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It wasn’t so long ago that everywhere you looked in Japan there were ads for Korean pop groups, cosmetics and health drinks. More people than ever were snapping up Korean language textbooks and, despite territorial squabbles and a few extreme-right noise makers, Japan was positively leaping on anything prefixed by the letter ‘K’.

Recent reports, however, suggest that all is not well in the K-Pop (Korean Pop music) camp in Japan, with major Korean record label and talent agency S.M. Entertainment reporting losses of more than 70 percent compared to the same period last year. Has the K-Pop bubble finally burst in Japan?

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Feed your heart, mind, and stomach at Roppongi Hills’ LOVE Exhibition and Hatsune Miku Café

Aside from being an upscale shopping center, Tokyo’s Roppongi Hills complex is also home to the Mori Art Museum and a 54th-floor observation deck. We recently paid the building a visit to check out two concurrently running events, the LOVE Exhibition and Hatsune Miku Café.

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Put your kitsune up! BABYMETAL is set to dominate the world with ‘dangerous kawaii’【Interview】

In 2011, the world was first baffled and then enthralled by the release of BABYMETAL’s “Doki Doki☆Morning” music video.

Not quite metal, not quite idol music, the video of three “dangerous kawaii” Japanese middle school girls singing and dancing to heavy metal music was difficult for some to comprehend. Were they for real? Was it okay for us to like them? And why couldn’t we stop listening to this song?

Two years later, the group has proved themselves to be anything but a joke, with legions of fans both in Japan and abroad. This Wednesday (June 19), they released their second major-label single, titled “Megitsune,” so we sat down with the group for an exclusive interview to learn more about them.

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Yes, Zima’s robot band will play metal and electronica, as long as you compose it for them

Zima never really took off in the U.S.. Molson Coors’ clear malt beverage never even made it out of puberty in its home market, lasting just 15 years before the last Zima made for American consumption shipped in 2008.

In Japan though, it’s been a solid hit, particularly at clubs. The company recently asked the lofty question of whether the way human beings party is advancing at the same rate of other aspects of our modern lifestyle, and has decided to give it an evolutionary kick in the backside by creating a robot party band.

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Still have any mix tapes lying about? Go digital with this cheap converter from Sanwa Direct

Remember making all those mixed-tapes after the Walkman burst onto the scene at the beginning of the 80s (for those of you who grew up with all things digital, ask your dad)? Do you have any of them left? Perhaps there are a few stuffed away at the bottom of the sock drawer? If you still have all or part of that collection, Sanwa Direct can help. Their new 400-MEDI002 cassette to MP3 converter makes changing those old analog compilations to digital format cheap and easy.

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Karaoke in Japan is quite different from what you find across most of the Western world. Rather than letting wannabe rock stars take to the stage in a crowded bar, most karaoke parlors in Japan offer private rooms for all of their customers, whether singing in a group or taking time alone to do some hitokara. Unfortunately, these closed quarters can lead to some awkward scenarios when single men and women share the mic at office after parties…

Earlier this month My Navi News conducted a short survey of the single women employed by the company. They asked 200 of these working ladies whether or not they’d ever had a man do something at karaoke which really made them want to draw away, and if so, to explain it in detail. The results were quite the eye-opener.

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This year marks the 20th anniversary of Sailor Moon. Since the series’ start as a manga comic serial in Kodanhsa’s Nakayoshi anthology, its team of planetary-themed, pleated skirt-wearing protectors of humanity have appeared in five seasons of televised anime, three theatrical features, a live action TV drama, and numerous video game adaptations.

Sailor Moon also inspired a live-action stage musical, with 27 variations and over 800 performances during its 12-year run that ended in 2005. As part of the franchise’s 20th anniversary festivities, a new version of the musical is set to open this fall, and producers have just announced the starring cast.

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We send a team to take part in the qualifying round of the Air Guitar World Championships 2013

The annual Air Guitar World Championships held in Oulu, Northern Finland celebrates the beloved guitar without actually using them. Instead, participants channel all the energy, attitude, and athleticism of playing rock guitar into their invisible air guitar while performing on stage.

With the 18th championships being held in August this year, RocketNews24 has assembled our finest imaginary guitarists, Stardust Sato and Fantastic Hatori, to represent us. However, the two must first face the qualifying round. Find out if they made the cut after the break.

