Bringing you yesterday's news from Japan and Asia, today.
animals (Page 45)
It’s kind of ironic that face packs, which are designed to make your skin healthier and more beautiful, actually look pretty ghoulish when they’re in use. Often, the price of eventual beauty can be spending a half-hour or so looking like either The Phantom of the Opera or Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s Leatherface.
Stepping up with an alternative is a Japanese company that’s selling face masks that promise to temporarily transform their wearer into a cute panda or tiger.
If we’re speaking honestly, we don’t really need much of an added incentive to eat a donut. Really, a sweet, inexpensive indulgence that we can eat with our hands is pretty much a laser-guided strike on our willpower.
Still, we can usually muster enough self-control that we don’t plow through a half-dozen in one sitting. But when you take donuts’ numerous preexisting merits and add the visual appeal of shaping them like cats, penguins, alpacas, and even killer whales, that’s when we stop even trying to resist them.
Hey Rocketeers! Any idea how many cats RocketNews24 has featured so far? To be absolutely honest, we have no idea either. We stopped trying to keep track a long time ago, but here’s one more to add to the list!
We’ve seen fat cats, mohawk cats, and even cats who are capable of taking selfies, but this is probably the cat with the most intense eyes we’ve ever seen! He always looks so energetic and robust with his large eyes and powerful gaze, it wouldn’t be surprising even if someone mistook him for a toy!
With only about 20,000 residents, the city of Oarai, in Ibaraki Prefecture, isn’t exactly bursting with entertainment options. If you do find yourself with some time to kill there, though, you could stop by the Aqua World aquarium, where aquatic life including sea lions, jellyfish, and dolphins are on hand to greet visitors.
The facility is even home to a number of sharks. Don’t worry, they’re not man-eaters or anything. The sharks might just eat each other, though.
Like most kids, I went through a period where I incessantly bugged my parents to let me have a pet, and like most parents, once they said OK, they ended up doing most of the work taking care of it.
Perhaps they knew things would turn out this way, which is why when it came time to choose an animal companion, they steered me towards a hamster. They’re quiet, relatively easy to care for, and pretty happy to stay in their cages, which meant we wouldn’t have one running around the house and tearing up the carpet.
Another thing that makes hamsters great pets is that they don’t take up much space. But if you still think the cute little rodents are just too gargantuan, there’s a way to make them even more compact, at least while they’re sleeping.
My family got its first cat when I myself was barely a year old. She and I more or less grew up together, her dying (at which point I was heartbroken, naturally) when I was 23. We’ve also had a couple of other cats along the way, and whenever I see a cat in my neighbourhood here in Tokyo or visit my friends who have them, I always stop to say hello.
It turns out, however, that for all my years living with and around our domesticated feline friends, I clearly know nothing about them. I mean, can you explain what on earth this cat here is doing!?
The creators of Pokémon were nothing if not brilliant when they decided to make the collectible creatures cute and cuddly fantastical cryptid-like animals influenced by – yet sufficiently removed from – the designs of real-world critters. This allows the player/collector to suspend their disbelief enough that they don’t feel too bad about enslaving a living, breathing thing to battle other living, breathing things for their amusement.
But when you make it the other way around – real-world animals made to look like pokémon – things get a little more disturbing. Are you or your kids willing to capture, for example, an actual fox with nine tails and make it battle a giant frog with a flower on its back for bragging rights? That scenario isn’t too far removed from real-life cockfighting and dog fights.
This wasn’t a question we had to ask ourselves in the early days of Pokémon. But then, of course, the Internet happened, and the Internet is uniquely capable of making us feel bad about almost anything. So, for your amusement/guilt, we present to you real-world animals if they were pokémon:
A pig farmer in Japan is warming hearts around the world, thanks to a photo collection that documents his life with some 1,200 pigs. Whether he’s tending to the little piglets, sleeping with the sows, or serenading them all with tunes on his guitar, this is a farmer who loves spending time in the pen surrounded by his animals.
My wife, who’s always interested in learning more about foreign culture (no doubt in an effort to better understand her insufferably baffling husband), recently asked me how Easter is celebrated in America. “We usually hunt for Easter eggs and eat chocolate rabbits,” I told her, which quickly presented us with two problems. First, our apartment isn’t nearly large enough for a proper Easter egg hunt, and while you can get special Easter donuts in Japan, bunny-shaped candies are surprisingly nonexistent.
Stumped as to how to spend the holiday, my wife offered a suggestion. “Why don’t we go to the rabbit café?”
