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Japanese phonetic character catching on as emoticon in the Middle East

Sometimes obvious things are hidden right in plain sight and it takes the fresh perspective of someone in another part of the world to point it out. One Twitter user stumbled on such a hidden gem recently when searching the Japanese character for “tsu” , which in the katakana alphabet is written ツ.

As you can probably see from the image above and in the text of the previous sentence, the letter looks quite a lot like a smirking face. This may appear obvious to many Western readers, but according to online reaction most Japanese netizens were taken by surprise at this discovery and had never noticed the similarity. Perhaps even more surprisingly, the character is also apparently getting an unusual amount of use in Middle Eastern countries.

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Tea cups and biting breasts: Japanese phrases that sound like weird English

The Japanese love to have fun with words. Kotoba asobi (wordplay) makes up a pretty large portion of Japanese humor on variety programs and comedy shows – possibly a side effect of so many kanji characters sounding phonetically identical despite wildly different meanings.

But YouTube’s The World Video Tour has taken it to a whole new level with a video series of Japanese words and phrases that sound a lot like totally unrelated English terms. Below, we’ll watch the series’ host have some fun with foreign tourists to see if they understand what he’s trying to say.

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Arabic opening song for popular Japanese anime confuses Japanese netizens 【Video】

When I was a kid, I used to watch Japanese anime that were dubbed in English or Mandarin because the original versions were not broadcast on the local TV channels. Most of the time, the theme songs of these anime remained in Japanese, and I had fun singing along to the catchy tunes even though I had absolutely no idea what the lyrics meant. However, it isn’t entirely uncommon for international versions of anime series to have theme songs localized to the audience’s native language and tastes for music.

Recently, a clip of the Arabic version of the popular anime series, Arupusu no Shojo Haiji (Heidi, Girl of the Alps) has been making waves among Japanese netizens due to its localized opening song, which was starkly different from the Japanese original. Videos after the jump!

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Five awesome hot springs in Taiwan (one of them has been on fire for 300 years!)

Japan is famous for being an onsen (hot spring) nation, so much so that a friend of mine preaches that “if you’ve never been to an onsen, then you’ve never been to Japan”. Quite the extremist, but you get the idea. Japanese hot springs come pretty close to “heaven on earth”.

But Japan’s neighboring country, Taiwan, also has some fabulous hot springs to boot! The fact that there are onsen-loving Japanese people who travel to Taiwan for a soak is sufficient to vouch for the quality of these bubbling hot baths. Here’s a list of five onsen hot spots you wouldn’t want to miss on your trip to Taiwan!

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To the trained eye, a person’s physical features and personality quirks can reveal what they do for a living. The guy with little cuts all over his hands? Likely a chef (or a bare knuckle fighter). The person at a party who effortlessly schmoozes with complete strangers? He’s probably a salesman, or maybe an actor (or an actor playing a salesman). And the individual with the pleasant smell? Most definitely a RocketNews24 writer (no parenthetical joke this time; nothing rivals the pleasing aroma of our creative team).

When your job requires such commitment that it stops being just an occupation and starts becoming a way of life, these traits become all the more telling, such as these ways to quickly spot a member of Japan’s Self-Defense Forces.

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Hey guys, unlucky with women? There’s always Latvia!

If love is a numbers game, we’d say there’s no better place for men to play the odds than Latvia. In the formerly communist Baltic-region country, there are only 84 men for every 100 women, making the country the most gender-divided in the world – a fact that has a lot of single men here in Japan paying great attention.

As if that weren’t enough for men fed up with being “friend-zoned” by the women of their own countries to start researching ways to smuggle themselves into some Latvian tourist’s return luggage, Latvian ladies are apparently gaga over foreign men with college educations.

