Featured

cool (Page 211)

Love Money? Cuddle Your Cash with this Chinese Money Pillow!

Oh, money, you make me smile like it’s Christmas Day and the cat’s just coughed up a shard of rainbow. As a man who spent most of his university years trying to work out ways to make potato chips and sliced bread viable alternatives to meat and vegetables, during the brief moments that I have a bit of cash in my bank account these days I become a noticeably nicer person to be around. I won’t even try to gouge your eyes if you greet me in the street.

This pillow is for people like me. People who want that warm money glow 24/7, so that even when our bank accounts are empty, our hearts are filled by the shallow but immediately believable promise of happiness that only cold, hard cash can bring.

Read More

If you’re a superhero fan living in North America, today very likely means only one thing: the launch of Iron Man 3. Perhaps waiting for a more suitable date to release the title, Marvel and Walt Disney Studios hung on until May 3 to unleash Tony Stark’s newest — and, according to some, best — supersuit-powered adventure, and millions of fans are champing at the bit to see it.

Despite having opened in Japan surprisingly early (Japanese releases are notoriously late, with movie fans forced to wait until this March for both Django Unchained and Wreck it Ralph alone), tongues are wagging all across the country today about Iron Man 3, but for an entirely different reason.

Put together by a clearly passionate and creative team of fans in Thailand, the following video recreates the official Iron Man 3 pre-release trailer shot by shot using little more than hand-crafted props, questionable make-up and models dangling from strings. Even so, it is nothing short of wonderful.

Read More

Beef Up Your iPhone With This Iron Man Mark VII Armor Case

Crank up the Black Sabbath to 11 and bust out your iPhone, this one’s for all you Iron Man fans out there.

Read More

Canned Ice Blasts Let You Literally Stop Cockroaches Cold

Japan is a great place to be in the summer. For the culturally minded, there are festivals at centuries-old shrines, dazzling fireworks displays, and neighborhood folk dances with everyone wearing summer kimonos or yukata. If your thought process is a little baser, the all-you-can-drink beer gardens on the rooftops of department stores, along with much higher socially-accepted hem lines than in many other parts of the world, aren’t half-bad either.

But there’s one thing no one likes about summer here: the hordes of cockroaches.

Read More

How to Make a Hatsune Miku Bento

Hatsune Miku is now coming to a bento near you (that is if you have to time and patience to make her). The folks over at Japanese culture website, Kawaii Kakkoii Sugoi, have just created a step-by-step video explaining how to make an edible version of everyone’s favorite vocaloid.

Read More

The TED (Technology Education and Design) website is easily one of my most favourite places in the entire digital world. With talks from industry experts, innovative thinkers and creative individuals with something valuable to say, I’ve lost hundreds of hours on the site watching presentations and listening to talks, absorbing knowledge and expanding my view of the world, galaxy, universe.

Filmed in February this year at a TED conference in Long Beach, California, the following video sees a young man by the name of Black take to the stage dressed like a cross between a ninja and a rock star. After telling the story of how he first picked up a yo-yo and struggled to perform even the simplest of tricks, he goes on to talk about how mastering this simple toy gave him the confidence he always lacked. As if more proof were needed having already seen him calmly address thousands of spectators in English, Black then launches into a yo-yo routine that left us completely open-mouthed.

The full video after the jump.

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

South Korean automobile manufacturer Hyundai revealed its new E4U single-person concept car at the recently completed Seoul Motor Show. Egg-like in shape, the mobility device measures 92cm in width while standing 123cm tall. Hyundai believes the vehicle to be suitable for narrow streets in urban centers where speeds are generally slow.
Read More

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 Gets Explosive New Multiplayer Map Set in Kyushu

Players of the Call of Duty series are no strangers to downloadable content in the form of additional maps on which to shoot, stab and detonate. Ever since downloadable map packs were released for Call of Duty 3 back in 2007, console gamers have been treated to (or blighted by, depending on your stance on DLC) regular releases of additional content to purchase or risk being the one guy in their group of friends who can’t play on the same maps as everyone else.

This time around, developers Treyarch are dropping virtual soldiers and screaming headset-wearing pubescents on Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan’s four main islands. As well as being situated in the shadow of an erupting volcano, the town featured in the map is absolutely covered with cute cultural references and written Japanese which, we’re happy to say, is not riddled with mistakes.

Read More

Time-Lapse Tokyo: Stunning Video Captures the Captial City’s Hidden Beauty

“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.

