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Anna and the Snow Queen

Frozen senbei packaging “looks like Anna hailing a cab for drunk Elsa” 【Pic】

“No Elsa! Please don’t ‘let it go’ all over my dress!”

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Cool Nengajo, bro! Check out six of the most awesome New Year’s postcards of 2015!

Nengajo, or New Year’s greeting cards, are a ubiquitous part of the end-of-year season in Japan. Much like Christmas cards in the west, nengajo are sent to family and friends to update them on what you’ve been up to that year. In fact, there are so many nengajo sent at the end of the year that post offices in Japan have to employ students as temporary staff to make sure they meet the delivery deadline of January 1. While there are plenty of preprinted cards available from stationery shops, many people opt to make their own, personalised cards. A nice touch, but results may vary depending on the artistic skills (and sense of humour) of the postcard sender! To show you what we mean, we’ve put together a little list of the best of this year’s nengajo. Some of them are genuinely impressive, while others would make us cringe if the neighbours saw ’em!

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Kyaraben roundup! We take a look back at 2014’s best packed lunches 【Pics】

The Kyaraben trend is still going strong in Japan, and even though winter has prompted some to make the temporary switch to deco-nabe, the demand for adorable packed lunches shows no signs of abating. Today we’d like to take a look back over the best of the past year’s Kyaraben. What can we learn about 2014 in Japan from studying these perfect works of edible art?

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Love sweets, hate Frozen? Solution: repurpose your Olaf bun into Bert from Sesame Street!

Remember when we recently had a little fun with the Disney’s Frozen pastry buns that have gone on sale all over Japan? You know, the ones oozing with cream and chocolate (mmm) and featuring the annoying face of that goofy snowman (grr) that’s absolutely everywhere right now? While we certainly enjoyed mangling Olaf’s face with a big knife whilst maniacally humming “Let it Go”, it seems that one Twitter user has an even better idea for dealing with that pent-up Frozen frustration. An idea that involves re-purposing the buns into something more aesthetically pleasing! Since we’re all about that silver lining (and since generally, we enjoy our food more when it doesn’t look like a murder scene) we had to investigate! It turns out that it’s actually pretty simple to change goofy Olaf into another character with a little more pedigree behind it – Bert from Sesame Street! Read on for the step-by step guide!

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Real-life Olaf takes Twitter by (snow)storm

Whether you sing Let it Go as a daily ritual, or just the thought of hearing that song one more time gives you brainfreeze, you can’t deny the pervasive popularity of Disney’s 2013 hit movie Frozen. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Japan, where Frozen can be found on everything from water bottles and chips to reasons for divorce.

For some people though, that’s not enough: they need to recreate Frozen with their own hands.

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Watch Hatsune Miku sing Frozen’s “Let It Go”

While some people are arguably Frozen‘d out, the movie’s popularity doesn’t look like it will go anywhere anytime soon, what with limited edition PS4s and karaoke rankings.

Niconico user おかっち took it one step further by using the Miku Miku Dance animation program to recreate the “Let It Go” video with Hatsune Miku in place of Elsa. From start the finish, the process took 43 days.

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Here are the limited edition Frozen foods you can buy in Japan

Japan has officially caught Frozen fever and you’d be hard pressed to go on any Japanese forum without seeing at least one strange, crazy, or completely cool post about the movie. It seems Japanese manufacturers have caught on and a storm of Frozen foods in limited edition packages have been produced in celebration of the July 16 release of Anna and the Snow Queen, the title given to Disney’s chilly hit animated feature in Japan. Let’s take a look at just a few!

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