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12 culinary delights from Japan that you can find in New York City

As much as we at RocketNews24 love talking about Japanese food and introducing our readers to new places to eat or our own crazy culinary creations, we appreciate that for many, popping over to Tokyo or Osaka for a week of washoku dining bliss simply isn’t on the cards. But thankfully, great Japanese food can be found all over the world – if you know where to look!

For those of you to whom New York is a heck of a lot closer than Tokyo, Susan Miyagi Hamaker, one of our friends from JapanCulture•NYC, has prepared a fantastic list of 12 authentic Japanese foods that are available within the city, even sharing some tips on which restaurants to check out if you’re in town. Yup, the real just got that little bit closer!

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An amazing 1,300-year old way of fishing involving birds diving underwater is going extinct

Cormorant fishing on China’s Li River is all but dying out.

Fisherman set out with domesticated cormorants, a seabird, on bamboo rafts before sunrise and often in the early evening. These birds prey on fish. But the fishermen tie threads around the necks of the cormorants to prevent them from swallowing the fish they catch.

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Onsen trivia! Finding the hottest, highest, and healthiest hot springs in Japan

Japan is practically overflowing with hot, bubbling water it seems and nearly every city and town has a local spring or public bath for people to get a nice soak. Called “onsen” in Japanese, hot spring spas or baths are one of the most enduring symbols of Japanese culture.

Today, we bring you a fact-filled list of Japanese onsen trivia! Impress your friends with your knowledge and find somewhere to go soothe your aching heart when they get mad at you for being so smart.

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Behold: the saddest Christmas tree in all of Japan

Lonely this Christmas? Shiga Prefecture’s Pieri Moriyama shopping mall most certainly is.

Although technically still operating, the once thriving shopping centre is now home to just 14 stores after the local economy took a nosedive and businesses started pulling out in their droves. In the spirit of Christmas, however, the mall’s operators evidently decided to pop a tree up for visitors to enjoy. But as this Twitter user’s photo shows, when surrounded by naught but vast expanses of nice shiny floor, this tiny tree is possibly the loneliest Christmas ornament we’ve ever seen.

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MiniShock: Check out these insanely detailed PlayStation 2 controller smartphone straps

The rest of the world may currently be in love with Sony’s newest controller, the DualShock 4, but gamers in Japan evidently still have a big soft spot for the ageing PlayStation 2 control pad, the DualShock 2.

What you can see in the image above is not, in fact, a row of the now 13-year-old controllers as viewed from a great height, but a new set of earphone jack plugs, and the level of detail is simply astounding.

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Comparatively speaking, Japanese homes are undeniably small. So much so that many traditional furnishings are designed to help maximize the efficiency of what little space there is. Futons that can be stuffed into a closet when not in use, tables that fold up in a snap, and cushions for sitting on the floor all provide the flexibility to quickly and easily convert a living room into a bedroom.

So with space at such a premium, why do so many Japanese married couples choose to sleep in separate rooms?

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The true meaning of Japanese Christmas

It’s December again in Japan, and that means that Christmas trees are sprouting up outside store fronts while festive advertisements of cakes adorn the trains and convenience stores across the land. The usual mercilessly repetitive jingles that fill department stores and supermarkets are replaced with mercilessly repetitive carols for this one special month.

However, not everyone can share in the festive joy of a Japanese Christmas filled with hallowed traditions such as fried chicken and bowling. Christmas in Japan is also a day for lovers, and as of 2011 it was estimated that over 60% of young men and women would be single for the holidays and that number certainly hasn’t appeared to have changed recently.

All this lonesomeness and misery brought about annually begs the question: “Who the hell made Christmas a romantic holiday in Japan anyway?!” RocketNews24 Japan investigated.

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10 things that surprise foreign women in Japan

Travel website Expedia recently conducted a poll to find out what women were most surprised by when they came to Japan. The top ten results revealed that ladies were fascinated with aspects of everyday culture, but none more so than when it came to bathroom habits. With three of the top ten responses relating directly to bathroom life, it seems there’s a lot going on in the ladies’ rooms of Japan.

