A certain reporter we know recently decided to make 20 kilos (44 pounds) of ‘Fruiche’ dessert in his very, very large Starbucks mug…
crazy (Page 126)
Tired of sushi standbys like tuna and salmon? An annual event in Tokyo recently served up mealworm nigiri and black wasp gunkan, plus a host of other bug-based foods and drinks.
Because why stop at 40 pieces when you could order 48, or just keep going into quadruple digits to really support your favorite Japanese idol singer?
In this age of viral videos, everyone is looking for the next big hit. People constantly have their smartphones out, desperately filming in hopes that something amazing is going to happen in front of them. However, as everyone records the incredible things that occur, we only have one piece of advice: please think a little bit about your own safety!
Our Japanese-language reporter Meg sets out to defend the honor of her favorite ice cream flavor by eating a breat mint sundae, and also makes her English RocketNews24 video debut.
Aside from the annual King of RocketNews24 Fighters underground bare-knuckled combat tournament, my job doesn’t require a lot of physical activity. That said, I still often find my stomach rumbling while I’m writing an article if it happens to be about meat, desserts, or some crossover between the two categories.
But I think I just lost my appetite, thanks to this Japanese Twitter user’s miscue in the kitchen and the accompanying photos of the most horrific home cooking imaginable.
Let’s play a little word association game. When I say “birthday,” what’s the next word that comes to mind?
For everyone who said “suit,” well, we’ve always suspected that at least a handful of people at any given moment are reading RocketNews24 while completely nude. Still, I’m guessing that far more of you thought of birthday parties and birthday cakes, which tend to go hand in hand. But what do you make the centerpiece of your birthday celebration edibles if sweets aren’t your thing?
Simple: you get a cake made of meat, like these carnivorous Japanese citizens.
Some drivers are committed to hauling as much cargo as they can in a single run, but the law usually draws the line of how much is OK to carry somewhere below the absolute limit of what’s physically possible. So when this trucker in China was warned that his container of gravel was over the limit, he had no choice but to dump some of his load…which he chose to do right on the inspector.
With Halloween just around the corner, people across Japan are getting ready to transform into all manner of awesome creatures. As a matter of fact, even some restaurants are getting into the spirit with special Halloween menu items, and we found one that’s a genuine monster: Tokyo’s massive Monster Burger, which is actually five burgers combined as one!
The somewhat euphemistically named process of “denailing” has remained a popular torture method since medieval times and, according to the sort of creepily detailed Wikipedia page for the method, it remains in use today.
There are a few good reasons for that. It apparently leaves no permanent marks or injury – after the nail grows back, of course – and requires only the most basic of tools to pull off. It also objectively hurts like hell and there’s something about the tips of the toes and fingers being manipulated that leaves a person feeling unbearably vulnerable.
All of which has us wondering why anyone would voluntarily use this tool, which is clearly just a re-purposed torture device, to fix their ingrown toenails, regardless of how amazingly well it supposedly works.
With a multitude of potential threats radiating over the border from North Korea, South Korea can not be lax when it comes to security.
As such, Seoul places a premium value on the training and capabilities of its military and police forces. This is clearly illustrated through the para-military capabilities of the South Korean National Police (KNP) SWAT teams.
A 2014 video from LiveLeak shows the incredible training in small arms maneuvers that these SWAT members go through.
Missing your bus stop has to be one of the worst feelings in the world. You’re trapped inside a vehicle going increasingly further away from the place you wanted to go, you’re suddenly surrounded by unfamiliar territory, and you’re going to have to waste a lot of time just to get back to your original destination.
Still, no matter how bad it gets, most people would never even think to attempt what one Chinese woman did. After realizing that she missed her stop, she climbed out of the bus’s window to exit as quickly as possible. Read on and watch the insane video, but whatever you do, be sure not to try this at home!
Man, being a professional manga artist must be a great life, right? For passionate and artistic individuals, it’s hard to imagine a sweeter deal than making a living just by dreaming and drawing, thinking up new worlds and bringing them to life.
And things must be even better if you’re the creator of a hit series, since not only are you bringing joy to thousands, or even millions, of fans, you’re also getting paid handsomely to do it. But even if you’re convinced you’ve got the skills to make it as a manga pro, before you go quitting your desk job you might want to check out the insane schedule of the most successful artist working in the industry today, One Piece’s Eiichiro Oda.
