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Free Underwear! Innovative Business Set to Give Away Up to 7 Pairs a Month

I have to admit, I’m the kind of guy who clings to his underwear until it’s little more than two threads attached to a stretched out, useless elastic band. Guys tend to be creatures of habit and would rather put up with worn down shorts than go to the store to buy new ones.

Freepan (short for Free Pants) is a totally new patented service prepared to send up to seven free pairs of underpants every month – with free delivery!

Catch? Yes, there are a couple catches but not as bad as you might imagine.

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iPhone App “Burner” Let’s You Keep Your Original Number Clean or Get into All Kinds of Mischief

With mobile phones steadily evolving into smart phones the days of prepaid units may one day slip away from us.  However, a new app called Burner keeps the tradition of making and receiving anonymous phone calls alive on your regular smart phone.

The app is named after a slang term for a cheap prepaid mobile phone that could be untraceably used in illegal dealings.  Once the job is done, you can just toss the burner in a dumpster severing all connection with that number.  This app saves the trouble of getting and disposing of a handset by putting the burner inside your iPhone side by side with your regular service. Yet this app surely can be used for legal purposes too… right?

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Bill Gates Building a Mansion in Japan!? We Investigate!

Rumor has it that the world-famous Bill Gates has started building a vacation home in Japan’s premier mountain resort town Karuizawa, Nagano!

After it was substantiated in an article in Shinken Shinbun, a local construction periodical, the Bill Gates Mansion became the talk of the town. The land for it includes an area of 19,979 square meters. It will be one-storied and go down two stories into a basement.  There will be a heliport and a private underground road accessing the grounds where a 2000 square metered garden is planned.

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Website Lets You Check if Anyone Was Murdered or Committed Suicide in Your Home

None of us wants to live in an apartment or house where someone was killed, also known as stigmatized properties. It’d be pretty creepy in the least.  However, in Japan the desire to not live in a place like that is so intense that you’d think Poltergeist was a documentary.

Oshima Teru is an up and coming website that also must be a real estate agent’s worst nightmare.  Its main purpose is to map out every property where unnatural deaths occurred. Originally only focusing on the Greater Tokyo Area, they have expanded into nearly worldwide coverage including North America and Europe.

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Domino’s Pizza “Manager of Excellence” Pawns His Domino’s Themed Rolex Reward, Company Appears Shaken

There are many pizza places in the world but very few have achieved the worldwide notoriety of Domino’s Pizza.  So it’s comforting to know that they reward their workers handsomely when outstanding work is done.

In Japan, a manager deemed “excellent” by the corporation gets rewarded a Rolex watch.  Granted the Rolex is engraved with the Domino’s logo in places, but it’s still a Rolex, and it’s worth a pretty penny too according to the pawn shop one was sold to.

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  • Aug 17, 2012

It’s a fact of life that summers in Japan are hot and humid, and the Japanese people have a long history of trying to find ways to cool down in hot weather. One tradition that has come about as a result is the telling of terrifying horror stories in the summer, for the purpose of getting “chilled with terror”. And right now with the summer in full swing in Japan, we are indeed in need of some “chilling”.

Well, to help those of us desperate to feel just even a little bit cooler, Japanese entertainment group Culture Convenience Club (CCC), which operates TSUTAYA, one of the largest Video/DVD rental chains in Japan, has released a list of the 20 most-rented horror movies in Japan over the past three decades (1983 to 2012 to be exact). So, let’s see which movies made the list! Read More

Turntable Rider Converts BMX Bike Into Musical Instrument

Yo dawg, Japanese smartphone-based bike-sharing service Cogoo heard you like freestyling, so they stuck a DJ mixer into your BMX bike so you can freestyle while you freestyle.

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Why Do Foreigners Like Japan so Much? We Head to Comiket 82 to Find Out!

Many foreigners view Japan as some marvelous dreamland of technology and culture; a place where crazy is the norm and embracing fantasy in everyday life is acceptable.

But to Japanese people, Japan is just that place you were born. Everyone and everything is routine, and it’s often difficult to see why the rest of the world get’s so worked up about “Japanese culture.”

Earlier this month, we sent one of our Japanese reporters to Comic Market (or “Comiket“), the world’s largest self-published comic book fair and otaku mecca, to interview real live foreigners and ask them what it is they really think about this country.

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Limited-Edition Pikachu Yellow Nintendo 3DS XL Coming to Japan in September

While North America and Australia are still have a week to wait before they can get their hands on the Nintendo 3DS XL, Japan is already getting its first limited edition version of the little giant: Nintendo 3DS LL Pikachu Yellow.

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Beautiful Japanese City Councilor: “I don’t wash my face or go to the bathroom”. Loses Job, Might be a Yakuza Alien.

Asuka Tachikawa, 27, famous for being a “beautiful city councilor,” has had pressure put on her to quit her job because she is actually an alien in disguise trying to ruin the city of Niizu in Saitama (near Tokyo).

Elected as a city councilor in February this year, the Saitama Prefectural Electoral Office has decided that her election is invalid because she may not have lived in the city for more than the required 3 months. In other words, she is an alien.

But what evidence do they have?
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Move over Ryohei Kato! There’s another male gymnast whipping women into a frenzy online.  His name is Kohei Uchimura, and while his boyish good looks and personality scores points with the ladies, it’s a certain part of his body tucked away that sets him apart from others.

That’s right. Women can’t seem to get enough of Uchimura’s arm pit hair.  In fact, there’s a lot of talk of using it a garnish as one person commented “I want to sprinkle his fresh pit hair over my soba and savor the taste.”

