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Giant rubber duck arrives in Osaka!

Rubber ducks invoke a sense of bath-time fun and childhood wonder no matter how old we get. Their bright colours and kind expressions are so pleasing that one artist has super-sized the fun by creating giant, inflatable versions that travel around the world.

One of these has recently taken up temporary residence in Nakanoshima, Osaka, where it will be appearing for one week only. To add to the excitement, a local hotel is serving up limited numbers of ‘rubber duck plates’ featuring the cutest rice creation you’ve ever seen!

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Puzzle & Dragons + Attack on Titan = ??? China’s creative copycats strike again【Photos】

What’s better than a ripoff of a top-selling game? A ripoff of a top-selling game featuring characters ripped off a top-selling anime!

If you own a smartphone and occasionally (or heavily) dabble in mobile games, you should have come across Puzzle & Dragons, one of the top grossing puzzle games available on both iOS and Android platforms. The Japanese developed mobile game’s tremendous success worldwide has led to many envious game developers producing “inspired” games of a similar genre.

Now, it is almost common knowledge that the Chinese are geniuses at creating imitations of anything and everything, so everyone would have expected them to make a pirated version of the monster-battling puzzle game eventually, but they have yet again managed to exceed expectations, incorporating characters and themed events based on one of the year’s hottest anime, Shingeki no Kyojin: Attack on Titan.

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F1 driver visits Japanese game arcade, burns pixels on Mario Kart

In case you hadn’t heard, F1 racing has come to Japan this weekend, and people are excited! Couple the race with a three-day weekend, and you can believe that a ton of people are heading out to Mie Prefecture to catch the big event. Though not quite as popular as soccer or baseball, it’s impossible to deny the draw the motorsport has in the country.

It also means all of the non-Japanese drivers are checking out some of the local culture. Like Red Bull Racing team driver Sebastian Vettel, who made a stop in Tokyo that has become a big hit online thanks to a video showing the German checking out a Japanese game arcade and trying his hand(s) at arcade Mario Kart!

Now, the million dollar question is: Do his real-world driving skills translate to a big win in the game world??

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Legendary mecha designer dreams up the future of Japan’s fire trucks

Fire truck manufacturer Yoshitani Machinery Co. recently approached mechanical designer Kunio Okawara and asked him to draw the next generation of fire engine. Of course, when you ask an artistic talent behind the Mobile Suit Gundam franchise and other giant robots to make a fire truck, you’re in for a treat.

Behold, The Next Yoshitani Rescue Vehicle!

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Real-life GTA missions: Yakuza member charged with trespassing after chasing boss’s cat

Everyone loves cats–this is the basic premise of that the Internet is built on. From bored housewives to hyperactive teens to exhausted business people, no one is immune to their soft, fuzzy bellies and adorable eyes. Not even yakuza bosses!

In fact, one yakuza member run afoul the law after running over a shopping arcade roof, chasing after an escaped cat on his boss’s command.

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Shinkansen stopped and searched by police because of passenger who really had to pee

No matter what language you speak, words can sometimes have a way of landing us in trouble. Sometimes we exaggerate for the sake of making a sentence simpler by saying things like “just a sec.” Other times idiomatic phrases like “talk someone’s ear off” can lead to absurd literal translations.

And then there are times when a simple turn of phrase can inadvertently lead to a major incident involving the police and talk of a potential terrorist attack.

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Fukushima Corporation unveils new mascot with an unfortunate (but hilarious) name

Meet the newest mascot at Fukushima Industries! This cute, winged egg is the perfect face for a company that manufactures the kind of industrial refrigerators, blast chillers, freezers and refrigerated showcases that you might find in a restaurant or a supermarket.

The name they chose for this little egghead, though, probably needed a bit more work…

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“Share a Coke” arrives in Spain! First Coca-Cola campaign in 60 years

The Coca-Cola Company recently launched a branding campaign in Spain, allowing consumers to personalize a Coca-Cola can or bottle with their name on it.

The global brand has achieved numerous marketing successes over the years, so it’s no surprise that the campaign received overwhelming response in just a couple of days. In fact, this award-winning “Share a Coke” campaign has been launched in several countries including Denmark, Australia, France and the UK, so some of you lucky people out there might already own one of those shiny red cans with your name on it. Nothing new, you might think, but there is a little twist behind the scenes this time.

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Wine-fueled mayhem in Japan’s Napa Valley: Katsunuma Wine and Grape Festival

When you think booze and Japan, wine is probably the last thing that comes to mind, and not without good reason. This is a country where the average wine list can be summed up as “red or white?”, both of which will come probably from an ancient box in the back of the fridge and chilled to near-zero temps.

The country is not without its fans of wine culture, though. In fact, Japan even has a wine-producing region, home to 31 wineries and an original grape variety! Katsunuma, sometimes called the Napa Valley of Japan, is tucked into the mountains of Yamanashi Prefecture, just an hour and a half from Tokyo.

