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A look inside the Tokyo Media Centre for the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games

Visitors at the eerily quiet venue can receive a free media kit, filled with some surprising goods.

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Engrish sign at the Tokyo Olympics turns out to be hilariously accurate

One of those times when an English mistake ends up expressing everyone’s true feelings.

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Japanese drama set in New York is your next binge-watch series

HodoBuzz shines a spotlight on women in the media with a cast of characters that redefines what it means to be Japanese.

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Harajuku crowded during coronavirus?! TV show slammed for using old footage to incite panic

Poster outside Takeshita Street McDonald’s alerts viewers to fake news on Japanese television.

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325 cruise participants diagnosed with coronavirus have recovered, were released from hospital

And Japanese citizens wonder why no news stations were reporting the good news. 

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Message to Japanese media: “Stop asking people to open their fridges during a blackout!”

As if things in Chiba aren’t bad enough, now these people have to put up with nosy parkers letting the cold air out.

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Outburst by Japanese minister at press conference overshadowed by…his Eva anime tie

Viewers were shocked to see the Reconstruction Minister rip into a journalist but then they couldn’t tear their eyes away from his necktie.

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Photographer captures serene moments in Japan’s traditional and modern worlds 【Photos】

Anyone can pick up a camera, but it takes a certain level of artistic talent to produce the kinds of photos that you’ll see below.

The work of Japanese photographer Takashi Yasui has been exploding in popularity on major Western websites recently, and for good reason. Yasui has a knack for capturing tranquil moments of time in both the natural world and urban cityscapes in his native Japan. In particular, he’s a master at manipulating light during dawn and dusk, adding an almost otherworldly quality to his vistas. Now take a moment to sit back and relax in order to completely appreciate the scope of Yasui’s craft.

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Japanese tourist injured in Tunisian terrorist attack also attacked by Japanese media in hospital

On March 18, three terrorists attacked and took hostage patrons at the Bardo National Museum in Tunisia, killing 21 people and injuring about 50 others. Among those injured was Noriko Yuki, a Japanese tourist visiting Tunisia with her mother.

Ms. Yuki sustained a gunshot wound in the attack and was taken to a nearby hospital for treatment. There, shortly after her surgery, she was immediately bombarded by Japanese media looking to interview her, with some members of the press apparently going so far as to tell the Japanese ambassador watching over her that he did “not have the authority to stop us from interviewing her.”

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Netizens enraged by elementary school’s “No Technology Challenge”

If you didn’t do one of these three things today, you can stop reading this article immediately:

1) Woke up and immediately looked at your phone.
2) Checked Facebook while eating a meal.
3) Played Candy Crush on your smartphone while on the toilet. (Or was that just me?)

Still with us? Okay, well this just shows that a lot of technology is seeping into every momentary pause in our day, which many educators aren’t exactly happy about. One elementary school in Japan decided to do something about it, implementing a “No Technology Challenge,” which asked students and their families to strive to completely eliminate the use of technology in their homes. Netizens were not pleased.

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Japanese TV personality Yuko Ito has been working in the entertainment industry for almost 20 years now. Having been at turns a swimsuit model, actress, and pitchwoman for Sapporo Beer, Nissan, and telecommunications provider NTT, we imagine she’s run into more than a few disingenuous showbiz types while paying her dues and building a career for herself.

Now, it looks like she’s done putting up with their two-faced double-talk, assuming she can actually understand the English on the T-shirt she wore during a recent TV appearance, which implored those watching, “Protect me from all your bullshit.”

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Scandal in North Korea after Kim Jong-un makes mildly self-deprecating remark

Every nation’s leader has to face one sooner or later and North Korea’s is no different. The DPRK was rocked recently by a scandal involving their Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un when a report came out that he once admitted he was “kind of boring” while visiting orphans at a hospital.

Although various rumors about Kim have circulated in other countries before, this would be the first time we know of that North Korea’s tightly controlled media will have reported a negative comment about him. Some fear this is only the beginning; further compliment-fishing remarks may come next such as,“Is that another grey hair?” or “You’re so lucky! Anytime I eat chocolate it goes right to my butt.” In great enough numbers these little utterances may seriously endanger his carefully engineered image of infallibility.