As someone who generally judges the value of animals based on their flavor, I tend to stay out of the whole cats vs. dogs argument that pet lovers so often engage in. If, for some reason though, you told me that my life depended on picking one or the other, I’d probably say I’d prefer a pooch, and then ask what kind of oddly specific sorcery you’d placed me under that cursed me to die if I didn’t choose between the world’s two most popular pets.
When you come home, you can expect your dog to run to the door, wag his tale, and slobber all over you. While I can’t say I really see the appeal of that last one, I can understand that it’s nice to have a pet that gives you a reaction when you come through the door, which is totally unlike the aloof reaction that’s so much more common in cats.
Except, of course, if you’re talking about this friendly feline.
Ginza’s history as one of Tokyo’s playgrounds for the well-to-do stretches back further than relative upstarts like Harajuku or Roppongi. While this means you can almost always find an elegant café to stop into for a refined mid-day snack, some of these establishments can be a little intimidating with their blue-blood atmosphere.
There is at least one place in Ginza, though, where you can indulge your sweet tooth without feeling any social tension, as nothing is so far removed from stuffiness as a bunny rabbit parfait.
I can’t even remember the last time I “said Grace” before a meal. It must have been before my teens, when my parents realized I was a Godless, hopeless heathen that shoveled food into my mouth so fast I couldn’t even taste it.
Which, I guess, puts my manners one level below four Chinese dogs that dutifully bow and lower their heads as their owner/trainer says a few words of thanks for their meal.
Unlike cats, dogs are usually pretty easy to win over. Constantly seeking praise and approval, with a few “good boy”s and a scratch behind the ear they’ll immediately cheer up and want to be friends again. You can praise a cat until you’re blue in the face — it neither wants nor needs your approval, and if it’s not in the mood, you’ll soon know about it.
This little shiba inu, though, looks especially irked, and is making no secret of the fact that he’s cross by ignoring his owner no matter what she says or does. All until…
Last week, we brought you Japanese retail company Muji’s guide to getting nothing done thanks to the comfort and unparalleled lethargy inducing qualities of the mighty bean bag chair. Well, it seems that some of our canine and feline friends have been paying close attention, and no sooner had their owners picked one up, immediately began showing us all how to use Muji’s popular bean bag chairs properly.
Judging by these photos, these little guys are clearly the true relaxation ninjas of the land.
We’ve previously seen Japan’s amazing cat islands and rabbit island, and today, we’re excited to show you yet another animal wonderland, though this time it’s not in Japan!
An uninhabited island, Big Major Cay, located in Exuma of the Bahamas, is home to what are arguably the world’s happiest pigs! More commonly known as Pig Island or Pig Beach by the locals, this tropical getaway is famous for none other than its adorable swimming pigs!
Last month, we brought you word about a special event at an aquarium in Yokohama where guests were going to be able to eat deep sea armored isopods, which are known in Japanese with the somewhat more descriptive name of ogusokumushi, or “giant armored bugs.”
We all had a good laugh at the zany idea for a publicity stunt, and our chuckling continued right up until the moment our boss said, “OK, one of us has to go try them.”
With feline-inspired marshmallows, lattes, and confectionaries, you could actually spend the whole day in Japan consuming nothing but cat-shaped treats. But while that diet would easily help you meet your recommended daily requirements of cuteness, there’re also a lot of calories in those feline-inspired delicacies.
Still, there’s nothing wrong with the occasional indulgence, as long as you also get enough exercise to balance the scales as opposed to tipping them. Going for a nice, after-dessert walk can be a great way to burn off some of those calories you just took in, and it only makes sense that if your love of cats is what got the cycle started, it should be there with you for the next step, too, with these cat-shaped shoes from online retailer Rakuten.
Yep, unfortunately it’s Monday again. It just doesn’t take the hint, does it? It’s like that kid no one ever wants at the party, but who just keeps turning up anyway.
So to ease you on your way into the week, we’ve got some cute little bunnykins who are all dealing with the dreaded Monday in their own special ways.
Cute, loveable, selfish, or cold-hearted, whatever you think of cats, they’re nothing but entertaining, and this little fella is no exception. Taken from what must have been hours of footage captured by its owners, these videos show one particular cat’s penchant for newspapers, plastic, bags and even plants – anything that springs back when he hits it – as he sits and paws, and paws, and paws away, never seeming to get tired.
I’ve always maintained that fish are the best pets, largely because they’re quiet and the chance of them peeing on your sofa is fairly slim. That said, I can see why dogs appeal to some people especially in modern society. When you’re feeling stressed over your latest work assignment, it’s nice to have an animal companion with the kind of straightforward emotional honesty that reminds you how happy life can be when you live in a world that has such awesome things as squirrels to be chased and sausages to be eaten.
