Late last week, we told you about an event being held by Tokuyama Zoo this summer: the Cockroach Fest. One of the attractions listed was the horrific sounding “cockroach encounter,” but we didn’t have any details about just what kind of encounter it was. Being a naturally curious bunch with a masochistic streak a mile wide, we decided to dispatch a reporter to find out.
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Not too long after we started dating, my wife and I were walking through a seaside park, hand-in-hand. The sun was shining and the mood relaxing and romantic. Just as I took a deep breath of the sweet ocean breeze, though, an insect landed on my wife’s arm, causing her to scream, recoil in horror, and practically pull my shoulder out of its socket.
And that’s how I found out she really hates bugs.
She’s not alone in that regard, either, as a recent poll of women in Japan found that more than half are too terrified to face their creepy crawly adversaries head-on, and also revealed a suave kabe-don wall pound-like move guys can do to score points with the ladies.
At my old job, my coworkers and I shared bathrooms with a half-dozen or so other companies that had offices in our building. For the most part, the men’s room stayed relatively clean, but about once a week, I’d walk into one of the stalls and find a pile of cigarette ashes on the floor.
Frankly, it was disgusting and exasperating, especially since the building had a smoking lounge. But hey, I guess the perpetrator who couldn’t resist the self-pleasing siren song of simultaneously taking a puff and a dump didn’t see what the big deal was. Here with a handy explanation, though, is some surprisingly wise Japanese bathroom graffiti.
There’s a balancing act involved in creating snack foods in the image of a beloved children’s character. Take too few cues from the original design, and your customers won’t be able to recognize the character, thereby missing out on all the fun. On the other hand, go too far in the opposite direction and you end up with something like these cutlets from Korea, which make it look like you’re literally eating the flesh of Pikachu.
Hold on to your lunch, guys, this story is pretty nauseating. A young man in Guangdong Province was caught in the act of eating feces out of a toilet in a public restroom.
Oh the realities of getting older. One minute you’re feeling fine, the next you’re shopping for adult diapers. It’s a fact of life that transcends language, culture, and bladders all over the world.
Yoshio, one of our RocketNews24 Japanese-side writers, has recently joined the ranks of the incontinently impaired himself. To celebrate his newfound misery, he composed a 28-part list describing a typical day in his new, significantly wetter life.
Take a read and commiserate along with him, or see what you have to look forward to when parts of your own body start turning against you.
McDonald’s Japan recently launched a limited time menu option called the teriyaki chicken and egg with Seto lemon sauce. The Seto Inland Sea is famous in Japan for its warm climate and top-notch citrus, so you would think a Seto lemon sauce would put the already popular teriyaki chicken and egg into stratospheric levels of demand.
That doesn’t seem to be the case, though, and the culprit may be McDonald’s own commercial, which viewers are calling “dirty” and “gross”.
April Fools’ Day has really taken off in Japan over the past few years, with major companies getting in on the action too. One of our Japanese writers, the one and only Mr. Sato, sifted through the Internet to find products worthy of his time. That is how he came across the “Princess Urine” drink. You better believe that he bought it, examined it and took some hearty gulps, all for our entertainment, of course.
So breasts seem to be popular these days. As a matter of fact, walk into any Japanese bookshop or convenience store and you’ll find magazine racks full of photo collections of gurabia, the country’s term for sexy but not-quite-naked models. Almost always busty, the sight of gurabia posing suggestively, often while relaxing in a pool or frolicking in the surf of an island paradise, has helped generations of men in Japan through a lonely winter’s night.
But while the men who run their eyes (or whatever other body parts) over their photos are obviously enjoying an escapist fantasy, one gurabia recently revealed some things fans might rather not have known about the industry. Her claim about the prevalence of surgically enhanced breasts gels with many people’s preexisting assumptions, but what’s shocking is what she claims is the true reason for some of those sweetly seductive smiles.
In case it wasn’t clear, we’ll be talking about/showing pictures of gurabia up ahead, so unless you’re employed as a swimwear designer, this probably isn’t safe for work.
If you’re one of those people who is plagued by bad luck, then you’ll know that disaster can strike anytime, anywhere. One man from Changsha in China’s Hunan Province learned this the hard way recently when an arrow flew out of nowhere and lodged itself in his knee while he was minding his own business hanging out laundry.
Warning: this report contains an image which some readers may find squirm-inducing!
