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Calbee Plus Store Opens in Harajuku, Offers Hot Potato Chips Straight From The Fryer!

Snack food giant, Calbee, opened up their latest Calbee Plus store in Harajuku on 7 December, where you can buy their famous potato chips straight from the deep fryer. Calbee already has shops located in Kyoto and New Chitose Airport in Hokkaido, but this newest store gives Tokyoites their first chance to enjoy piping hot potato chips.

I rushed out to get a first-tongue taste.

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Calling All Boozehounds! All You Can Drink for 30 Minutes, Just 299 Yen!

The weekend is almost here! You’re off tomorrow, so how’s about hitting the bars? Come on, you’re probably sitting at your desk right now sneakily checking out your options for a post-work tipple.

Yes, I know what you’re thinking: if you want to drink the good stuff and actually manage a buzz, it’s going to cost a pretty penny. Well, think again. Rocket News has found the best, cheapest nomihoudai in town.
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What Kind of Hamburger Is Worth 23 Bucks?

Every day on my way to work, I pass one of the many outlets of fast-food giant Lotteria. Usually, I grab a cup of coffee there and drink it as I head to the office, but this morning something new caught my eye.

They’re selling Matsusaka Beef hamburgers? Hamburgers made from one of the best quality meats in Japan, famous for its exquisite marbling? But at 1800 yen (about $23), that’s a pretty steep price tag for a fast-food burger… Will it be worth it?
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“Gourmet” fans, add Ikebukuro Station to your list of stops for fine fare. Platform 3/4 for the Tobu Tojo Line, to be exact. HOT DOG 59 is the name, hot dogs are their game.

Folks in gourmet circles rave about these sizzling sausages available only at this single location. HOT DOG 59 spares no expense on the quality of the buns and dogs, said to be a step above New York’s famed red hots.

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Okunoshima Is Up to its Ears in Bunnies

Do you have a penchant for the fluffy and cuddly? Well, good news! It turns out there is a place in Japan that is literally crawling with squee-worthy bunnies. About 300 of them, in fact. They aren’t even fenced in, but are living their adorable little lives running free on an island.

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Fashionistas, Take Note: These Hot iPhone Covers Are Just 100 Yen!

There is a shopping wonderland where every item is only about a buck and you can buy pretty much any daily necessity and a whole lot of stuff you didn’t even know existed. This fabled place is the Japanese 100 yen shop, and it’s head and shoulders above the dingy dollar shops you know from home. You can even pick up a stylish cover to pimp your iPhone, with an unexpected abundance of styles and colors to satisfy even the most demanding fashion divas.

Of course, price is one thing, but quality is also going to be a major factor. Can decoration-loving fashionistas really buy with confidence? Can these cheap covers really protect our all-important iPhones? Rocket News decided to find out.
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Japanese confectionery companies always seem to be on the lookout for the next great combination of tastes, and the shelves in supermarkets and convenience stores are often stocked with the results of these “korabo.”

Words like “suspect” and “amusing” come to mind to describe most of these products, but Morinaga and Pasco have teamed up to create a product that just may give the old peanut butter and chocolate combo a run for its money.

“Morinaga Caramel Shokupan” is exactly what it sounds like: the old-fashioned flavor of Morinaga Caramel baked into fluffy Pasco bread. The packaging is the same gold color as those familiar little rectangular boxes of caramel, and the immediate association with the mouth-watering taste of Morinaga caramel is anything but subtle.

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HAMAMATSU – The Hamamatsu University School of Medicine has partnered with the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute to develop anti-cancer medicine with reduced side effects. The research group announced Tuesday that research and development are progressing and that experiments on animals have yielded positive results.

Cancerous mice were given 1/40 the usual dosage of anti-cancer medicine, and their tumors nearly disappeared by the 19th day of the test. Moreover, the researchers observed no side effects whatsoever.

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Toyota Introduces Increasingly Impressive Cast for Live-Action Doraemon Commercials

Toyota made waves by casting Japanese heartthrob Satoshi Tsumabuki as Nobita-kun in its live-action Doraemon commercials two weeks ago, but fans of the adapation of the popular cartoon were in for an even bigger shock the following week.

Toyota rolled its second wave of live-action Doraemon commercials off the line on November 18 with film star Jean Reno playing the role of Doraemon.

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On November 15, Japanese electronics manufacturer Sanwa Denshi unveiled a radiation-measuring device that can connect to iPhones and serve as an affordable Geiger counter.

It is 14 cm long and five cm wide and displays radiation dosages on the screens of iPhones equipped with GeigerBot and other such applications.

The retail price is 9,800 yen, and it will go on sale in a few days.