But sometimes this phenomenon works in reverse, and if dogs’ can get such a huge boost from small things, it doesn’t always take much to swing their emotional state back the other way, as this troubled little guy shows us.
But what’s he fretting over exactly?
Japanese ramen restaurants under pressure from new yen banknotes
McDonald’s new Happy Meals offer up cute and practical Sanrio lifestyle goods
Tokyo Tsukiji fish market site to be redeveloped with 50,000-seat stadium, hotel, shopping center
Sakura tree falls on man at Sannenzaka near Kiyomizu temple in Kyoto 【Breaking News】
Beautiful Red and Blue Star luxury trains set to be Japan’s new Hokkaido travel stars
New private rooms on Tokaido Shinkansen change the way we travel from Tokyo to Kyoto
We tried Korea’s way-too-big King Tonkatsu Burger at Lotteria 【Taste Test】
French Fries Bread in Tokyo’s Shibuya becomes a hit on social media
Pokémon Sleep camping suite and guestrooms coming to Tokyo Hyatt along with giant Snorlax burgers
Mt. Koya planning to instate visitor’s tax to cope with huge tourist numbersMcDonald’s new Happy Meals offer up cute and practical Sanrio lifestyle goods
All-you-can-drink Starbucks and amazing views part of Tokyo’s new 170 meter-high sky lounge
More foreign tourists than ever before in history visited Japan last month
Starbucks reopens at Shibuya Scramble Crossing with new look and design concept
Studio Ghibli releases new action figures featuring Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind charactersFrench Fries Bread in Tokyo’s Shibuya becomes a hit on social media
Studio Ghibli glasses cases let anime characters keep an eye on your spectacles
Is the new Shinkansen Train Desk ticket worth it?New private rooms on Tokaido Shinkansen change the way we travel from Tokyo to Kyoto
Beautiful Ghibli sealing wax kits let you create accessories and elegant letter decorations【Pics】McDonald’s new Happy Meals offer up cute and practical Sanrio lifestyle goods
Studio Ghibli releases Kiki’s Delivery Service chocolate cake pouches in Japan
New definition of “Japanese whiskey” goes into effect to prevent fakes from fooling overseas buyers
Our Japanese reporter visits Costco in the U.S., finds super American and very Japanese things
Studio Ghibli unveils Mother’s Day gift set that captures the love in My Neighbour Totoro
Domino’s Japan now sells…pizza ears?
New Japanese KitKat flavour stars Sanrio characters, including Hello KittyAll-you-can-drink Starbucks and amazing views part of Tokyo’s new 170 meter-high sky loungeMore foreign tourists than ever before in history visited Japan last month
New Pokémon cakes let you eat your way through Pikachu and all the Eevee evolutions
Sales of Japan’s most convenient train ticket/shopping payment cards suspended indefinitelyMcDonald’s new Happy Meals offer up cute and practical Sanrio lifestyle goods
Sold-out Studio Ghibli desktop humidifiers are back so Totoro can help you through the dry season
Japanese government to make first change to romanization spelling rules since the 1950s
Ghibli founders Toshio Suzuki and Hayao Miyazaki contribute to Japanese whisky Totoro label design
Doraemon found buried at sea as scene from 1993 anime becomes real life【Photos】
Tokyo’s most famous Starbucks is closed
One Piece characters’ nationalities revealed, but fans have mixed opinions
We asked a Uniqlo employee what four things we should buy and their suggestions didn’t disappoint
Princesses, fruits, and blacksmiths: Study reveals the 30 most unusual family names in Japan
New private rooms on Tokaido Shinkansen change the way we travel from Tokyo to Kyoto
We tried Korea’s way-too-big King Tonkatsu Burger at Lotteria 【Taste Test】
French Fries Bread in Tokyo’s Shibuya becomes a hit on social media
Pokémon Sleep camping suite and guestrooms coming to Tokyo Hyatt along with giant Snorlax burgers
Mt. Koya planning to instate visitor’s tax to cope with huge tourist numbers
Beautiful Ghibli sealing wax kits let you create accessories and elegant letter decorations【Pics】
Fried sandwiches arrive in Tokyo, become hot topic on social media
11 different ways to say “father” in Japanese
McDonald’s Japan releases a pancake pie for new retro kissaten coffeeshop series
Secret Kitchen bento serves Japanese flowers, birds, wind and moon in a box, but is it worth it?
Better than Apple EarPods? Our 100 yen shop earphone showdown finds a true champion
Turn heads under the cherry blossoms with a sakura hat from Japan