Bringing you yesterday's news from Japan and Asia, today.
We all know about wedding anniversaries like the 50th year ‘Golden Anniversary’ and the 25th year ‘Silver Anniversary.’ Some people even may make a point of celebrating every year with something special, others may surprise their partner on an unplanned year.
One Japanese man teamed up with Nissan (yes, the car company) to give his wife the surprise of a lifetime for their 11th anniversary.
Check the video below!
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls! Hungry students and budgeting businespeople! Have we got a great deal for you! Yoshinoya’s gyūdon beef bowls – made with the same USA beef, rice, onion and delicious marinade as ever – is available for just 250 yen!
This isn’t a special offer. This isn’t for a limited time only. This is 24 hours a day, seven-days-a-week wallet-friendly value. Available at a number of special Tsukiji Yoshinoya restaurants, for just US$3, you can have a big, hearty warming dish of rice and beef, guaranteed to warm your soul and fill you up until your next meal.
Our top dog Kuzo headed out to try the beef bowl for himself, and he can confirm that this is the same Yoshinoya grub that we know and love, for 130 yen ($1.60) less than normal!
Men, no matter how old or how “masculine” they are, can learn a lot from crossdressing in public (trust us, we know).
But even if you do get the urge to unbuckle and skirt up, it can be difficult to find a time and place where going out in drag is socially acceptable. Throw in the added stress of having to coordinate an outfit and wig that sufficiently bring out your inner woman and the simple act of putting on women’s clothes and walking out the door can feel incredibly intimidating to first-timers.
Enter Onna no Ko Club, or Girls Club, a new club in Tokyo where curious men can go to experience the wonderful world of crossdressing.
We’ve had a Wii U in the RocketNews24 office, not to mention out on the shinkansen bullet train, for about a week now. Despite being made by a Japanese company, the console isn’t available in Japan for another 10 days, and many Japanese and foreigners alike are clamouring to know how the new machine works and, most importantly, whether games on the platform are really the magical experience Nintendo would like us to believe.
We picked up New Super Mario Bros U, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, ZombiU and Nintendo Land along with our import machine, and are happy to say from the outset that these are all genuinely good titles. This isn’t a review as such, but since we have a number of lifelong gamers on the RocketNews24 team, especially our main man Kuzo, we were keen to share our impressions with you regarding how the four biggest titles launching alongside the Wii U show off the new console, not to mention which of the games are most likely to satisfy once they arrive in your sweaty little hands come December 8.
SteganoSonic, a new technology that’s being developed by researches at Keio University which transmits digital information with supersonic waves was exhibited last week at the university’s Open Research Forum 2012 (ORF 2012).
By setting a terminal in the vicinity of a speaker, information can be sent from the directional speakers to the screen where it is displayed. The speaker is completely silent as it sends information to the display.
Most humanoid robots are made to look either as lifelike as possible, or as machine-like as possible; that is, similar to the robots we know from science fiction.
After seeing the “Dancing Dolls” made by YouTube user RozenZebet, we have a feeling we know why: anything in between would be absolutely terrifying.
It’s too late for this Christmas, but if you want to pamper your pet next December, this might make the perfect gift!
Made from soft inewara rice-straw, these neko chigura (lit. cat cradle) are made by a 30-strong team of weavers in the town of Sekikawa, Niigata prefecture on the northwest coast of Honshu, Japan. The weavers are known simply as the neko chigura kai (cat cradle committee) with each cradle taking around a week to put together.
Demand for the cat beds have exceeded even the creators’ wildest dreams, however, when thousands of orders flew in during recent weeks, creating a 12-month backlog.
Japanese independent musicians IOSYS (ee-oh-she-su) have a treat in store for us this Christmas. They created a concept album titled Teach me Shiri Sensei! starring everyone’s favorite virtual assistant who only knows what you’re saying half of the time, Siri.
You might be wondering from the image above why anthropomorphic moé Siri (yes, that’s her) has a severe case of plumber’s crack. It’s not just pervy for the sake of being pervy. In Japanese, there isn’t really a “see/si” sound. Instead, it’s a “she” sound.