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Here at RocketNews24, we like to bring you the latest and greatest, whether it’s (potentially) killer mechs or adorable new fonts! But sometimes it’s nice to take a moment to appreciate the beauty of raw human ingenuity. Read More

The two boys seen above are Aldrich Lloyd Taloding and James Walter Bucong from the Philippines.  Their video having been uploaded to YouTube about a week ago is already nearing one million views and comments such as “Freaking beautiful!” and “I got goosebumps.”

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Ginza’s David Bowie Café Now Open and in Full Funky Swing

As reported here on RocketNews24, a special, limited-time-only café in honour of legendary British rock star David Bowie opened on March 18 this year. Keen to see if the real thing was as far out as the earlier press release, our reporter headed down to Ginza, Tokyo to check it out.

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Creepy Robotic Cat Ear Maker Neurowear Releases Mindreading Headphones That Play Music Based on Your Mood

Are you tired of combing through iTunes or Pandora in search of the perfect song? Well you’re in luck! Now your headphones can read your mind and select the exact playlist to suit your mood.

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Floor Space Oddity: David Bowie Café to Open in Ginza for Month of March

Now that everyone has probably sobered up from last year’s Rolling Stones and Suntory collaboration, a new rock legend is bringing a slightly classier offering to Japan.

For just a few weeks of March, in Ginza, Tokyo you can enjoy the sights, sounds, and tastes of the Thin White Duke – David Bowie.

To promote The Next Day – his first album in 10 years – Sony will be converting part of their building into the David Bowie Café with a special selection of food and décor.

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A chart surface on the Internet recently titled: 100 American College Music Majors Analyze Japanese Musical Talent and the Relationship with the Number of Members.

How exactly this information came together is unknown, but the name suggests that 100 American music students were surveyed about several Japanese music acts past and present. Those results were then plotted against the number of members in each band.

The results certainly do suggest that there is a correlation between the number of members in a music act and the perceived crappiness of said act. So lets examine this more deeply with some samples and a translated version of the chart above.

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Korea’s chart-topping boyband BIGBANG has been cited in Korean high school music textbooks as an example of plagiarism.

The above image was taken by a second year high school student moments after she received the book. She then uploaded it to Twitter where it has since shocked many Korean Internet users.

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Proving once again that Gloria Estefan was right and that the rhythm is gonna get you, Japanese DJ Kazuhiro Abo’s fantastic video shows a 10-minute session he did during visit to a kindergarten as part of a workshop appropriately titled “Kids and Music”. Although it takes the little ones a while to get moving at first, once they’re all up on their feet they’re bouncing and spinning around as only kids can do.

The full cute, chaotic video after the jump.

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Japanese Teacher Suspended for Hugging Students While Singing to Them

When I was a junior high school student my music teacher used to jab a meter stick into my gut while I played Mary Had a Little Lamb on the trumpet.  Good times.

Still, that guy could win teacher of the year next to a 55 year-old man who was suspended from his Shonan Ward high school in Kanagawa Prefecture for inappropriate behavior with some female students.

How inappropriate? For starters, he composed an original love ballad.

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Sony Unveils New Walkman for Swimmers– Light, Sturdy and on Sale for Under $170 this February

If you’re of the sporty persuasion and wish that you could take your tunes to the pool without having a funny-looking contraption strapped to your goggles or having your earphones fall out every other stroke, Sony’s newest addition to the Walkman series will definitely be of interest.

Scheduled for a February 16 release in Japan, the new NWD-W270 series features a compact, lightweight design and boasts 4GB of onboard storage space. Plenty of delicious images and details after the break.

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【Video】 These Japanese Dolls Are Creepy, but They Sure Can Dance

Most humanoid robots are made to look either as lifelike as possible, or as machine-like as possible; that is, similar to the robots we know from science fiction.

After seeing the “Dancing Dolls” made by YouTube user RozenZebet, we have a feeling we know why: anything in between would be absolutely terrifying.

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After three years of waiting and months of promotional tie-ins, Evangelion 3.0: You Can (Not) Redo finally debuted in theaters across Japan at midnight tonight.

To get fans pumped up for the long-awaited release (as if they weren’t enough already), Nippon Television Network aired both of the previous Rebuild of Evangelion movies over the past two Fridays— Evangelion 1.11: You Are (Not) Alone on November 9 and Evangelion 2.22: You Can (Not) Advance last night— and topped it off with a special treat by broadcasting the first six minutes and 36 seconds of Evangelion 3.0 after the ending credits of last night’s showing.

We are pleased to bring you those six minutes and 36 seconds, as well as the newly-released music video for Sakura Nagashi, the Evangelion 3.0 theme by Utada Hikaru, below.

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