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  • Aug 16, 2012

Annoyed by Buzzing Mosquitoes? A Smartphone App May Be the Answer to Your Problem

We’ve introduced some unique smartphone apps in one of our previous posts, but here’s one more unique app that’s caught our attention and may even be useful, if you believe what the developers say. If you’ve ever been annoyed by mosquitoes in the outdoors, and I believe most of us have at one time or another, then the Mosquito Buster app may be the solution to your pest problem. Yes, those small, buzzing blood-suckers can really be a pain, can’t they? But can a smartphone app really help you avoid mosquitoes? Well, the people at TABROID, a Japanese site that focuses on Android-related news and information, have apparently tested the app out in the field to see if it actually works. Read More


  • Aug 15, 2012

 

I’m sure you’ve all had the experience of folding paper planes as a child. But the paper planes we’re going to show you here don’t look at all like the typical paper plane you might imagine. In fact, we have to warn you, you may even think these paper planes look a bit creepy. Why? Because these planes have legs! Yes, that’s right, they’re two-legged paper planes! But how ever did such a trend begin? Read More

Bottles? We Don’t Need No Stinking Bottles! In China Everyone Carries Cucumbers to Beat the Heat

In these dog days of summer it’s a pretty good idea to carry around a bottle of water or sports drink to stay safe from heat stroke.  However, in China, home of the melt-proof ice pop, people are into a much more low tech way to keep cool.

One of our reporters was standing at a traffic signal in Shanghai when he spotted an attractive businesswoman rummaging through her purse.  Finding what she was looking for, she pulled out a huge cucumber and started munching on it as nonchalantly as one would drink a cup of coffee from Starbuck’s.  Mildly aroused, he decided to investigate this spontaneous act more deeply.

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Sakhalin as Seen From a Japanese Tourist in 42 Points

Sakhalin is a large and sparsely populated island in the North Pacific, lying directly North of Japan and East of Russia. While it currently belongs to the latter, the island was the source of a bitter territorial dispute between the two countries throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.

Getting into Sakhalin as a tourist can be rather difficult due to the restrictions set by the Russian government, which is why, despite the island’s proximity to Japan, Japanese and other foreign tourists are few and far between. While you can find tours of historical remains from Japanese occupation and landmarks visited by famous Japanese author Kenji Miyazawa, you’ll need quite a bit of cash and patience to get there in the first place.

One of our Japanese correspondents recently returned from a trip to Sakhalin and shares with us his rather random thoughts on the Russian island in convenient numbered list form.

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20 Guilt Free Snacks With Only A Hundred Calories

Imagine, if you will, a conversation in your Pilattes studio or gym locker room, or even on the train in any city in Japan, between two slender women, whom nobody would ever guess to be worried about their weight.  These women could be any age, married, single, with or without children, the point being that they are slender.

“I’m getting fat!  I really have to watch what I eat!”

“Me too!  My weakness is snacks I can’t help eating snacks!”

“Oh, guess what?  I found an article on RocketNews 24 about ‘diet snack food’!  It introduces 20 of them, I’m pretty sure it says they are no more than 100 calories each!”

Two heads meet in the center to gaze over an i-phone. Read More

The Very Bitter Gourd ‘Goya’ Ripens into a Sweet Treat!

The goya represents summer in Japan in many ways.  This bitter gourd is a staple of Okinawa cuisine with a tropical image, its bitterness is celebrated as one of the healthiest foods around.  If you can stand the bitterness then it is excellent for the skin, a beauty aide for women!

The ever popular ‘green curtain’, which is a vine plant grown on netting over windows to keep out the heat, often consists of goya plants.  The leaves grow thick and can keep direct sunlight out considerably saving on cooling costs!

Goya growers and super markets throw out the over-ripe goya when it yellows, I suppose because it stops being the well-loved summer vegetable we all know.

But wait!  If you let it ripen, it turns into a bright yellow sweet fruit!  WOW!  Where did that bitterness go?
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How Many Winks Can You Expect to Catch with these Blindfolds? Over NINE THOUSAAAAAAND!

Have trouble getting to sleep? The sensory depriving qualities of a sleep mask might be just what you’re looking for.  Sure, you may think eye masks are for wealthy dowagers and other fuddy-duddies. However, these masks cater to the hip, urbanite otaku in all of us with patterns ranging from mainstream (Sailor Moon) to the obscure (Black Butler).

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Panda Onigiri Are Too Cute to Eat, We Do So Anyways

As a rule of thumb, if you want to cuten something up, add some panda. Just look at these panda rice balls (onigiri). There is no other animal on this planet that can make a ball of white rice look this adorable.

We know what you’re thinking: “Sure they’re cute, and I’d love to make them myself, but don’t you need the dexterity of a Japanese ninja housewife to do so?”

Not anymore you don’t! The panda rice balls you see above were actually made by one of our Japanese reporters (single, female, hasn’t made a bento in 5 years) with the help of the fabulous “Panda Onigiri Set,” which can be purchased for around $13 from sites like Bento & co or JBOX.

Already own a Panda Onigiri Set but are having trouble getting your rice balls to look like the ones in the picture? RocketNews24 is here to pander to your needs with our step-by-step guide to making adorable panda onigiri!

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Ride a Real Sushi Train! The Newest Attraction at the Hamanako PalPal Amusement Park

The first sushi train themed ride in Japan!

This is one ride we would like to try at least once before we die. The newest attraction at the Hamanako PalPal amusement park in Hamamatsu City, Shizuoka Prefecture allows you to ride on a piece of sushi. The name of the attraction?“Ride on the sushi and spin around!”
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