If you’ve ever had to attend one of your sibling’s high school gymnastics team performances and been bored out of your mind at all the jumping around and the bizarre Whose Lines is it Anyway/Clueless Gamer–style grading system, and thought to yourself, “Man, I’d be much more entertained if this was set to the Attack on Titan theme song. And would it kill these guys to throw a fart joke in there?,” you’re in luck; because this genius Kagoshima Prefecture high school men’s gymnastics team delivers on all of that in spades.
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Last spring, BuzzFeed released a pair of videos, one dealing with what people around the world eat when they get up in the morning, and the other about what they eat after they get liquored up in a bar. Those are both interesting concepts, since breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and the post-drinking, pre-hangover snack is the happiest, but we couldn’t help but scratch our heads at their selections for Japan, neither of which were things we remembered eating in our time living in the country.
Now, BuzzFeed has moved on from the foods Japan puts in its mouth to the words coming out of it, with a new video titled 11 Anime Expressions To Show How You Really Feel. Let’s see how they handled the switch from gastronomy to linguistics.
Among Japanese fast food chains, MOS Burger tries to position itself as being just a little more upscale than its rivals. Sure, the prices are a little higher, but the ingredients taste a little fresher, their customer service a little better, and if your order isn’t to go, they’ll serve your drink in a glass instead of a paper cup.
A lot of MOS branches even add a personal touch by putting a blackboard in front of their entrance with a new message written on it each day. The one in my neighborhood, for example, usually has some sort of seasonal or daily greeting like, “There’s a fireworks festival tonight. We hope everyone who’s going has a great time!”
But things aren’t so chipper in Kawasaki, where the staff of one MOS Burger have decided to use their board to let everyone passing by know about their physical and romantic ailments.
I can only imagine what it would be like for a tourist from some far off country to inadvertently disembark in the United States right in time for the Halloween holiday. Stepping off the plane to be surrounded by blood-covered nurses, mad scientists and cackling witchcraft wielders would be extremely traumatizing for someone not specifically told that people are going to be walking around in costume like it’s no big deal.
Well, now I sort of have an idea of what that might feel like now that I’ve watched this YouTube video of a Taiwanese bus company that decided to replace its bus driver with a creepy zombie for Taiwan’s annual Hungry Ghost Festival.
It’s never a good choice to try to drown your sorrows with alcohol when you feel like you’re down on luck. As the saying goes, it never rains but it pours and when you’re down and out, not to mention drunk, there’s a high possibility that shit is going to happen.
Let’s not even get into drunk driving; Taiwanese news site ETToday recently reported a bizarre case of a drunken man who broke into someone’s house, and eventually jumped out of a window from the fifth floor, landing him in the hospital. How exactly did all that come together? Details after the break!
One of our favorite things about Japan is the convenience of just about everything, especially the vending machines. Wherever you are, there’s at least one machine just waiting to quench your thirst–and all of them have any tired writer’s favorite drink: Coffee!
Even more conveniently, though, most machines offer a choice of hot or cold cans–but, of course, the cans will cool down if you don’t drink them right away. In which case you might be tempted to try heating your can up on the stove, like this Japanese Twitter user. That would be a bad idea.
Right now there’s no hotter anime or video game franchise among kids than Yo-kai Watch. While we’re sure the high standards of quality at creator Level-5 are a huge factor in its success, at least some fans of the ostensibly for-kids series have said that part of the appeal is that grown-ups haven’t started horning in on tykes’ turf in the same way they have with other popular franchises.
The borders to their children’s paradise might be fading, though, as this video, showing a young lady dancing her heart out to the Yo-Kai Watch ending theme, proves that teens aren’t even remotely too old to get some enjoyment out of the show.
That’s right, mutant parrot-banana hybrids! But before you freak out and start boarding up your windows (or perhaps grabbing a napkin and a large net), we should be clear that we are talking about gachapon, the little toys sold in plastic bubbles out of vending machines.
While these fruit and fauna combo toys are hardly the weirdest or even the most nonsensical toy to hit the gachapon scene, they seem to be selling well, with collectors posting pictures on social media of the cute critters interacting with a variety of action figures and other tiny toys.
Cats are known throughout the world for their amazing ability to put themselves exactly where they don’t belong. Whether they’re plunged deep where the sun doesn’t shine into a narrow crawl space or looking down on their “hoomans” from the attic, there’s no end to their hiding spots.
However, one Japanese Twiter user found her cat in what could best be described as a “compromising” position…under the toilet faucet!
