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crowd funding

Crowdfunded samurai sword-inspired kitchen knives now available for general sale

Now anyone can pretend to use Oda Nobunaga’s sword to cut onions!

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Kyoto’s famous Gion Festival celebrates its 1150th anniversary with…crowdfunding?

You have the chance to contribute to this festival’s 1,150th anniversary.

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Axent Wear, those cat-ear headphones with LEDs and external speakers, are finally going on sale!

Think cat ears are only appropriate for cosplay and on Halloween? Think again!

Thanks to a highly successful crowd funding campaign, these amazingly awesome cat ear headphones are now, after what feels like an age since we first discovered them, hitting the market, and just begging to be worn just about anywhere.
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Books meet beer – Man achieves dream of opening “night library” with help from crowdfunding site

There are few things better than curling up with a good book, but one of them is doing so with a nice glass of wine or beer. There’s something about spending an entire afternoon reading that is so much more forgivable than losing the best part of a day to video games or sitting in a darkened room watching movies, and so even the addition of a cheeky alcoholic accompaniment – so long as you put a stopper in it before the words start to swim about on the page – barely registers as a sin.

A man who knows the pleasure of getting lost in literature is Shunsuke Mori. Since his junior high school days, he has dreamed of having his own private library and being surrounded by books. Now an adult, his vision has grown with him, and he has decided to open up a special “night library” in trendy Shibuya for grown-ups only to enjoy with, of course, a tipple or two to help them unwind. And thanks to like-minded netizens, his dream will soon be a reality.

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Live-action Princess Mononoke fan film “Wolf Girl” goes live on Kickstarter

It’s only September, but 2013 has already been quite the year for Studio Ghibli news. What with the critical success of Kaze Tachinu, jaw-dropping theatre adaptations, incoming movie Kaguya Hime no Monogatari and the last week’s announcement of Hayao Miyazaki’s retirement, we can’t remember a year like it. And now, just when we thought we couldn’t possibly squeeze in any more Ghibli goodness, we’ve received word that a new live-action fan film inspired by Princess Mononoke is in the works!

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Japanese Guy Follows Dream of Travelling World and Taking Pictures of Beautiful Women (But Needs Our Help)

Kei Akatsu is a man with a dream – a dream to travel the world, meet women, and take their pictures. Having spent half a year in Vancouver introducing himself girls and holding impromptu photo shoots, he honed the necessary skills to fulfill his ambition.

The Tokyo University of Science student then spent the rest of the time setting up his website, Beauties World Map. The website came together very well but he needed more content and for that he needed more capital. So he turned to crowd funding.

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