Japan’s Meiji period ushered in revolutionary changes to the country. As over 200 years of self-imposed isolation came to an end, centuries of economic, political, and scientific advances came flooding into Japan, and the nation’s thinkers and entrepreneurs began scrambling to modernize. Thanks to their efforts, soon after the Meiji period began in 1868, Japan had its first railways, banks, and apparently a dog-powered butter-making machine.
Have you heard of the LifeStraw? It’s a small water filter designed for one person that removes virtually all bacteria and parasites from unclean water. It has saved lives all over the world during natural disasters, helped areas with unclean drinking water, and even won awards for how effective it is.
But of course we had one question for the LifeStraw: can it make pee drinkable? If it’s truly such an amazing device, can it make drinkable water during the worst possible circumstances?
We put it to the test, so read on to see if a LifeStraw will need to be part of your zombie apocalypse kit.
Last month, we got our first in-costume look at the cast of the upcoming live-action TV adaptation of manga and anime Prison School. But while the production’s casting directors, stylists, and costumers have done a commendable job making the real-life performers look like their 2-D inspirations, fans have been wondering if the live-action Prison School will still feel like its source material.
After all, it’s not uncommon for there to be a major shift in tone when anime goes live-action, and a lot of the outlandishly pervy stuff that goes on in the animated Prison School ostensibly gets a pass from censors because it’s not being done by real people. Still, it doesn’t look like the live-action Prison School is looking to change the formula that worked for both the anime and the manga, as its two preview videos show it’s still perfectly happy to bask in its ludicrous lewdness, as well as repeatedly ask the question “Do you prefer butts or breasts?”
Heads-up! Depending on how accepting your workplace environment is of ludicrous lewdness, you might want to save these videos for after you get home.
High school girls. In all seriousness, are they aliens??
Japanese Twitter users delight in sharing the perplexing, nonsensical, contradictory, or downright outrageous behaviors that they observe high school girls engaging in around the country. Below, we’ve gathered together a sampling of some such anecdotes for your reading pleasure. What strange escapades are the girls up to now?
Compared to some of the cooler or more elegant-sounding parts of Tokyo, like Jiyugaoka (“Freedom Hill”) or Akihabara (“Field of Autumn Leaves”), the Shinagawa neighborhood has a pretty dull name, meaning essentially “Merchandise River.” Still, you have to admit it’s appropriate. Located near the mouth of the Sumidagawa river, for generations Shinagawa has seen plenty of cargo ships sail past as they ferry goods in and out of Tokyo’s ports.
The name even works in a figurative economic sense, as Shinagawa Station is a major rail hub that thousands of workers pass through every day on their way from their homes in the suburbs to their offices downtown. The facility is designed to keep passengers efficiently flowing in and out, but this morning the “river” got blocked due to a problem with the trains, resulting in perhaps the most crowded scene of rush hour in Japan that we’ve ever seen.
Tokyo’s Harajuku neighborhood means different things to different people. The beautiful people living the Japanese high life are drawn by the brand-name jewelers on the tree-lined Omotesando boulevard. Teens, meanwhile, flock to the narrow Takeshitadori shopping street to score up-to-date fashions that leave their parents scratching their heads in bewilderment.
And for those with a sweet tooth, Harajuku is all about the crepes.
Our intrepid Japanese-language correspondent P.K. recently took a break from seeing how many slices of roast pork or boiled eggs he could cram in his stomach and instead decided to see how much dessert he could consume in a single serving, as he decided to max out a Tokyo crepe by ordering one with every available dessert topping.
Well, that didn’t take long. It was just a couple of days ago that we took a look at Mario Maker user PangeaPanga’s course titled Pit of Panga: P-Break and shook our heads in awe at its diabolical difficulty. While it’s true that Nintendo doesn’t allow you to upload Mario Maker levels unless you can prove they’re beatable, we wouldn’t have been surprised if no one other than PangeaPanga himself was able to clear his creation.
But in less than a week, the hardest of the hard-core have risen to the challenge, and while this video of a Japanese gamer finishing the level is a display of some impressive platforming skills, what really makes it worthwhile is the surge of adrenalin that sends him shouting his victory to the heavens, and how it leaves his body in pain and his psyche tattered as he breaks down in tears of joy at his gaming accomplishment.
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