Bringing you yesterday's news from Japan and Asia, today.
photos (Page 15)
Twice a year otaku from all over Japan, and even the world, make the sacred pilgrimage to Tokyo Big Sight for Comic Market, better known as Comiket. Every year as I stand in the boiling heat or the freezing cold I ask myself ‘Why am I doing this?’, and yet there I am again the same time next year. It’s an almost masochistic experience, but the pleasure and limited-edition merch gained always outweighs the pain. Read on for photos and commentary from Summer Comiket 86.
Heads up, photo fans! It’s time to announce the winner of our weekly photo contest.
The number of professional-quality photos we received this week was nothing short of staggering, and it took a long, long time for us to decide on one overall winner (and of course three very honourable mentions!), but here we go…
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.
The photo above is the popular sightseeing destination of Kegon Falls in Nikko. At 97 meters high (318 ft), it is one of the three highest falls in Japan and also one of the so-called “Eight Views”, said to exemplify Japan and its culture. But the photo above is Kegon on a normal day.
With Japan recently taking a beating and a whole lotta rain from the slow-moving Typhoon Halong, Kegon looks a little different now.
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.
Sometimes just keeping up with the news makes you despair for humanity. Between all the war, racially motivated killings, ethnic strife, and general meanness, you have to wonder if we will ever be able to get along.
It’s been one of those days and I needed a pick-me-up, so here is a collection of photos of dogs and cats getting along. Because if they can manage to overcome their differences, maybe we can too.
If you’re anything like us, you love old stuff from Japan. The temples, shrines, centuries-old festivals, and museums are some of our favorite things to check out when we have free time. There’s just something absolutely captivating about all the relics of the past that live on in Japan–but they’re just not quite as good as time travel! Come on, scientists, we want to hang out with Nobunaga! Well, while we’re waiting for Doc Brown to get back with the DeLorean, we can still at least look at old photos of Japan.
Though you might think there aren’t many–after all, it wasn’t like the samurai were running around with smartphones, snapping selfies–it turns out that there may be quite a few more than we realized! After a few hours clicking around the Internet, we’ve come up with our six favorite sites for finding old photos of Japan. Be sure to check them out and see what life was like over a hundred years ago!
Hey, you! You like taking pictures don’t you? Well how would you like to have your best snaps up on RocketNews24 for all the world to see?
Every Wednesday, we’re running a fun little contest called Pic of the Week. All you have to do to enter is send us an Asia-related photo that you’re especially proud of or think your fellow readers would enjoy. If we like it, we’ll feature it on our site and maybe even say nice things about you.
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.
Toyokazu Nagano is no ordinary photographer. Whereas most kinen shashinka, or commemorative photographers, will have their subjects don traditional attire and adopt the exact same poses as the hundreds of patrons before them, Nagano is instead on a mission to commemorate the moments in our lives that all too often go uncelebrated, building whimsical scenes around his subjects that let their true personalities shine out.
It should come as no surprise, then, to learn that the idea for setting up a portrait studio that celebrates life’s little moments and does away with the kimono, sombre expressions and set poses should have come from a series of genuinely adorable, laugh-out-loud-funny photos of his daughters taken on a place that quickly came to be known as the “Magic Road”…
On Saturday night, July 12, you may have noticed that the moon looked unusually large.
That’s because it was the “supermoon,” which happens when two phenomenon occur at the same time: the full moon and the “perigee moon.” The perigee moon is when the moon passes closest to earth causing it to look about 14% larger and 30% brighter than usual. It looks even larger when it hangs low over the horizon, as it does when it is rising, for reasons scientists can’t completely explain.
Don’t worry if you missed it though. You can catch another supermoon on August 10 and September 9.
Until then, check out our favorite pictures from this past weekend below:
Well, as we’ve seen time and time again, it seems the Chinese Interwebs simply cannot handle (or, in the parlance of teens today, “Cannot even”) the idea of an attractive woman who’s doing something other than sitting around being attractive all day.
Our newest recipient of the dubious “Beautiful woman doing things” distinction – which the Chinese Internet media seems to be giving away like an unplanned litter of kittens these days – is this Asian doctoral student, which the Japanese media and creepy Internet commentators haven’t even bothered to name – presumably because they were too busy breathing heavily for an uncomfortably long time and mopping sweat from their brows.
