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We Sample Traditional Portuguese Cuisine… at McDonald’s

Our fast food correspondent Kuzo constantly travels the world visiting exotic countries and partaking of their McDonald’s menus to see what wonders they have in store. In the past, we’ve seen him visit McDonald’s restaurants in Turkey and Russia to name a few, but now his McSight is set on Portugal. Here is his super-sized McReport, translated into English for you, our beautiful, hungry readers.

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Kuzo Makes an Egg on a Stick for Everyone in the Office

How do you usually cook a sunny side up egg? We’re guessing most people plop an egg into a frying pan with a little oil and hope for the best. However, our reporter Kuzo has just discovered a new way to eat eggs thanks to the “Rollie EggMaster.” Straight from, you guessed it, the USA, the Rollie EggMaster works like a toaster to cook an egg in minutes. Although the Rollie EggMaster is sold in North America and cannot be shipped to Japan, Kuzo was able to get his hands on one and proudly made an “egg on a stick” for the entire RocketNews24 office, delighting our Japanese editorial team.

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Six People Injured by Escalator in Akihabara, Once Again Proving that People in Tokyo Use the Wrong Side of the Escalator

On 24 April at approximately 9:25 a.m., six people were injured while riding an escalator in Akihabara Station, Tokyo.

All the victims suffered injuries as serious as broken fingers when a piece of metal siding became bent upwards blocking the clearance between it and the rubber handrail.

Sadly, this digital carnage could have been easily avoided if people in Tokyo just stood on the right side of the escalator like normal people.

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You Can (Not) Lose with Sega’s Newest Evangelion Promotion


The UFO catcher, also known in the West as the crane game, is a stalwart of Japanese arcades. The rules are simple: drop in your coin, then operate the mechanical claw to try to pick up your prize, whether it’s a stuffed Pikachu, giant box of Pocky, or a live prawn. No, we are not making that last one up. Of course, this is easier said than done. More often than not the prizes slip out of the claw’s grasp (especially the prawns).

In a way, the UFO catcher is the perfect metaphor for the long-running, psychologically heavy-hitting anime series Evangelion, known to fans simply as Eva. Like Eva’s protagonist Shinji with his giant robot, at first the technology seems fun and exciting. Then, following soul-crushing failure after failure, you find yourself void of the strength to go on, staring at the machine through your tears of frustration, finally understanding that a part of you has hated it all along, even as the realization sinks in that it may house the soul of your dead mother (OK, the last bit is strictly Eva).

But with a new Eva UFO catcher promotion, Sega is making sure no one has to go home empty-handed. Read More

Japanese Woman Dies after Heavy-Set Police Officer Sits on Her

In Sakai City, Osaka last November a woman in her 40s died from a case of hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy (HIE), a condition that occurs when oxygen is cut off from the brain.

A possible cause of the HIE is suspected to have been the 100kg (220lbs) police officer who had sat on the woman’s back like one would on a pony.

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Green With Envy? Super Mario Muscles in on His Brother’s 15 Minutes of Fame

Poor old Luigi just can’t catch a break. Often only taken out of the box when a second player joins the game, forced to stand idly by as his brother Mario gets to smooch the princess, and reduced to the role of comical, vacuum-wielding scaredy cat in his haunted house adventure games…

Even in this, “The Year of Luigi”, wherein creators Nintendo put the man in green under the limelight, it seems that Luigi’s red-capped brother has managed to get his famous face onto what is supposed to be a special edition Nintendo 3DS celebrating all things Luigi.

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Is that Soy Sauce you’re Chugging? No, It’s Nanchatte Orange!

Hot on the heels of our incredibly successful cola transformation test, we couldn’t resist another weird and wonderful drink challenge. This time, we decided to try a drink called Nanchatte Orange (literally fake orange). It’s an orange juice sold by “Cheerio Japan” but with one catch: it looks exactly like soy sauce.

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When Nintendo first announced its 3D-capable 3DS handheld system, what kind of in-your-face gaming experience did you imagine? A high-tuned Mario Kart? A new Pilotwings with skydiving so realistic it’d have you looking for a ripcord?

Well if you were video game producer Kenichiro Takaki, you thought of boobs. Takaki, along with lonely gamer lust, is the driving force behind the Senran Kagura franchise. The series follows Asuka, a high school girl who’s also a ninja protecting the citizens of Japan against other, less scrupulous ninja. Joining Asuka in her mission are her classmates and their prodigious busts.

Starting with a 3DS release in 2011, the series expanded to a comic and anime TV series before making its PlayStation Vita debut this February with its third titillating title, Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus. Takaki recently had an idea for a little downloadable extra, but first threw down a lacy gauntlet to the series’ fans to gauge their interest. Read More

14 Year-Old Girl’s Crime Spree Thwarted by Suzuka Police, Motive: To Laugh at Daikon Getting Run Over by Cars

The noble daikon is a beloved vegetable of Japan with a wide range of culinary uses along with other uses like carving huge phalluses, making cute calendars, or avant-garde musical instruments.

However, during two days in December of last year 100 daikon were mercilessly snatched from their homes and brutally crushed in Suzuka City, Mie Prefecture.