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Too hot during the blackout? Cool down with an electric fan, veteran newscaster suggests

With more than 25 years of working in broadcast journalism, Japanese newscaster Ichiro Furutachi has turned in plenty of fine on-air performances. Still, each time you go before the cameras you’re spinning that roulette wheel, and it’s only a matter of time until you end up with a flub or two.

Earlier this year, the 59-year-old Furutachi elicited chuckles with his comments that exposed his lack of understanding about PowerPoint. It wasn’t Furutachi’s lack of knowledge regarding the finer points of the ubiquitous presentation software that surprised the public, but rather his admission that he didn’t even know what PowerPoint was.

What’s more, if we take the words of Furutachi’s most recent gaffe literally, it would seem that he’s not just confused about computer programs, but how electricity works, when he suggested using a room fan to stay cool during a blackout…

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Japan’s public broadcaster goes thug-style, tags the house of man who refuses to pay fees

We’ve talked before about the oddities of how Japan’s public broadcaster, NHK, goes about collecting its fees from ordinary citizens. Rather than sending you an official bill in the mail, collectors will come to your door and ask you for a stack of cash to cover the 13,600 yen (US$133) Japanese residents are technically supposed to pay.

However, many people refuse to pony up the money, since there’s no official penalty for nonpayment, and many feel that NHK’s programming is sub-par and rarely watch it. However, should you make one particular NHK collector walk away empty-handed, he just might mark your house for all to see, as he apparently did to one person we talked to.

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The Olympics gives the world’s most talented athletes a chance to show their abilities to people all over the globe. It also gives the world’s most wealthy marketers a chance to show their products to that same audience.

Among the Games’ biggest sponsors is Samsung, whose Galaxy Note 3 was granted the title of official phone of the Sochi Olympics in thanks of its manufacturer’s generosity. Some reports are claiming that the Korean electronics maker isn’t showing a respect for healthy competition, though, by asking athletes with iPhones to make sure they cover the Apple logo when on-camera.

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With Yuzuru Hanyu taking home Japan’s first-ever gold medal in men’s figure skating, there’s a chance the country’s rabid sports fans will back off on the intense pressure they’ve been placing on the nation’s Olympic team. That’s sure to be a weight off the shoulders of the athletes themselves, as well as former Olympiad Dai Tamesue, who recently took so-called fans of the Japanese team to task for calling athletes who fail to reach the podium parasites.

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From children to netizens: Asian international relations have a long way to go

We here at RocketNews24 occasionally get hit with accusations of having an anti-China or anti-Korea slant. And while we don’t think a story about a young Chinese man getting a seatless bicycle wedged in his butt is inherently anti-Chinese, we can see how it might be interpreted that way. We can also see how we get labeled as anti-other-Asian-countries since we largely get our information from Japanese sources, and it would be naive to say there aren’t anti-Chinese and anti-Korean forces at play within the Japanese media. You couldn’t hope for a better example than the following story that was said to have been posted by a Chinese person on a message board. The anecdote has a lot to say about how Chinese children are raised to view Japan. However, the reaction to the story itself is more revealing about what it’s like on the other side.

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Don’t own a television? Japan’s public broadcaster doesn’t care, but still wants your money

Paying taxes works a little differently in Japan. Often, large companies will simply deduct the required income tax from employees’ paychecks, and even file the necessary paperwork for them. On the other hand, workers have their earnings taxed twice, with residency taxes which are based on their income from the previous year and must be paid quarterly. Like most things in Japan, resident taxes can be paid with a fat wad of cash at the convenience store.

But perhaps the weirdest of all are government fees for public television in Japan. Not only do the bill collectors go door to door soliciting payment, but some administrators are looking to make people pay the fees whether they own a TV or not.

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Members of the Korean media have come under fire this week after they filmed a man who warned via his Twitter account that he would jump from Mapo Bridge-a known suicide spot-and made good on his promise.

There staff on the scene made no effort to intervene and have been arrested as accomplices to the man’s suicide.

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It became evident on the 16th that as a general rule, Chinese authorities would soon ban domestic media companies from using quotes from foreign media sources and information garnered from Weibo, the country’s popular microblogging website. Citing the need to “form a healthy reporting structure,” among other reasons, authorities are preparing to lay out strict reporting regulations

The General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) and the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT), state authorities that control domestic media, made it clear they will start “requesting reporters and editors” not to use reports from foreign media sources or citizen-generated content from the Internet without first gaining prior approval.

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