First, this can make it very funny when a Japanese person asks “May I take a seat?” Second, this changes the pronunciation of Siri to “Shiri”, which is the Japanese word for “buttocks.” This word play is a major theme in the album.
![[Hobby News] Choco Egg Collectable Figurines Return to Steal all of Japan’s Loose Change](https://soranews24.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2012/11/choco-egg-title.jpg?w=580 "[Hobby News] Choco Egg Collectable Figurines Return to Steal all of Japan’s Loose Change")
If there’s one thing Japanese people like to do it’s collect things. And when those things are small, cute or quirky characters, you can bet your bottom dollar that they’ll fight to get the entire set!
In the land of gachapon (onomatopoeia for the sound of a turning mechanism followed by the drop of a ball or capsule) capsule toys and free collectable figures, mobile phone charms and stickers, confectioners Furuta are well known for their Choko Eggu (choco egg) series that include a collectable toy inside the chocolate shell, not unlike Kinder Surprise eggs sold in Europe and Canada.
Since 1999, the company has produced collectible figures including Disney, Marvel and Nintendo characters as well as scale models of automobiles and cars. The figures are always of incredibly high quality and, with the chocolate eggs being sold for just a few hundred yen each, they’re a big hit with children as well as adults. In 2006, however, the company’s animal figure series, which features everything from cute rabbits to ferocious-looking dinosaurs disappeared from shops, much to the disappointment of collectors.
But now, to delight model fans and kleptomaniacs alike, Furuta’s figures are being brought back to the market as stand-alone models, and Japanese collectors are already going nuts.
Here’s a news story that managed to warm even our cynical, Internet-jaded hearts to the core.
A man going by the name of Colonel Muska, the nefarious villain from Studio Ghibli’s Castle in the Sky, has made a surprise donation to an orphanage in Tokushima city on the island of Shikoku, Japan.
The mysterious stranger left a pile of expensive leather school backpacks as well as a copy of the Ghibli feature film on DVD outside the orphanage, along with a letter simply saying “Please think of this as an early Christmas present. Yours, Colonel Muska”
It’s not easy being a kid. If you’re fat the other kids make fun of you; if you’re skinny the other kids make fun of you; if you get good grades they make fun of you… Kids don’t need a genuine reason to be tease their peers; they can make one up just as easily.
But when your parents name you after their favourite thing – be it the weather on the day you were born, the place you were conceived or their favourite snack food – things get awkward for poor little Windy Latrine Butterfinger.
Although authorities have been known to intervene when parents try to call their child things like Akuma, meaning devil in Japanese, and @ as once rejected by authorities in China, the vast majority slip through the net. Since kanji, the Chinese characters used in the Japanese writing system, are based on meaning and can be read in a variety of different ways, parents giving their child a kanji-based name (some choose phonetic kana script, but this is usually just for girls) are able to choose both their child’s name and how it will be written.
For the most part, parents choose names that convey their love or hopes for their offspring, but in the land of otaku nerdism, sometimes parents just can’t help but get carried away.
Let’s be clear here: I’m no a baseball fan. I’ve never even watched an entire game, and I genuinely don’t understand the appeal of the sport, but by Zeus’ beard that Ichiro guy has got some skills.
As part of a television commerical for Japanese health tonic Yunker, Ichiro performs a few tricks, showing the world what true talent really looks like and leaving us all open-mouthed as he pitches with speed and accuracy that many players could only dream of.
From November 23rd 2012 until February 11th 2013, you can experience interstellar travel right here in Tokyo!
With the opening of Star Cruise Planetarium in Roppongi Hills, you can travel to a station on Saturn and see the Earth 137 light years into the future thanks to a wide-screen 3D display and a moving model of the solar system. It all happens at the Mori Arts Center Gallery, in the Mori Tower on the 52nd floor of Roppongi Hills. Read More
Ladies, have you ever taken a picture that you absolutely love, but wished you were wearing a bit of makeup at the time? Ever had to take a headshot for a job application but were too lazy to throw on a bit of eyeshadow and lipgloss?
Now there’s no longer any need to spend hours in front of the mirror putting your face on. With the Panasonic Lumix FX80 camera, makeup application is simply a click away.