A sneaky Twitter user snapped this shot of a kabe-don in action right in the middle of the world’s busiest train station. Always eager for a bit of 2-D romance come to life, netizens were looking forward images of a cute female station attendant blushing in her uniform while being thoroughly kabe-donned by a towering, masculine passenger… Unfortunately that’s not quite what they got.
While the dog you owned in your childhood may have been a total idiot that barked at its own farts, super smart dogs aren’t all that uncommon, and the Internet has done a beautiful job of giving us a one-stop shop for viewing all the glorious tricks and people-things canines are capable of.
Some dogs on the Internet are so smart, in fact, it’s hard to tell who is the owner and who is the pet. Such as this jogging man with casually Segway-riding dog that was spotted in China recently.
Obon is a great time to be in Japan–the summer festivals fill the country with nights of folk music, stall food, and, of course, dancing. While the cops may not approve of you tearing it up in a club, surely no one could complain about the traditional circle dances of Obon.
But it turns out there’s a critic for everything!
You know how in English you can take pretty much any noun and make it a verb—derivation for the cunning linguists out there—by adding to to the front? For example, how the search engine Google has become to google, as in, “Why the hell are you asking me? Go google it, you twit!”
Well, you can do the same thing in Japanese by adding –ru or a handful of other suffixes to the end of a word, and some Japanese net users recently had some fun with this by turning country names into some very non-PC verbs.
Have a look at our geopolitical dictionary and see how your country fared.
I thought summers in America were hot, until I moved to Asia and learned firsthand what a hot summer is really like. In Japan, China and other parts of East Asia, the summer can be brutal to the point that people flock to public pools by the thousands, risking other people’s disgusting mud butt and possible drowning by crowd crush just to enjoy a few moments in the tepid water.
But a number of enterprising Chinese college students have apparently figured out a genius workaround: Just put a pool in your own dorm room.
For a country where rice is eaten at almost every meal, Japan has a surprising number of bakeries and pâtisseries. One stroll down the street of any city and eventually you’re likely to pass by the drifting aroma of freshly-baked bread and other sweet treats. Japanese bakeries aren’t afraid to have a little fun with their pan, either–just check out this Hello Kitty bread, Suica penguin bread, and these, well, rather unfortunate but hilarious attempts at capturing the essence of Doraemon, Totoro, and other popular characters!
Of course, you may want to stay clear of the bread in the above picture unless you’re an aspiring coleopterist (yes, that’s a word) or looking to gross out your younger siblings!
Remember when “poking” your friends on Facebook was a trendy thing to do? I feel old now just by recalling how my schoolmates and I could spend the entire evening “poking” each other online, refreshing the browser page every few seconds in attempt to return a “poke” at the fastest timing possible. Well, the younger generation who only got on Facebook in the recent year or two probably wouldn’t have an idea what I’m talking about since the trend has died down.
But you know how trends are revived every once in a while? “Poking” is now back with a new force, this time on the globally popular free messaging mobile app, LINE. Sorry to dash your hopes if you were looking forward to giving your LINE friends a cyber poke because LINE users are “poking” their favorite (or least favorite) anime characters and celebrities instead!
I don’t know if it was because of the layout of the surrounding skyscrapers, the beat-up old boom box we had in the lobby, or just a weak signal from the local broadcaster, but at one of my old jobs, we could never get a clear radio signal. This didn’t mean we had no musical accompaniment while we worked though, just that we had to use CDs. Unfortunately, on many days that meant a constant repeat of the Enya CD my boss would stick in the player.
She may be an award-winning artist, but a selection you could describe as “soothing and ethereal” wasn’t exactly the best choice to help power the staff through our shift. Sometimes I’d see one of my coworkers nodding off in front of his PC monitor, and I’d give him a quick, “Hey, wake up dude,” before our boss noticed.
I’m sure he appreciated the favor, but now technology can perform that same service for you, with a program that’ll send a cute anime girl onto your screen to wake you up if you doze off.
We’re already well into the school summer holidays here in Japan, and Sony is taking the opportunity to entice younger gamers over to its decidedly more grown-up portable console, the PlayStation Vita. Join us after the jump for a closer look at these cheeky ads from Sony’s summer campaign.
Normally I pride myself on being able to come up with at least somewhat clever headlines for my articles, but this story is so bizarrely specific, I ran out of space just trying to come up with a comprehensible title.
What you’re looking at is a new father who got the idea to pose with his daughter in the bathtub every couple of weeks to record her growth from gross poop machine into vaguely human infant. The man’s wife apparently proposed that they add a little makeup to dad’s face to make things interesting and then the situation, as you can see, kind of escalated from there.
