her perspective on how Japanese women may get higher marks than Japanese men in the international dating market. And her message? Japanese men need to watch out, or all the nice ladies in Japan may be snatched up by foreign men! Read More

Can Men and Women Really Be Close Platonic Friends? Survey Says Your Girlfriend Might Not Think So

Ladies do you think you could possibly get along with a guy just as well as you do with your female friends?  Not in exactly the same way, but on the same level without it changing into something romantic.  And fellas, do you really think the “friend zone” exists with a woman or is that just her way of getting you off her back.

Japanese bridal information site Bridal Souken conducted a study last March asking 3096 single men and women between the ages of 20 and 50, “Is a friendship between a man and a woman real?” According to the results many more men and women think it is than isn’t, but the deeper we go we can see that gender is but a single piece of a bigger puzzle.

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You Can Only Listen to This Song Once In Your Life

To promote their new album Meeteen (ミーティン), quirky pop-rock ensemble Dainari><Konari (Greater Than >< Less Than) released a highly exclusive song online.  In fact, it’s so exclusive that once you listen to it it will remain locked forever.

Full of questions I embarked on this journey, worried that the song may be so catchy that I’d go crazy if unable to hear it again.

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