Also, fellas, we know you’ve been secretly wondering what you look like wearing makeup but were too embarrassed to actually put some on…this is the camera for you!
North Korea isn’t exactly renown for its footwear industry, but the recent appearance of a new pair of sneakers on North Korean television has caused quite a stir in the Asian media.
Featuring an “extra-supportive heel section” and a red design with a series of white stripes, the North Korean design bears a striking resemblance to Japanese company Asics’ own model.
Is this a simple coincidence or are we looking at an all-out rip-off?
It’s winter and by now your feet probably turn to icicles as soon as they hit the hardwood floor in the morning. Wouldn’t it be nice to slip into something warm and comfy to protect your feet from the winter chill? But why settle for plain old boring slippers.
The folks over at ITmedia have discovered an etsy shop in the US that offers 100% handmade sushi slippers!
For those who can’t get enough, the sushibooties etsy shop also offers sushi baby booties, nunchuck pillows and rattles, and fortune cookie baby booties and slippers.
Have you ever heard that stoner question: “What does like, yellow taste like man?”
Recently a group of guys in Tokyo developed a recipe for a color called #c0ffee. Those who don’t use computers heavily may assume it’s a brownish color but…
It’s actually a light turquoise, like this.
“#c0ffee” is a hexadecimal color code, which is basically a combination of letters from a to f and numbers that web pages interpret as a specific color. Hexadecimal color codes are denoted by a hash tag so the little magic elves running the internet know that it’s not a string of nonsense. For example: #FFFFFF indicates black, #FF0000 indicated red, and #c0ffee indicates that light turquoise color above.
So how did they create a beverage the same color as #c0ffee? Is there even any real coffee involved?
Not in the least! The recipe for #c0ffee consists of sardines, cabbage and milk. What’s surprising is that after crating the recipe and putting on Cook Pad, Japan’s most popular recipe-sharing website, a couple of people actually tried it and said it was “delicious.”
Finding it hard to believe a bluish-green drink made from fish could be delicious, I set out to whip up a batch and try it myself!
The dish in the photo above looks like a dessert, something sweet to eat after a meal. But wait! It is the meal! It’s udon noodles in curry sauce and topped with whipped cream, to be exact, and it is absolutely delicious!
According to our trusty reporter Mr. Sato (Food Queen Sato, as he calls himself on Twitter), that is, who went to the noodle shop Shodai in Ebisu, Tokyo to taste this revolutionary spin on curry udon.
Curry udon is a standard noodle dish that can be found at just about any udon shop in Japan. It mixes the flavor of udon and curried rice by ladling curry sauce over a bowl of udon noodles. Simple, yet effective.
Throwing whipped cream into the mix doesn’t sound like it would end well. Usually these kind of things don’t. But what did Mr. Sato think about this unlikely combination?
Check his full report below! Read More
The Wii U — Nintendo’s first new home console in six years — may not be available until next Saturday here in Japan, but that didn’t stop our team getting hold of a North American unit and getting stuck into some quality gaming early.
Gamers among you will already know a little about Nintendo’s newest baby, but for the uninitiated, here it is in a nutshell: the Wii U combines the remote-wielding mayhem of everyone’s favourite Nintendo system with a unique new controller featuring a touch screen that can be used with or without a TV set, all topped off with a layer of gorgeous high-definition visuals. The idea is that the player uses the screen to interaxct with their games in a new way or, as we did here, use the gamepad screen in place of a TV set.
Sounds good, right?
But until we got our hands on a Wii U, we never fully appreciated just how much of a game-changer it was. We’ve played Sony PSP and Nintendo DS consoles on the go for years now, but imagine being able to take your actual home games console out on the road. Or how about on a high speed train…
The Japan Tourism Agency invites you to share your WOW! moments from your time in Japan by entering their Japan Photo Contest. Photos will be voted on by other users and those with the most WOW!’s (the facebook equivalent of likes), have a chance to win some fabulous prizes.