Read More

Testament to the strength and versatility of nature, a fish that became caught in the bait box of a small fishing boat swept away by the tsunami that struck the northeast coast of Japan in 2011 has been discovered alive and well on the coast of Washington State.

Read More

Evoland Celebrates the Growth of the Action RPG Genre in Style, Available to Buy Now 【Review】

In January this year, we brought you news of an upcoming video game that quite literally evolves as you play, starting off as a monochrome mass of pixels before slowly introducing virtually every gaming mechanic and action RPG element that we’ve come to know and love, culminating with full-on 3-D visuals, giant demons and a suitably epic plot. That game is Evoland, and after long last it’s available to buy from today.

RocketNews24 was fortunate enough to receive a review copy of the game late last week. Having poured over the original promotional video for so long, it was with high expectations that we sat down with the full game for an extended session of hacking, slashing and critical dissecting. The finished article, we’re happy to say, is absolutely spellbinding.

Read More

Under Its au Brand, Japanese Cellular Service Provider KDDI Unveils World’s Largest and Highest Resolution Smartphone

When he realized he’d primarily been using his smartphone in bed, Nemool Smith, an au product designer and chief hardware architect, wanted a more comfortable and rewarding user experience. Coming up blank in an online search for solutions, Nemool got an idea and decided to approach his bosses at KDDI and get their permission to design a radically new hardware platform he was sure would revolutionize the way people used their phones. The result has set the tech world abuzz, and has the potential to vault KDDI to the top of the global smartphone market.

Introducing the new au zzzPhoneBed by KDDI

Read More

“Geek & Cute” Accessories Made From Electronic Parts Are Actually Really Cool

Electronic resisters, condensers, LEDs, and circuit boards are just some of the parts used to make these really cute, yet totally geeky accessories.

Read More

Sega Fans Rejoice! Limited Edition Mega Drive, Saturn, Dreamcast-Themed Laptops on Sale Now!

If you’re a video game fan and in the line for a new laptop computer, it might be your lucky day! Japan’s Sega Store is currently accepting orders for specially designed notebooks designed to look like Sega’s late, great home consoles.

Short of dropping our current machines down the stairs or accidentally pouring coffee over them, we don’t necessarily need one per-se, but the more we gaze upon these photos, the more that little tech-loving devil inside us shouts the same word over and over and pumps gaming nostalgia into our bloodstream. Waaaant!

Read More

Lawson Convenience Store Goes Dragon Quest X Crazy, Puts In-Game Goodies Up for Grabs

Never shy of running a cool promotional offer or two, Japanese convenience store Lawson has announced that it will be transforming one of its Tokyo outlets into a video game castle to mark the launch of the Nintendo Wii U version of hugely popular game Dragon Quest X. Even better, visitors to the store will be able to bag themselves a whole host of themed goodies and even unlock in-game items during the promotional period.

Read More

Ordinarily, we wouldn’t even bother burning the calories required to click the link when presented with a video titled “Chinese Military Shovel” (especially when it means risking seeing that god-awful Gundam pachinko ad again). But after being recommended it by our Japanese sister site RocketNews24 Japan, we sat down to watch a demonstration of how China’s bravest men make the most of a tool that few of us would think of using for anything more than digging a hole in the ground or patting the tops of sandcastles flat with.

As it turns out, this is one handy little tool to have, with the Chinese military demonstrating some 24 different uses for it in this peculiar video. And we thought Swiss Army knives were versatile…

Read More

Mixing Business with Pleasure: Take Your Nerdiness to Work with the Itasuit!

Who says the office is no place for scantily-clad girls with blue hair? Now you can look smart and professional while staying true to your animé roots with the latest in clothing for discerning otaku- the itasuit!

Read More

Japanese Resort Announces New Studio Ghibli Diorama Exhibition

Fans of Studio Ghibli’s work who are unable to make it as far north as the Ghbili Museum in Tokyo will no doubt be excited to hear that the Laguna Gamagori Resort in Aichi Prefecture has announced that it will host a special Ghibli diorama exhibition within its amusement park from now until the beginning of March next year.

Read More

Ginza’s David Bowie Café Now Open and in Full Funky Swing

As reported here on RocketNews24, a special, limited-time-only café in honour of legendary British rock star David Bowie opened on March 18 this year. Keen to see if the real thing was as far out as the earlier press release, our reporter headed down to Ginza, Tokyo to check it out.

Read More

  2. 1
  3. ...
  4. 206
  5. 207
  6. 208
  7. 209
  8. 210
  9. 211
  10. 212
  11. 213