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George Mallroy, one of the first Britons to attempt to conquer Mount Everest back in 1924, famously said of his desire to climb the mountain that he did so “because it’s there.” In the case of two of the mountain’s most recent visitors, “because I can” might be a better mantra.

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We devour a mountain of ramen (toppings)

By far the plainest, most bare-bones name for a guy in Japan is Taro. Look at just about any sample application form in the country, and nine times out of ten the applicant’s name will be listed as “Taro.” When coupled with a girl’s name like Hanako it’s the equivalent of “Dick and Jane,” showing up in children’s stories and textbooks.

Nonetheless,the name Taro is something of a classic, and a common choice for first-born sons. But change the first kanji character Taro is written with and you get “Jiro,” meaning more or less “second son.” Jiro doesn’t have quite the cachet of Taro, as it has a perpetual little brother-like ring to it.

Restaurant chain Ramen Jiro doesn’t play second fiddle to anyone, though, especially with creations like this.
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Pigs fly (in broth form) as ANA serves up in-flight Ippudo ramen

Japan has earned plenty of foodie cred over the last few years. Tokyo has topped multiple lists of the best cities in the world to eat out in, morning talk shows showcase delicious, hole-in-the wall restaurants and bakeries almost every day, and this month even provincial Hiroshima got its own Michelin Guide.

But even with a nation of enthusiastic diners and gastronomic craftsmen ready to serve them, airline food is, for the most part, nothing to get too excited about. Unless you happen to be flying ANA internationally, that is, where you can now get Ippudo ramen. Read More

Silly Pun Leads to Great Dessert – Special Strawberry Shortcake Available Just Once a Month at Japanese Convenience Store

In almost every company in Japan, payday is on the 25th of the month. While this means every month feels a little like Christmas, it also means that if you’ve been partying a little too hard for the last 30-odd days, around the 22nd, your bank balance might be looking pretty dismal.

But no matter how much you try to cut back, man can’t live on bread alone. Looking to treat yourself to the most meager luxury possible, you might stumble into a branch of the Japanese convenience store Lawson, where there’s a special treat to brighten your day that’s available only on the 22nd of each month. Read More

Hello Kitty Melons Selling for an Exorbitant Price in Japan

Japan seems to have mastered the art of growing cute fruit. Heart lemons, star cucumbers, and even the infamous square watermelons are all testaments to the lengths farmers in Japan will go to in order to provide the masses with adorable fruit. The newest delightfully deformed fruit to hit the market is a musk melon with an image of Hello Kitty etched into the rind. However only a select few who are quick (and rich) enough to snatch them up will be able to enjoy the flavor of Hello Kitty’s melons in their mouth.

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Japan’s latest tourism offering looks set to capture the attention of both sightseers and locals seeking a spot of adventure. From the Japanese company that embarked on such enterprises as the open air double-decker bus comes the “land and water bus”. The development of the vehicle is part of a new Tokyo sightseeing strategy undertaken by Japanese automobile company “Hinomaru Bus”. The service, dubbed “Sky Duck Tokyo Splash Tour”, launched on March 2013 and has been fully booked since its first day of operation.

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It’s Dangerous to Go Alone! Take this! 3-D Printing Zelda Equipment

Becoming obsessed with The Legend of Zelda after getting it as a birthday present at the age of six, one fan has found a way to bring items from the game into the real world.

How, you ask with images of magical blacksmiths dancing in your head. Simple: 3-D printing!

This fan, who documents the creations at the incredible blog Hyrule Founder, recreated the 8-bit items as 3-D, digital models and printed them with a high-quality 3-D printer. Read More

Despite being a country where firearms are incredibly rare and licences to own them notoriously difficult to obtain, there nevertheless remain thousands of gun nuts in Japan. Thankfully, the majority of firearm fans here are content to spend hours poring over photos and technical diagrams of weapons, occasionally visiting shooting ranges or watching videos of pretty girls squeezing off a few rounds while dressed as French maids.

For those who prefer to have something to play with at home, there are airsoft guns from makers such as Tokyo Marui, which feature a shockingly high level of detail and come with all manner of bells and whistles in an attempt to recreate the experience of firing the real thing without the risk of death, serious injury or being arrested. But as aesthetically pleasing as these firing replicas are, one key element was always missing: sound.

Enter: Bakuon Gun-Sound replicas.

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We Use Lotteria’s Ramen Burger to Make a Bowl of Ramen Noodles, Restore the Natural Balance of the Universe

On May 17, Japanese hamburger chain Lotteria’s ramen burger went on sale in the Tokyo area. Comprised of a slab of seasoned pork and a handful of noodles sandwiched inside a bun, with a cup of broth on the side, the sandwich is a collaboration between Lotteria and the popular ramen restaurant chain Musashi.

Representing the convergence of two of fast food’s all-stars, the ramen burger has been a hit, with lines stretching out the door when it went on sale. But our stomachs are fickle masters, and we decided to tear the two star-crossed lovers apart once again by using the ramen burger to make a bowl of ramen noodles. Read More

Japanese Electronics Company Releases Camera Glasses for Under US$100

With the general release of Google Glass still several months away, Tokyo-based electronics maker Thanko is already offering gadget lovers something that shares one function with Google’s wearable computer for a fraction of the price.