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“You’re an otaku!” Defining Japan’s nerdiest word

What would you say if someone were to call you an otaku? These days, people’s responses would likely fall into one of two extremes: “Hell, yeah! I’m a huge [insert hobby here] otaku!” or “Screw you! I have a life!”

Some might argue that the latter response is more likely to come from a true otaku, but very rarely do you hear someone admit to being an otaku with the nonchalant cadence of someone saying, “I’m a claims adjuster.” There’s always at least hint of bias in their tone whether its pride or embarrassment.

And yet such an emotionally charged label is still in debate with regards to its definition. To try to make sense of what an otaku is and whether it’s a good or bad thing, let’s start by looking at reasons people might say they aren’t an otaku. The following are four types of denial you might hear when calling someone an otaku as concocted by Japan’s Excite News.

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A Japanese fast food chain invented a wrapper to help women feel comfortable chomping into a burger

A Japanese burger company has a new burger wrapper designed exclusively to help women eat burgers more politely.

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Can you handle the heat at Fukugonji’s annual firewalking festival?

Over the course of a year, we humans can accumulate a lot of mucky emotions. We inevitably forget the dangers that certain fiery passions, like anger and envy, can do to our psyches. In order to remind ourselves to retake control of these troublesome fires that burn within us, we must take a walk through physical flames and let the fear of literal fire burn away our emotional impurities.

At least, that’s the idea behind Fukugonji’s annual firewalking festival! Each year, on second Sunday of December, this Zen Buddhist temple in Aichi Prefecture invites all members of the public to step across their scorching coals and reclaim inner purity at the Fukugonji Akiba Grand Festival. This year, the festival promises to be particularly entertaining, as well as spiritual and somewhat scary, as one might expect from firewalking.

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South Park’s anime-style “Princess Kenny” video arrives in Japan, chuckles and confusion abound

A recent storyline in the often controversial, always hilarious animated series South Park focuses on the run-up to the Black Friday sales, and sees the fictional town’s inhabitants turning into murderous, bargain-hunting zombies prepared to gouge one another’s eyes out if it means getting a new TV for a fraction of the normal retail price.

At the same time, a war rages between the town’s kids over which console – Xbox One or PlayStation 4 – they should band together to nab in the sales, and results in Microsoft’s Bill Gates handing out weapons to young Xbox One fans (one per child, in the name of safety) to aid them in their struggle. Not wanting to be outdone, Sony strikes back by granting the leader of the competing faction – none other than parker-wearing mumbler Kenny – the power to become a real Japanese princess, transforming him into an doe-eyed anime beauty, complete with his own Japanese theme song.

Of course, it didn’t take long for clips from the show to make their way to Japan…

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We pick up a new good luck charm at the Tori no Ichi Festival in Shinjuku

Japan’s urban and rural areas alike are dotted with temples and shrines, but there’s no practice of attending regular services at them. Instead, visitors primarily come to offer a few yen as a donation, say a quick prayer, and pick up one of the plethora of good luck charms and amulets sold there, many of which have specific purposes such as passing an important exam or finding a new love.

But every member of our team is already out of college, and so popular with the opposite sex that we’re starting to feel bad about not leaving any for the rest of the populace. Looking further down our to-do list, we noticed that “build mansion with supermodel grotto” was preceded by “achieve economic success,” so we decided to head to our local Shinto shrine for Tori no Ichi, Japan’s annual festival for buying good luck charms for success in business.

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Reading books makes you aware we live in the Matrix, artist depicts

We were all pretty sure we live in the Matrix anyway. Doesn’t that explain deja vu and rainbows or whatever?

Now we have definitive artistic proof that the Matrix is real, and only those that read tons of books ever get it. As this artist rendition shows, reading books makes you more knowledgeable about the world around you in the form of a giant book ladder that lets you climb up and see the real world outside of our digitized quasi-reality.

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