With more than 200,000 attendees visiting from all around the world, Japan Expo, the biggest anime convention in Europe, took place from July 2-6 at the Parc des Exposition in Paris. For its 15th Anniversary, Japan Expo invited numerous well-known and prestigious guests, including musicians Yoshiki and Kalafina, and character designer Daigo Ikeno. Other events included the European Cosplay Gathering finale, and the world premieres of Sword Art Online II and K: Missing Kings.
You can find just about anything you want in Tokyo. The city is a wonderful melting pot of new and old, domestic and foreign, low and high brow. With everything from a vibrant French quarter to gorgeous temple gardens, it’s hard to imagine anyone getting bored in Japan’s capital. Even so, we have to admit that we were a bit surprised to find a country bar–let alone a country bar with such authentic shows and delicious food! But that’s exactly what Meguro’s oldest country bar, Little Texas, has. With everything from license plates covering the walls to amazing bands on stage, you are guaranteed to have a great time–even if you don’t know the difference between a steer and a bull!
The beds and couches at Ikea are communal nap spots in China. Photographer Kevin Frayer captured the phenomenon for Getty Images.
Eight of the world’s 10 biggest Ikea stores are in China, where the home goods store is expanding to accommodate the growing middle class.
“The stores are designed with extra room displays given the tendency for customers to make a visit an all-day affair,” according to Frayer. “Store management does not discourage shoppers from sleeping on Ikea furniture, even marking them with signs inviting customers to try them out.”
The stores are a refuge in the summer heat.
It turns out that there are a surprising number of mirrors in museums, so when Google unleashed its Street View cameras to catalog the insides of museums around the world, more than a few of them ended up accidentally taking pictures of themselves, we learn via Quartz.
Spanish artist Mario Santamaría noticed this happening quite a bit and did exactly what one should do upon noticing a trend: build a Tumblr around it.
Titled “The Camera In The Mirror,” Santamaría’s site catalogs the eerie moments in which Google’s cameras photograph their own reflections. You get a peek at them wrapped up in silver cloth or exposed to reveal a surprisingly robot-like body.
We’ve featured so many “before and after” cosmetic surgery photo collections here on RocketNews24 that I’m personally starting to lose count. And yet there’s something so undeniably compelling about images of the selfsame people looking markedly different after going under the knife that it’s hard not to look.
Rather than comparing pre and post-surgery photos, though, today we’d like to share with you a collection of images from acclaimed photographer Ji Yeo, which focus solely on the painful, decidedly lonely period that occurs between the two. Yeo’s “Beauty Room Recovery” collection shows a handful of South Korean women who have opted to change their bodies through surgery and, after waking up bandaged and sore, begin the process of recovery and transition into the version of themselves that they have long wanted to be.
Join us after the jump to check out these haunting, intimate images.
Singapore Airlines took the top spot on our list of the Best Airlines In The World.
The list ranked the best major international airlines for flying economy class, based on two categories: the quality of the in-flight experience and the on-time delays.
Last year, I flew economy class from New York City to Singapore (with a stop in Frankfurt) on Singapore Airlines, and saw for myself why the airline gets rave reviews.
You know you’re pretty famous when you have your own Wikipedia page. Sure, some people just take the shortcut of writing their own Wiki and acting like they’re a big deal (I’m looking at you, weird Dungeons and Dragons extra with suspiciously specific and in-depth Wikipedia entry), but when other people write a page all about you of their own accord, you kind of know you’re a big deal.
That’s what happened with Paraguayan model and actress Larissa Riquelme when, in 2010, a photographer caught her celebrating a Paraguay team goal at the 2010 South Africa World Cup and the globe collectively paused, sucked in their breath, and shifted awkwardly in their chairs.
Now, it’s something of an accepted fact that Japanese companies expect their staff to work hard and put in a lot of overtime. Long hours are the norm, and it can be difficult to get time off from work when resources are already stretched thin and doing so could very well mean making your coworkers’ lives harder. The truth is, with the exception of the New Year’s holiday and the obon period in summer, the majority of Japanese workers don’t take time off unless they absolutely have to. So it can be a bit tricky if you want to take an overseas vacation.
