The Powerpuff Girls and Japan’s Ponta mascot are crossing over to celebrate the cartoon’s 15th anniversary. Sega, Pizza Hut, and Cartoon Network Japan are participating with various goods featuring the Powerpuff Girls with ears and tails.
With a little under a week until Valentine’s Day, Japan is still in the midst of chocolate madness, and it appears the fast food industry is no exception. Hot on the heels of their unique french fries and chocolate sauce combination, fast food chain Lotteria has now come out with a burger with … yes, you guessed it — chocolate sauce!
North American anime distributor Funimation confirmed on Thursday that it acquired the streaming rights to the Ben-To anime. The company will begin streaming the anime with English subtitles to subscribers on Tuesday, February 11, followed by free streaming on February 28.
Funimation describes the story based on Asaura‘s “school serious/gag action” light novel series:
Every day an epic struggle rages in grocery stores across Japan—the battle for half-priced bento boxes! Once the discount stickers go on, ravenous brawlers start throwing punches in a knockdown, drag-out war over who gets to take home the cheap eats…
Japan’s SoftBank Corporation recently put together a typically bizarre commercial to advertise their new student discount service, and held a press conference to announce it. In attendance was the famous SoftBank dog, and a couple of large pears, who all got a little over-excited. When dealing with huge talents like these, things don’t always go to plan…
*made from concentrate
Happy Friday, everyone, and welcome to round 6 of our weekly multiple choice quiz! We hope you’ve all had a great week and enjoyed the news we’ve had to offer, and of course that you’ve been paying close attention, because as you should probably know by now, this quiz is by no means a walk in the park–it takes years of repeated head trauma to get into this kind of mindset.
So step inside and let’s see how much of newshound you are!
In many ways, Japan is a wonderland of desserts, a place with cherry blossom lattes, roasted tea parfaits, and even suicide-themed bean cakes. Still, the country is rather lacking when it comes to donuts. The indigenous Mr. Donut chain has branches all over, but while their products are indeed tasty, they’re usually a little on the bland side.
If you want the full-fledged flavor of an authentic donut, you’ve got to visit one of the American outfits in Japan, such as Krispy Kreme or Donut Plant. Unfortunately, Donut Plant locations are few and far between, and the lines at Japan’s Krispy Kremes are ridiculously long, so there’s no way for us to get our hands on the real deal without a bit of time and travel.
Since we’d already tossed subtlety out the window as far as flavor is concerned, we decided to do the same for the scale of our search for donut satisfaction. We hopped on a plane, leaving the Land of the Rising Sun and heading for the Land of the Ring-Shaped Cake, America.
Visitors to Tokyo’s Ueno Zoo were asked to evacuate the premises yesterday after it was reported that a gorilla had become loose from its enclosure. More than 50 members of staff immediately leapt into action, preparing giant nets and tranquilizer guns to take down the rampaging, and undeniably cuddly looking, animal.
Last year we brought you a firsthand account of the 2013 Sapporo Snow Festival, with more images of snow and ice sculptures than you can get your tongue stuck to. This year, we’re sad to say we couldn’t make it out to the annual event up in Japan’s northernmost prefecture, so we’ve been living vicariously through Twitter users. Some of the images we’ve seen are too good not to share, so we decided to give you a little taste of the snow festival through the following gallery of images from Twitter.
Since their introduction in the 1930’s, drive-thrus have become part of modern life. We’re used to the idea of ordering fast food or a coffee through a little glass window, but there’s also a a range of other shopping and services available from the comfort of your car, from picking up prescriptions or dry cleaning, to getting your groceries. And of course Vegas even offers those infamous drive-thru weddings! But one of the more bizarre drive-thrus is, of course, to be found in Japan.
Tekken is arguably one of the best fighting games out there. The series is coming up on its 20th anniversary and has been hugely successful in Japan and abroad during the past two decades. Tekken has recently been gaining a lot of buzz online, not for the game itself, but for a new way to play it. In a YouTube video titled, “Tekkenpiano Docu,” user Peter Oehler shows us how he invented a way to play Tekken using a piano.
Early this morning, a peculiar fellow was spotted riding the rails in Tokyo. Wrapped in layers of lights and adorned in pink pinwheels, he didn’t even bother sitting in the half-empty carriage. Just what was this glowing man doing on the last train home? The answer may surprise you.