Japan’s hot and sticky summer days may mean that people are wearing slightly less than usual, but unless you’re some kind of magma demon impervious to the 34-degree heat we’ve been having recently, it also means you’ll be throwing sweat-soaked t-shirts and underwear into the washing machine with depressing frequency, making every other day laundry day.
Fortunately, book and cutesy crap emporium Village Vanguard has a couple of new t-shirts that are perfect for summer – and one of them already looks drenched before you even put it on!


















Kyoto samurai house wants to share its history of seppuku, torture and gold coins with visitors
“Bear” voted Japan’s Kanji of the Year for 2025 in extremely close race
Tokyo considering law requiring more trash cans following litter increase in heavily touristed area
Japan’s Hiepita forehead cooling strips, so popular they changed the language, are disappearing
Tokyo event lets you travel back in time, for free, to celebrate 100 years since Showa era start
Pokémon Christmas village event taking place nightly in Yokohama
Studio Ghibli releases new Totoro neckties to brighten up your office wear
Top Secret Cookie Recipe Finally Comes to Light
7-Eleven Japan has a hack for creating insanely delicious potato chip rice meals
Yoshinoya’s new ramen doesn’t smell like it tastes【Taste test】
Stamina-destroying “Paralysis Noodles” are Tokyo’s newest over-the-top ramen innovation
Sanrio theme park in Japan announces plans to expand into a Sanrio resort
China’s don’t-go-to-Japan warning seems to be affecting Osaka’s Namba and Dotonbori neighborhoods
Uniqlo Ukiyo-e Blue T-shirts: A cool-hued reinterpretation of some of Japan’s greatest paintings
Japan’s first hotel with a human washing machine is now ready for you to come and bathe in it
Studio Ghibli adds new Kiki’s Delivery Service music box to its anime merchandise shop in Japan
Studio Ghibli mixes with sporty street styles of New Era to put No Face on your head in cap series
Japanese company selling bear-proof automatic doors
Japan’s human washing machines will go on sale to general public, demos to be held in Tokyo
Starbucks Japan unveils new Christmas goods and a rhinestone tumbler that costs 19,500 yen
Real-world Nausicaa Ghibli anime glider completes its final flight in Japan【Video】
Japanese train company is letting fans buy its actual ticket gates for their homes
Is China’s don’t-go-to-Japan warning affecting tourist crowds in Tokyo’s Asakusa neighborhood?
The 10 best day trips from downtown Tokyo【Survey】
Nintendo’s Kirby now delivering orders at Kura Sushi restaurants, but not in Japan
Japanese government considering tripling departure taxes to combat overtourism
A guide to visiting Sagamiko Illumination, one of the three biggest light-ups in Kanto
Giant new nine-floor arcade opens in Tokyo, wants to welcome new and old games fans alike
Survey asks foreign tourists what bothered them in Japan, more than half gave same answer
Japan’s deadliest food claims more victims, but why do people keep eating it for New Year’s?
We deeply regret going into this tunnel on our walk in the mountains of Japan
Studio Ghibli releases Kodama forest spirits from Princess Mononoke to light up your home
Major Japanese hotel chain says reservations via overseas booking sites may not be valid
Put sesame oil in your coffee? Japanese maker says it’s the best way to start your day【Taste test】
The top 10 annoying foreign tourist behaviors on trains, as chosen by Japanese people【Survey】
No more using real katana for tourism activities, Japan’s National Police Agency says
Starbucks Japan reveals new sakura drinkware collection, inspired by evening cherry blossoms
Pokémon Christmas village event taking place nightly in Yokohama
Studio Ghibli releases new Totoro neckties to brighten up your office wear
Top Secret Cookie Recipe Finally Comes to Light
7-Eleven Japan has a hack for creating insanely delicious potato chip rice meals
Yoshinoya’s new ramen doesn’t smell like it tastes【Taste test】
Japan’s first hotel with a human washing machine is now ready for you to come and bathe in it
Stamina-destroying “Paralysis Noodles” are Tokyo’s newest over-the-top ramen innovation
Nintendo releases Metroid-shaped ice cube/cooking tray and Samus arm cannon pillow【Pics】
Record number of foreign children in Japan need help understanding Japanese in school
Japanese group to hold fashion show of colostomy bags and other stoma equipment in Paris
Once you hear this lady sing “Yooooooghurppe”, you may never stop hearing it
Sanrio theme park in Japan announces plans to expand into a Sanrio resort
Eight Ways You Really, Really Shouldn’t Use a Japanese Toilet
Japanese convenience store chain has beer and sake dispensers that few people know about