On April 11 Thanko released its mita manma megane, or “just what you see glasses” video camera, designed like a pair of eyeglasses. Read More

Simple Arts and Crafts Kit Produces Beautiful, Shiny Balls of Mud

Some things just don’t quite translate culturally. For example, in most parts of the West, horses aren’t really considered food, while some Japanese consider horse meat a delicacy, particularly if you don’t mar the flavor by cooking it before eating. But whether it’s a hamburger or a stallion skewer, at the end of the day they’re both ways of satisfying a meat lover’s cravings.

Likewise, kids in Japan might reach for some dango dumplings instead of a slice of cake, but they’re both just treats for someone with a sweet tooth. Which brings us to another fundamental human condition: children love to make things out of mud, and while Japanese kids don’t make mud cakes, they make mud dango.

Now, writing supply maker Shachihata is putting a new, shiny spin on mud dango. Read More

Located in Kanagawa Prefecture, the city of Hakone is a popular weekend travel destination for people living in the Tokyo area. The town’s numerous open-air hot springs and traditional inns, several with spectacular views of Mt. Fuji, attract visitors both young and old.

Most people headed to Hakone take the train, although the mountain passes that wind through and around the town make it a popular destination for drifters, too (the kind with cars, not the kind with bindles). One group of recent Kanagawa junior high graduates thought it would be more fun to bypass motorized transportation and headed out for Hakone by skateboard, taking their video camera with them. Read More

In the Future Your Own Hand Will be Your Smartphone (With the Help of 5,000 Pounds of Terrifying Machinery)

Minority Report it is not, but Masatoshi Ishikawa – namesake of Tokyo University’s renowned Ishikawa Lab – brought us one step closer to the future when he recently invited Japanese press to witness the lab’s newest creation: a projection system that can track and display an image on a moving object.

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This Blue Beer Looks Like it Came from Alcoholic Willy Wonka’s Factory

The Abashiri Brewery in Hokkaido which, judging by its website, really is some kind of beer-themed Willy Wonka side project, boasts what may be the world’s first naturally blue beer.

Always ready to get drunk for the sake of our readers, RocketNews24 took it upon ourselves to investigate this mystifying beer anomaly, appropriately named the Ryuhyou Draft (“Ice Floe Draft”), at a beachside pub. Read More

Korean Remote Controlled Turtle Project Making Slow But Steady Progress

One year when I was in junior high school my parents gave me a radio controlled car for Christmas. It was the perfect gift for a young boy right in the middle of dealing with the most awkward, confusing psychological change that comes with puberty (no longer thinking riding a bike is cool, but still being too young to drive a car). I loved that R/C car, so much that I kept playing with it outside as it started to rain one day, eventually frying the circuits so that it never ran again.

But things would have been different if my parents had been researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, or KAIST. First, everyone would have been surprised by how two Korean scientists ended up with a Caucasian son with blond hair. And next, they could have hooked me up with a controllable water-resistant reptile, like the remote controlled turtle KAIST is currently developing. Read More

If a wardrobe filled with musty coats brought people to Narnia, we wonder where these beautiful tunnels might bring you. Let’s take a look at ten beautiful passageways from around the world.

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Calling All Evil Billionaires: The Dream of Space Flight Can be Yours for a Fraction of Your Fortune

It used to be that to go to space you needed to join NASA and become an astronaut. But you’re an evil billionaire, and you’re far too busy being evil for all that training in the gravitron.

Lucky for you and whatever evil space plans you’re hatching, SXC (Space Expedition Corporation) offers the dream of space travel to any commoner with US$100,000 lying around, a pittance that will barely put a dent in your underground chamber of dubiously acquired gold bricks.

There are also a number of other aerospace companies offering a variety of space travel flavors, from a few minutes in orbit to a full 9 days at the International Space Station (ISS), complete with space walk. Let’s take a look at the different space travel packages offered, including one that costs US$150 million. 

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Let It Rip with Japanese Company’s Stress-Relieving Notepad

The company Edit, based in Tokyo’s Chiyoda Ward, produces a variety of notebooks. Most of them come with specialized forms on each page, such as a cooking notebook with separate boxes for ingredient names, amounts, and cooking directions. The company’s more unique offerings include a pitcher’s notebook with a three-by-three grid to mark each throw as high or low, inside or outside, and a horse racing journal to record bets, wins (hopefully), and losses (inevitably).

The pages of Edit’s newest big seller are completely blank, though. What’s more, if customers follow the instructions for using it, they’ll never be able to refer back to what they wrote, because the pages are designed to feel good as you rip them into shreds. Read More

The Saudi Arabian television program Hawatel Kaizen (a combination of the Arabic word for “thoughts” and the Japanese for “improvement”) is a series of reports by Arabic reporters in which they share things they have been impressed by in Japan. A Japanese TV show in turn did a feature on Hawatel Kaizen, in which the panel of Japanese TV personalities were amused by the enthusiastic responses of Saudi reporter, Ahmad, to things Japanese citizens take for granted.

So in an effort to be as international as possible, RocketNews24 brings you an English recap of a Japanese TV program reacting to another program in which a Saudi Arabian reporter reacts to Japan. Read More

How to Make Gundam Using Microsoft Excel 【Video】

How many of you actually know how to use Microsoft Excel? Unless you need to make spreadsheets on a regular basis, Excel acts as the forgotten stepsister of Word and PowerPoint. Even those who claim to be able use Excel, don’t actually know how to use it. So you can imagine our surprise when we found out that with a lot of creativity and even more time, you can make amazing works of art using the most boring of all the Microsoft Office programs.

The following video shows each painstakingly detailed step to creating Gundam using Microsoft Excel (in super high speed).

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