For decades Japan has had fleeting affairs with concoctions known as “White Cola” which is meant to be a twist on the age old formula that brings us the brown colas we all know and love. Now, it’s back again to celebrate the Sochi Olympics. From 4 February you can purchase a bottle of Pokka Sapporo White Cola for 147 yen (US$1.45).
As completely fictitious forms of media, we usually don’t see the characters in anime and manga suffering the physical ill effects of their action-packed lifestyles. Shouldn’t Evangelion’s Shinji have severe whiplash from all the times his scrawny frame gets tossed around while piloting his giant robot? How does Kenshiro, hero of post-apocalyptic epic Fist of the North Star, not get a wicked eye infection after spending the whole of his adult life wandering a desert wasteland without so much as bottle of eye drops?
The answer, of course, is that those aren’t what Evangelion and Fist of the North Star are about (they’re about turning humanity into delicious Tang and making dudes’ heads explode, respectively). But by skipping over these real world problems, are creators missing an opportunity to make their characters more nuanced, relatable, and ultimately, attractive?
At least one artist seems to think so, as a new manga series has just begun featuring a cast of handsome men all suffering from physical ailments such as hay fever and stiff shoulders.
On 3 February, Häagen-Dazs Japan released two new flavors to celebrate their 30th anniversary: Rose and Sakura (cherry blossom). Although they were unusual flavors in the realm of ice cream, in the more than capable hands of Häagen-Dazs they’re sure to be great… right?
Unlike in the West, in Japan it’s primarily girls who hand out gifts of chocolate on Valentine’s Day. Although the most common pattern is for a woman to give sweets to her boyfriend or secret crush, the holiday’s scope has been expanded to include relatives, coworkers, or any guy whose kindness she feels indebted to, regardless of whether there’s any romantic sentiment involved or not.
In recent years, the recipient doesn’t even have to be a real person, as this giant haul of Valentine’s Day chocolate for a single anime character proves.
Like them or loathe them, social networking services, or SNS for short, have become an integral part of our daily lives and society as a whole. While Facebook, Twitter and Naver Corporation’s Line offer very different experiences, most users will agree that without them, they’d feel lost, or at least have a sudden and unexpected amount of free time on their hands.
Recently, a survey was conducted in Japan which asked respondents about the services they used, asking them which they turned to most often, which they were most careful about using and sharing information on, and which they’d hate to be without. Join us for a peek at the results after the jump.
When it comes to product quality and innovation, Japanese makers are the cream of the crop, with exceptional achievements in the automobile and electronics sector. Apart from high-tech machinery, the Japanese also create beauty products of excellent quality and value, something that they’re rarely recognized for outside of Asia.
Beauty and fashion website, The Cut by New York magazine spills that makeup artists backstage at Fashion Week often use beauty tools and cosmetics from Japan. The Cut, together with Japanese makeup artist Maki Ryoke, shares seven Japanese drugstore beauty buys that even women in the West are in love with!
Bookstores can be a destination upon themselves. From Venice to Mexico City, check out some of the most interesting book retailers out there.
Yesterday, we ran an article telling the story of a dentist in Japan who was arrested for “massaging” a female patient’s chest while claiming that doing so would help fix her misaligned teeth. In it, we included a photo of what appeared to be a young woman in a dentist’s chair with her mouth wide open.
We received plenty of comments on Facebook and Twitter about the news story itself, but many people also took a profound interest in the model in the photo, some feeling quite uneasy about the way she looked yet not knowing why, asking, “What’s wrong with her eyes!?”
The answer to that question is simple, but also kind of creepy: the woman in the photo is an ultra-lifelike doll used in dentistry.
While there’s no questioning that Attack on Titan is one of the most successful anime of the past several years, there’s still room for debate about the series’ giant monsters themselves. Sure, the titans stand 60 meters (197 feet) tall and are out to eat all of mankind. At the same time, though, they’re naked, often disheveled, and occasionally of pudgy build. Sometimes they look downright comical, even becoming the inspiration for lighthearted merchandise and cosplay.
So which is it? Are the titans supposed to be terrifying or silly?
After taking a look at this new Attack on Titan model, we’re going to have to put one more mark in the latter column.
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