RocketNews24 went to check out this grapey paradise on the occasion of the Katsunuma Wine and Grape Festival, where rumor had it 500 yen would get you unlimited wine for the day.

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Starbucks: More expensive in China than Japan or America, but why?

It’s safe to say that no one you see at Starbucks is there because they want to stretch their java-buying budget. With locations in more than 60 countries (and seemingly every branch in the Tokyo area at maximum capacity every day between 3 and 7 p.m., the Seattle-based chain must be doing something right, but sometimes it’s hard not to feel a bit surprised at the prices they charge.

But the next time you’re sitting in a Starbucks in Japan or America, pretending to sip from an empty mug because you’re not quite ready to disconnect from the free wi-fi but don’t feel like laying out the cash for another cup, consider yourself lucky. You’d be paying a lot more for your latte if you were at a Starbucks in China.

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Saiyans, pirates, and Jesus all come alive on Japanese blackboards

As we saw from their hilarious textbook doodles not too long ago, Japanese school children seem to be bursting at the seams with creativity. Now, with the slightly more public and temporary space of a classroom blackboard, some students with encouraging teachers were able to create some very impressive murals.

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Weekly Shonen Sunday’s newest manga artist is a 16-year-old high school student

Said to be like “spending a pleasant Sunday,” Weekly Shonen Sunday is one of the top three manga publications in Japan. With a weekly circulation of one million copies, Weekly Shonen Sunday has featured many noted manga artists. But their newest contributor is relatively unknown in the manga community and surprisingly young.

Sabanoneko is in her first year of high school in Hiroshima Prefecture. Deemed a manga prodigy, she won Shonen Weekly Sunday’s Rookie of the Year award for the powerful expression of emotion in her work, Oni-Hime.

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Lego ninjas duke it out in this epic stop motion video

Legos are awesome. Ninja legos are even better. But a ninja lego stop motion video? Few things are cooler than that.

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A tiny capybara bathes in a piece of toast at karaoke parlors across Tokyo

Even if you can’t make it out to the Izu Shaboten Zoo in Shizuoka Prefecture, you can still see a capybara take a bath at karaoke joints across Tokyo thanks to Pasela, a chain of high-class karaoke parlors. When it comes down to it, their “Capybara-san Honey Toast” is basically just an entire loaf of bread with some sugary toppings, but that cute little capybara face might inspire you to get one for the shear cuteness of it all.

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Burger King Japan unveils a black ninja burger that licks you back

Burger King is bringing on the bizarre burgers once again with their new “Kuro Ninja,” a burger with a black bun and long, thick strip of bacon protruding out of one side. We’re not sure if ninjas ever stuck their tongues out at their enemies, but if they did and they were somehow magically transformed into a burger, this is what they’d look like.

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New cosplay seller enters stores across Japan, just in time for Halloween

We’re well into fall now, and it’s time to start preparing for some horror-filled festivities on October 31. Japan is getting all geared-up with ghosts and skeletons clearly on display and plenty of Halloween parties planned for the days leading up to the turn of the month. But of course, what’s a Halloween party without a good costume? And what’s a good costume without a band of beautiful girls ready to promote it?

Clearstone costume maker recently released a new cosplay series called Tokimeki Graffiti, modeled and promoted by the idol group, DenpaGumi.inc. Already, whether for the quality of the costumes or the influence of idols, sales are really skyrocketing!

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Study in China determines Sprite to be the best drink to relieve a hangover

So you hit the bottle a little too hard last night and have now awoken in a state of gut-rotting, head-pounding, agony. Standing before the fridge you pretend to be a doctor and judge which drink would be chemically most efficient to chug your way out of this stupor. Water? Coffee? Wheat tea?

Surprisingly, if you chose Sprite, you’d be correct. At least, that’s what a team of researchers at Zhongshan University decided after studying the effects of 57 different drinks against hangovers.

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Police from the Himonya Precinct in Tokyo’s Merguro Ward have announced the arrest of one Keiko Hatano. Mr. Hatano has an unusual given name for a man in Japan, but even more unusual is the crime he is suspected of: fondling a woman’s posterior after explaining to her that he “studies English.”

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Take a peek inside the world’s top video game companies

While you’re trying to sneak your way past Clickers or making it rain at a Los Santos strip club, do you ever stop to think about those men and women who have slaved away for countless hours, trying to bring you the best game possible? And with every good group of game developers, you have to have a place to house them while they work, so here’s a look inside the walls of some of the biggest video game companies in the world.

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Japanese violinist perfectly mimics patrol car siren, blows our minds

There’s no shortage of brilliant musicians on the Internet putting their unique spins on popular songs or performing in unusual locations. From shamisen duos playing on moving vehicles to symphonic video game music, it seems like there couldn’t possibly be anything new for us to discover.

Emphasis on the “seems like,” because you are not going to believe what this Japanese violinist manages to pull off!

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