If Frozen struck a deep chord with you, it’s been a good year. Even now, months after the film’s home video release, it’s still got a hold on the imagination of animation and musical fans, and this week Japanese convenience store Family Mart started selling steamed buns filled with chocolate and shaped like Olaf, the Disney hit’s comic relief living snowman.
Family Mart did a fine job recreating Olaf’s look, and we’re sure moviegoers who were tickled by his antics are thrilled to have the character seemingly leap off the screen and into the palm of their hands. Plus, in a rare case of simultaneously being able to please a movie’s fans and detractors, the Olaf bun’s uncanny resemblance to its inspiration means it’s the perfect effigy for Frozen haters to unleash their resentment of the film’s success on.
Japan works hard for most of the year, but right now, it’s party time across the nation. With the holiday’s secular, stylish image, many people get together with friends for Christmas parties, not to mention end-of-the-year and beginning-of-the-year parties with both coworkers and private acquaintances.
And what more festive way to get the party going than with a party cracker? You know, one of those shiny paper cones that, when you pull its cord, emits a shower of confetti…or, in the case of one new design, a colony of cockroaches.
With such a wide range of delicious and delectable (and, erm, shall we say unusual) snack foods available in Japan, it’s a little hard to understand when people get whipped up into a frenzy over plainer options, such as toast and bread crusts fried with sugar. Now, twitter users in Japan are getting their tastebuds in a twist over the confusingly-named “English Toast”, a sweet snacklet that first became popular in Aomori prefecture and has now expanded into a whole range of conbini sandwiches. But what on earth is it?
It’s hard not to love onigiri, those handy little triangular parcels of rice and seaweed stuffed with tasty fillings ranging from plum to fish to chicken and more. Onigiri are a ubiquitous snack in Japan, available at every convenience store in a range of varieties for the cost of a few coins. But even though conbini onigiri are usually fresh and tasty, it’s also nice to run across smaller stands and stores selling hand-made onigiri sometimes. Unless you happen to stop by this establishment inside Shinagawa Station in Tokyo – because their onigiri leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to presentation. That is unless you like eating something with a big fish butt hanging out of it…
Ramen is an amazing food, and nothing beats traveling around Japan and eating all the different kinds. Some are certainly better than other (tonkotsu FTW!) but they all are fighting for the top spot of “best bowl of ramen ever eaten“. Some bowls of ramen you can’t wait to go back and eat again, others are categorized as “one time is enough“. But there are some bowls of ramen that you shouldn’t even taste…let alone look at. Beware; these next pictures are not for the faint of heart.
Back when Japan was still at the mercy of the midsummer heat, a group of…creative anime fans tried to cool off with bowls of shaved ice. Ordinarily that wouldn’t be so weird, except that they set up their strawberry syrup dispenser to look like their treats were being flavored by an anime girl’s menstrual flow.
But hey, what’s the alternative to anime fans getting excited over 2-D characters having their periods? Anime fans getting excited about 2-D characters not having periods! Otaku around Japan have been sharing retouched pics of animation stars showing off pregnancy test results, and the trend isn’t limited to anime’s ladies.
I’ll be honest. When I first saw pictures of the new key chain/cell phone strap that’s become a big seller in Aomori Prefecture, my first thought was, “Wow, that looks like a turd.” The truth is actually a few levels less disgusting, as that brown, lumpy cylinder isn’t a stool sample, but actually a sea cucumber.
However, the truth behind that truth takes things a step back towards gross. When I said the strap is “actually a sea cucumber,” I mean that literally, as that’s really the body of the slug-like marine animal.
The Japanese have long been known for their dexterousness. From origami to bonsai to precision engineering, Japan does small and detailed incredibly well. One thing we had no idea they were so good at, however, was gross.
What you see in the above photo, dear reader, is not in fact a trio of insect larvae but delicious, blueberry-filled gummy bugs. And they’re making one little coffee stand in northwest Japan very famous.
I get a twinge of excitement every time I peer into the cooler case at the grocery store in Japan. Not only are there tons of unique, tempting flavors of ice cream and popsicles, you can also find all sorts of tasty frozen entrees, too. The most common are things like dumplings and meatballs, but one Twitter user in Japan recently found something even more substantial, if a little sad to take in: a whole pig wrapped in plastic.















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