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Akihabara Restaurant Serves Up Three Squares in One

Many Japanese restaurants serve a “yama-mori,” or “mountain-sized,” serving of rice and other main dishes, but Adachi’s in Akihabara may boast the biggest one in the country.

Adachi’s claim to fame has always been its large portions. The first Adachi’s operated out of the Kanda Market, and its clientele were people who worked in the fruit and vegetable market. They worked up huge appetites by performing manual labor from the early morning hours, and regular portions would not fill their bellies. It was then that the elder Adachi decided to provide huge portions.

The affable younger Adachi told me all about it during my first visit to the restaurant. The restaurant is famous for letting its patrons eat to their hearts’ content, and anyone who has ever dined there knows that the “regular” portion of rice is five to six times larger than normal. Read More

New Organizer Keeps Devices and Cords Away From Each Other

Smartphone? Check. Digital camera? Check. Electronic dictionary? Check. Chargers and cords for all of the above? Check. Hope of finding them amidst the mess they will undoubtedly become in your handbag? Uncheck.

We are carrying more and more electronic products around with us these days, and it gets tougher and tougher to find them in our bags and untangle them from each other. It’s like untangling Christmas lights, except what used to be reserved for one day a year is now happening almost every day.

The GRID-IT purports to solve this problem with rubber bands arranged horizontally and vertically across its pocket-less surface. Read More

In soccer, the goalkeeper is the essence of defense. No matter what happens elsewhere on the field, you have to get it past the keeper, and that’s no easy task.

Or, it shouldn’t be easy. With the help of Youtube, keeper Virgil Vries of the Golden Arrows of the South African soccer league showed the world a new way to allow your team to score on itself. Read More

Five American Candies Guaranteed to Gum Up Your Gut

When I think of American candies, I think of sickening confections splashed with garish colors. I went to the United States and checked out a candy store, and I found exactly what I thought I’d see!

These are treats I would never even think of giving my kids (if I had them). Forget the lack of nutritional value; no matter how safe the candies are thought to be, those colors alone make me worry.

Here is my list of the Top Five American Candies Guaranteed to Gum Up Your Gut: Read More

Boy Drowns iPhone4S, Ginza Apple Store Rights Ship

The iPhone4S had been on the market nary a month when I got my hands on mine. I’d had my beloved 16 GB dream machine for nary a week when my three-year-old son got his hands on it and dunked it in the bathtub.

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Add “Night at The Windsor” to List of Things to Do Before You Die

The Windsor Hotel Toya put itself on the map by hosting the G8 Summit in 2008, but the appeal of the Hokkaido resort and spa remains today. The mountaintop hotel offers expansive views of the vast Lake Toya in addition to unparalleled entertainment and amenities.

I had the good fortune to stay at The Windsor this summer, and I’m going to share seven things that show that visiting this resort belongs on everyone’s bucket list. Read More

We Take Cues From Reddit Picture, Attempt The First Japanese “Kubipan”

Recently on our Japanese site, we introduced a picture (above) uploaded to reddit of a young black male who had sits causally with his pants pulled up over his shoulders. The picture was a hit with our Japanese readers, who interpreted it as a herald of the end of koshipan—the Japanese word for ‘saggy pants,’ which is a portmanteau of hips (koshi) and pants (pantsu)—and the beginning of a new age: the age of kubipan (kubi = neck).

Feeling it our mission to keep Japan up to date with the latest hip-hop fashion, we called upon our own Mr. Satoh to model the basics of kubipan for our Japanese readers who are interested in trying it themselves.

However, we soon realized how foolish we were to believe such a challenging new style could be easily manipulated. Read More

Attention, gluttons on holiday in Japan: RocketNews24 has compiled a list of five restaurants that feature signature dishes with gut-busting, imagination-defying, comically-oversized portions.

First, some vocabulary to help you enjoy your eating spree. You probably already know to ask for o-mori when you want a large portion of rice and an extra helping of the main dish, but there’s still one level to go: deka-mori.

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Free Admission – Twelve of Tokyo’s Best Kept Secrets

Expensive Tokyo living got you down? Are you staring another three-day weekend in the face and wondering what havoc it will wreak on your wallet?

There are places to enjoy yourself for free all over Tokyo, if you know where to look. RocketNews24 has sifted through the many options and has come up with 12 suggestions that will not disappoint. Try them next time you have a last-minute date or cobwebs in your billfold! Read More

Timeless Fukuoka Ramen Shop Serves Up Good Memories, Cheap Eats

Part the curtains at the simple storefront of Shoryuken, wrestle the creaky, swollen sliding door open, and step back in time to 1972.

A worn, handmade menu at the Fukuoka City ramen shop advertises ramen bowls for 100 yen, and it is clear that that price has persisted through the restaurant’s 39 years of existence. Read More

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