Summer in Japan is all about kimonos, fans and fireworks. There really are few better ways to beat the heat than getting outdoors in a light cotton robe, eating and ton of festival grub and settling in to watch pictures being painted on the black night sky. And although fireworks festivals themselves are nothing out of the ordinary here in Japan, the blast that brought Kumano City’s Hanabi Taikai fireworks festival to a close this year was truly spectacular, with the excited crowd’s countdown to the final moment immediately followed by gasps and cheers almost as loud as the explosion itself. Check out the epic firework in all its glory after the jump.
beautiful (Page 33)
People have the amazing ability to see human traits in nearly anything. From the anthropomorphism of cartoons and nature to cursing at your car when it won’t start, there’s almost no limit to the things we see as human-like.
But safety pins? Surely only someone with a less-than-firm grip on reality could take a safety pin for person-like or even having any human qualities?
The following photo album might just convince you otherwise!
Recently a video titled Where is Dobayashi’s Ball Going… Home Run Girl Stares as She Waits Her Turn was uploaded onto the official YouTube channel for Nippon Professional Baseball’s Central League. Within days it became the most watched video on the channel with 286,249 views and counting. The reason why this video of a failed home run became so popular is clear from the image above.
However, you might be wondering what this stunningly beautiful woman is doing in full uniform clutching a doll of what appears to be the Phillie Phanatic and intensely staring at player, Shota Dobayashi.
“Seen this way, Tokyo really is beautiful.”– A comment from the Japanese Niconico Video user who originally posted photographer Samuel Cockedey’s video “Inter States” to the social video site.
The time-lapse video shows splashes of neon interspersed with orange street lamps, streaking red taillights and rushes of black figures, painting detail onto the concrete canvas that is Japan’s capital city. Hives of energy and movement, it sometimes takes an outsider’s perspective to recognise that even a sprawling metropolises like Tokyo can be quite breathtaking when we stop to notice them. The full video after the jump.
Surrounded by multi-story buildings and forever glued to our computers and smartphones, we often forget that the world we live in was once a much simpler place. People took time over writing letters, arranged to meet with friends and loved ones well in advance and, without streaming video and compact, waterproof music players to keep us entertained, took the time to appreciate the little things in life.
As a reminder of Japan’s once much more subdued yet intrinsically beautiful lifestyle, RocketNews24‘s sister site Pouch presents us with the following collection of photographs, which feature stunning Japanese gardens, arching wooden bridges over rivers, and ordinary folk just going about their day some 100 years ago.
So grab yourself a cup of tea, switch your phone to silent mode and take a few minutes to appreciate just how different life in Japan used to be.
Every year during the summer solstice, the night skies of Poland are filled with thousands of paper lanterns being released into the heavens. People write their wishes on the lanterns before sending them up into the sky in the hope that their wish will some day come true.
Yi Peng is a similar festival that takes place in Thailand, but instead of being used to make a wish, lanterns are used to symbolize the release of one’s troubles. It’s true that the customs and traditions surrounding these two festivals are different, but the sight of thousands of paper stars embracing the night sky is surely a universal beauty.
As a man whose handwriting could be defined as infantile at best, I can’t help but admire those who can wield a fountain pen like a paintbrush. Thanks to the bizarre way in which I hold my pen (I’m right-handed but people often ask if I’m a lefty purely because my grip is so odd), writing with any pen whose ink is wetter than a cheap ballpoint’s results in my hand turning blue and an enormous horizontal smear of ink across the page as if the letters were warping through time.
After seeing this short video from Japanese pen makers Namiki, though, I’m genuinely tempted to sit down and practice writing my ABCs all over again if it means that I can correct my awkward grip and learn to write as beautifully as this…
Asuka Tachikawa, 27, famous for being a “beautiful city councilor,” has had pressure put on her to quit her job because she is actually an alien in disguise trying to ruin the city of Niizu in Saitama (near Tokyo).
Elected as a city councilor in February this year, the Saitama Prefectural Electoral Office has decided that her election is invalid because she may not have lived in the city for more than the required 3 months. In other words, she is an alien.
But what evidence do they have?
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In these days of digital media the world is losing more and more brick & mortar shops, which is a shame. Take ebooks for example. Sure they’re infinitely more convenient and less space consuming. But half the fun of reading is going to the book store to find hidden gems and what could be your next favorite. No matter what book store you go to you can’t help but get filled with a sense of elegance and tranquility.
With that in mind, photographer Koach, before capturing the second most beautiful bookstore in Argentina, started his journey in Portugal at the oppositely designed but equally beautiful, Livraria Lello & Irmão (Lello for short).
Around the world women often turn to bizarre-looking contraptions in the quest to look more beautiful and Japan is perhaps home to some of the strangest. Sometimes it even seems like beauty product makers are playing a huge joke on their customers by making them look more ridiculous than beautiful.
The latest of such products is Hana-Tsun (Pointy Nose), produced by Glim Inc., who are no strangers to thinking outside the box when it comes to beauty products.









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Studio Ghibli still doesn’t allow its anime to be streamed online in Japan, and here’s why
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