After a tireless investigation the police announced on 22 April that the culprits have been apprehended. The ringleader was an unnamed 14 year-old junior high school girl with a very strange motive indeed…

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Beer Pong Becoming Increasingly Popular in the Philippines

Booze lovers, come on! It’s time for a news update regarding beer pong, the world’s most wobbly sport! In case you’ve never heard of it, beer pong sees two teams stand against each other and take turns tossing ping-pong balls into their opponent’s cups of beer while getting increasingly intoxicated. The game originated in the United States, where in fact its popularity has grown so large that it spawned the World Series of Beer Pong in Las Vegas! With all of the drunken mayhem that this game encourages, it’s hard to find a sport more silly and unhinged than beer pong.

Our Japanese RocketNews24 reporter had his first introduction to beer pong near a college campus in the Philippines, where the popularity of this tipsy tournament has really started to take off! Read More

New MOS Burgers are 100% Beef, Still 0% Moss


Despite Japan’s image as a country where people mainly eat fish and pickled vegetables, the truth is the country has some serious carnivorous tendencies. Aside from scores of independent hamburger joints, you’ll find branches of McDonald’s and Burger King, along with home-grown chains such as First Kitchen and MOS Burger.

MOS Burger’s name becomes less intimidating, if no less nonsensical, when you find out it stands for “Mountain Ocean Sun” burger. With over 1,000 locations across Japan and a reputation for high-quality ingredients, MOS has legions of fans, so it was big news when the company announced a major change to its burgers. Read More

Models, Music and Mindbending Colours Celebrate 10 Years of Tokyo’s Roppongi Hills

Opened almost two decades after it was originally imagined by real estate tycoon Minori Mori, Roppongi Hills — a self-contained mega-complex in the middle of Tokyo complete with office buildings, shopping malls, parks and trendy apartments — has become home to thousands of well-to-do businesspeople and Tokyoites, as well as a metropolitan mecca for those craving designer labels and fine dining.

In honour of Roppongi Hills’ 10-year anniversary, a number of celebrations are being held both online and off. The most creative and eye-catching by far, though, has to be the Tokyo City Symphony, an interactive online synthesizer produced as part of the Love Tokyo project. Combining music, 3-D projection mapping and a 1:1000 scale model of Tokyo with Roppongi Hills’ iconic 54-storey Mori Tower at its centre, visitors to the site are invited to project psychadelic patterns and colours onto the tiny, intricately-detailed model city in order to create original “symphony” music. The effect is nothing short of hypnotic. Read More

Food Rage: Korean Deported Over In-Flight Ramen Brawl

Over the weekend, a Korean businessman got into hot water when he complained about his in-flight meal on a trip to the United States. Apparently, he wasn’t satisfied with the taste of his ramen or with the service, and expressed his displeasure by assaulting one of the cabin crew. As a result, he was turned over to the FBI and prevented from entering the country.

Here’s what we know about this bizarre incident. Read More

Blog Chronicling Dumbasses at Tokyo Disneyland Shamed by Internet and Removed

For quite some time a blog had been lying dormant in the recesses of the internet featuring a group of young guys – presumably students – elevating the art of asshattery to bold new levels.

However, recently this internet artifact as unearthed and spread through Twitter like a virus of stupid and justly incinerated by the indignation of the masses.

In an effort to remember this event and perhaps teach future generations that being completely ignorant is no way to go through life, we present: A Group of Huge Jerkoffs Riding Big Thunder Mountain in Tokyo Disneyland.

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Fake Knee-High Stockings Enrage Men of the Internet

A storm of boos has flooded Japanese forums in response to the invention of fake knee-high stockings. This piece of clothing makes a woman appear to be wearing long socks when she is actually wearing fully sealed tights. As a product, fake knee-high stockings greatly help women to comfortably achieve a cute look. But for some men, the lost opportunity to catch a glimpse of an exposed leg that is brought on by these full-coverage stockings is too much to handle.

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These Guys Keep All Their Cuteness Even When Cooked! We Try Deep-Fried Axolotl in Osaka

It came to the attention of our staff recently that there’s a restaurant down in Osaka that serves deep-fried axolotl. You know, the Mexican salamanders. The ones that had an enormous boom in popularity in the 1980s. the ones that are proudly kept in cool tanks as adorable pets. The ones that inspired the creation of the Pokémon, Wooper. Those axolotl!

Our sweet, little reporter Usagi didn’t realize that by bringing up the topic of eating axolotl she’s be asked to write an article about it, but that’s what happens when one introduces strange and interesting foods to our editors! It was time for our reporter to chow down on some deep-fried adorable salamanders. Read More

Is That Sushi in Your Ear or are You Just Wearing “Crazy Headphones”?

Gadgets purveyor Apparestore is hoping that pretending your ears are so unclean that fungus has actually started to grow out of them will become the new fashion trend with these “crazy headphones” featuring weird objects that jut out from the earbuds. Samurai swords and sushi are just some of the things you could have seemingly growing out of your ears with a pair of these cheeky earphones.

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The picture above shows the kind of sound-deadening walls installed along the Tomei Expressway in Kanagawa Prefecture. Yesterday, a construction worker performing repairs removed one of the panels and got a grisly surprise: a headless human skeleton. Read More

A 150-meter long crack has suddenly widened on the ground of a Shizuoka Prefecture tea farm, while officials evacuated six local households over fears of a landslide. Read More

TV Emirates reported recently that three United Arab Emirates nationals were deported from Saudi Arabia for the crime of being “too handsome.”

This is certainly an uncommon criminal accusation, but one that we can relate to (some of our writers are banned in 26 countries for the opposite reason). Read More

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