But how far would you be willing to go to take a trip abroad? Would you be prepared to take a trip so short that you’re at your destination for just 12 hours? Well, that’s exactly what our reporter Meg from our Japanese sister site did. Read on to find out what it was like to travel to, enjoy, and fly back from a foreign destination in the space of 24 hours, and whether she thought it was worth making the trip!
Japan’s otoshidama tradition of giving kids money at New Year’s gets a social welfare upgrade
7-Eleven Japan’s ramen-cooking robot whipped us up a bowl of noodles【Taste test】
Hello Kitty Choco Egg figures are an adorable trip through three periods of Japanese pop culture【Pics】
Mr. Sato accosts award-winning actor Hideaki Ito【Interview】
The best Japanese cosplayers from Day 3 of Winter Comiket 2019【Photos】
Is it rude to sing along at concerts in Japan? We ask a pro musician for his take
Starbucks Japan reveals new Halloween goods for 2024, with black cats and a costumed Bearista
A Japanese dating app matched our bachelorette with a Buddhist monk, and she learned some things
We found the “world’s best breakfast” at this Japanese hotel, and it was not cheap【Taste test】
Full-size Gundam head, Lycoris Recoil manhole cover, and other awesome photos from Anime Japan
7-Eleven Japan starts new temporary luggage storage service in over 300 branches
Disillusionment at Tsukiji’s tourist-target prices led us to a great ramen restaurant in Tokyo
Japan may add Japanese language proficiency, lifestyle classes to permanent foreign resident requirements
Starbucks Japan releases new zodiac chilled cup drink for 2026
Lacquerware supplier to emperor of Japan and Pokémon team up for new tableware
Starbucks teams up with 166-year-old Kyoto doll maker for Year of the Horse decorations【Photos】
Starbucks on a Shinkansen bullet train platform: 6 tips for using the automated store in Japan
Is this the most relaxing Starbucks in Japan?
Large amount of supposed human organs left in Osaka marketplace
Tokyo’s Tsukiji sushi neighborhood asks tour groups to stay away for the rest of the month
Japan’s human washing machines will go on sale to general public, demos to be held in Tokyo
Japanese train company is letting fans buy its actual ticket gates for their homes7-Eleven Japan starts new temporary luggage storage service in over 300 branchesDisillusionment at Tsukiji’s tourist-target prices led us to a great ramen restaurant in TokyoStarbucks teams up with 166-year-old Kyoto doll maker for Year of the Horse decorations【Photos】
Tokyo considering law requiring more trash cans following litter increase in heavily touristed areaTokyo’s Tsukiji sushi neighborhood asks tour groups to stay away for the rest of the month
Nintendo’s Kirby now delivering orders at Kura Sushi restaurants, but not in Japan
Tokyo event lets you travel back in time, for free, to celebrate 100 years since Showa era start
Sanrio theme park in Japan announces plans to expand into a Sanrio resort
Survey asks foreign tourists what bothered them in Japan, more than half gave same answerJapan’s human washing machines will go on sale to general public, demos to be held in Tokyo
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
Is it rude to sing along at concerts in Japan? We ask a pro musician for his take
Starbucks Japan reveals new Halloween goods for 2024, with black cats and a costumed Bearista
A Japanese dating app matched our bachelorette with a Buddhist monk, and she learned some things
We found the “world’s best breakfast” at this Japanese hotel, and it was not cheap【Taste test】
Full-size Gundam head, Lycoris Recoil manhole cover, and other awesome photos from Anime Japan
Starbucks Japan releases new zodiac chilled cup drink for 2026
Can a dirty butthole make you filthy rich in Japan? We’re starting a New Year’s lottery experiment
Tokyo’s new burger chain isn’t new, is disappointing, tasty, and hopeful all at once【Taste test】
Disillusionment at Tsukiji’s tourist-target prices led us to a great ramen restaurant in Tokyo
Why you shouldn’t call this food “Hiroshimayaki” if you’re talking to people from Hiroshima
Real-life location of Your Name’s anime-only lake discovered, still holds a beautiful surprise
We visit a hidden store on the Imperial Palace grounds offering items you can’t find anywhere else