Possessing Harry Potter’s Sword of Godric Gryffindor is now illegal in Japan
Uniqlo announces first-ever collaboration with horror manga master Junji Ito【Photos】
Eight unforgettable hot springs, as recommended by Japan’s “Professor Bath”
Big dam Godzilla appears in Japan as power-washer art on side of 195-foot dam【Video】
Yakuza family speaks out against rise in organized crime
Harry Potter walk-through museum is now open in Tokyo, and here’s what you can see there【Photos】
Berserk T-shirts coming to Uniqlo for launch of new Manga Curation line【Photos】
One Piece Shinkansen bullet trains set to speed to adventure in Japan
Four words that mean something very different in east Japan and Kyoto
Drinkable Mayo on sale at Japanese convenience stores for mayonnaise fanatics
Studio Ghibli releases new range of cardigans for anime fans
Mt Fuji convenience store becomes “lawless zone” as tourists hurl abuse at security guards
Kyoto Whopper divides customers at Burger King Japan
Celebrating Good Couple’s Day in Japan…by getting our significant others to dress us
7-Eleven Japan releases fukubukuro lucky bags filled with convenience store surprisesEight unforgettable hot springs, as recommended by Japan’s “Professor Bath”
Japanese burger chain no longer serves onion rings, but offers intriguing replacement【Taste test】
Travel tip: Fukuoka has a great luggage delivery service that’s cheaper than a coin locker
Starbucks Japan reveals new holiday goods for the 2024 festive seasonPossessing Harry Potter’s Sword of Godric Gryffindor is now illegal in Japan
Nintendo’s controller capsule toys are so cool, even the machine you buy them from is awesome【Pics】
One of Japan’s most beautiful hot spring towns announces new limits on number of day trippers
Ghibli’s Princess Mononoke teams up with Foxfire for outdoor apparel collaboration【Photos】
Ghibli Park debuts first winter illumination display with Howl’s Moving Castle themeStudio Ghibli releases new range of cardigans for anime fans
Sanrio and magical girl anime PreCure join forces for new merch line【Photos】
Pringles releases a limited-edition sweet flavour in Japan
Japanese job-quitting service contacted by other job-quitting service because employee wants to quit
After cancelling Halloween, Tokyo’s Shibuya neighborhood cancels New Year’s Eve tooBerserk T-shirts coming to Uniqlo for launch of new Manga Curation line【Photos】
McDonald’s new Happy Meals offer up cute and practical Sanrio lifestyle goods
Foreign tourists on Shinkansen bullet train break suitcase etiquette, angering local passengers
[Deleted] Article written for April Fool’s Day 2018
Japanese government to make first change to romanization spelling rules since the 1950s
Foreigner’s request for help in Tokyo makes us sad for the state of society
Ghibli founders Toshio Suzuki and Hayao Miyazaki contribute to Japanese whisky Totoro label design
Japanese convenience store Family Mart announces abolishment of eat-in spaces
Princesses, fruits, and blacksmiths: Study reveals the 30 most unusual family names in Japan
Life-size vibrating Legend of Zelda Master Sword for sale from Nintendo【Photos】
Studio Ghibli releases free-download board game — Here’s how to play it without reading Japanese
Harry Potter walk-through museum is now open in Tokyo, and here’s what you can see there【Photos】
Berserk T-shirts coming to Uniqlo for launch of new Manga Curation line【Photos】
One Piece Shinkansen bullet trains set to speed to adventure in Japan
Four words that mean something very different in east Japan and Kyoto
Drinkable Mayo on sale at Japanese convenience stores for mayonnaise fanatics
Studio Ghibli releases new range of cardigans for anime fans
Do you know what this caterpillar-like food is? We had no idea!【Taste test】
Mt Fuji convenience store becomes “lawless zone” as tourists hurl abuse at security guards
Shimonoseki’s Koreantown isn’t like Tokyo’s or Osaka’s, but it has a retro atmosphere all its own
Mt. Fuji view-blocking screen to combat bad tourist manners might be replaced with another screen
Hello Kitty isn’t a cat!? We called Sanrio to find out!
Japanese woman stumbles on the power of the infamous “gaijin seat” phenomenon during flight
Japanese bank’s founders blood-signed promise to commit samurai-style suicide if they committed fraud
Starbucks Japan reveals new holiday goods for the 2024 festive season