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Never miss an important call again at the office with our bra lifehack!

For those of us working in high-tech societies, connection and communication can be as valuable as any resource. A single missed call can turn into a missed business chance, so making sure you can be reached no matter how furiously you’re typing is important. But at the office, no one wants to be that jerk that just leaves their ringer on. And it’s pretty easy to miss a call with just vibration mode.

However, the writers for the Japanese-language side of RocketNews24 may have come up with a solution for you. All you need to do is keep your phone in range of view while you’re using the computer. There are, obviously, a number of ways to do this, but our writer P.K. thinks he’s found the best way: With a bra!

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I don’t know about you, but eating fruit as a kid was kind of a chore. Sure, fruit tasted good, but candy tasted so much better. Now that I’m a fully-functioning adult, though, I eat fruit for fun and candy isn’t all that appealing any more.

But this handy device might help to make a lot of people’s childhoods much sweeter since it enables you to combine fruit and sweet, sweet candy into one treat. Behold: the banana-stuffer, aka “Sonna Choco Banana!”

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“Solid Sato” sneaks into Starbucks under cover of cardboard box, Metal Gear-style 【VIDEO】

Our resident oddball writer Mr. Sato loves his coffee, so much so that he finds it impossible to pass by a Starbucks without stopping in for a quick coffee break. The only problem is that he tends to favour “girly” drinks like frappuccinos, and lives in fear of being spotted by friends and acquaintances enjoying one.

The solution? Sneak into Starbucks underneath a cardboard box, Solid Snake-style, and see if the baristas will serve coffee to a cardboard box. Check out our video to see how he did!

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Sushiro is making sushi so delicious that even McDonald’s should be worried

If you’ve spent much time in Japan, chances are you’ve eaten at a conveyor belt sushi (kaitenzushi in Japanese) restaurant. One nice thing about these restaurants is that they also offer many child-friendly sushi dishes on their menu. These dishes also double as foreigner-friendly, so that those who aren’t so fond of raw fish and other seafood can enjoy sushi too.

There are so many different chains in Japan, it’s often hard to figure out which one to go to, but anyone who sees the sign for Sushiro best head there soon as the chain has a new dish that is oddly satisfying.

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While dogs remain one of Japan’s favorite pet choices, you can actually get much of the same enjoyment from a pet turtle or tortoise. For example, we’ve seen that with enough patience, you and your shelled friend can enjoy going for walks together. And just like dog owners might one day experience the joy of coming home and finding a litter of puppies, so too can those with a turtle feel blessed when it lays a bunch of adorable little eggs.

As a matter of fact, the latter might even be the better of the two, since turtle eggs are far easier to cook than puppies. What’s that? You say you wouldn’t eat your animal companions’ eggs? Then you’re clearly operating under different thinking than this pet owner in Japan.

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Usually, lingerie maker Triumph International Japan takes about half a year between announcing its innovative and unusual concept bras. So since it’s been about six months since we saw the company’s paired Close Sisters Bras, we figured the its next design highlighting a social trend was just about due.

Sure enough, this week Triumph showed off its newest creation: a bra that’ll give you verbal pep talks and also help you snap selfies.

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Century-old brewery crafts soy sauce specifically for use on pudding

Village Vanguard is a popular chain of novelty stores across Japan. There you can find all sorts of things from bird poop stickers to Resident Evil curry to wasabi toothpaste. As such, it’s easy to get desensitized to their range of items and lose the ability to be surprised with what they come out with next.

Or so we thought, until word came of a new product that will be sold there around the end of May. Purin Senyo Shoyu is a specially crafted soy sauce meant to be drizzled over a jiggly glob of pudding. You might wonder what pudding and soy sauce taste like together. The answer is surprisingly simple: it tastes like sea urchin.

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Last year, some anime fans with extremely specific tastes hit upon the idea of taking a picture of their favorite character, whether male or female, and subtly sliding a positive pregnancy test into the image. Not everyone is attracted to the healthy radiance of approaching motherhood, though, so now there’s a new burgeoning trend for those who want to dance on the razor-thin line between otaku creativeness and creepiness: using photo editing software to slip a chained collar around an anime character’s neck.

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12 eggs, 24 yolks? Woman in Japan receives batch of extraordinary eggs

Pretty much every man, woman, and child in Japan works hard. Professionals throw themselves into their jobs, homemakers take on just about every domestic responsibility by themselves, and kids are expected to not only keep up with their regular studies, but also attend cram schools after their normal classes get out in the afternoon.

But is the Japanese work ethic so infectious that it caused a group of industrious chickens to lay an entire batch of double-yolk eggs?

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Even after living in Japan for more than a decade, I still get excited when I see a restaurant with paper lanterns hanging out in front of it. The mix of vibrant colors and bold calligraphy is just so uniquely Japanese that it instantly fills me with a sense of excitement.

Of course, just a bit of the eroticism has faded over time, especially now that I can read the calligraphy and tell that it usually doesn’t say anything more dramatic than “draft beer” or “grilled chicken skewers.” But while those lanterns are usually giving the menu highlights in Japan, at this Japanese restaurant in Thailand, they’re instead plastered with non sequiturs, gags, and the occasional philosophical declaration and/or love letter to women’s breasts.

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Upgrade your tuna sashimi to chu-toro with a mayo marinade? We test the theory 【RocketKitchen】

Being one of Japan’s two favorite types of fish to eat raw, Japan takes its tuna pretty seriously. As a matter of fact, tuna sushi and sashimi gets different names depending on which cut of the fish is being served. While just about everyone loves ordinary tuna, either maguro or akami in Japanese, it’s the extra-fatty tuna belly, called chu-toro or o-toro, that people really rave about.

Of course, those same premium cuts that get gourmands’ mouths watering can leave your wallet crying, as the price of the extra-creamy toro can be more than double that of lesser cuts of tuna. That’s why we decided to test a theory we’d heard that you can unlock the full potential of akami with mayonnaise. But does marinating your ordinary tuna in mayo turn it into toro, or is this rumor just a bunch of bull?

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Boxers in the Philippines fight blindfolded, show us why they shouldn’t 【Video】

One of the best scenes in any martial arts movie is when a skilled fighter shows off just how powerful he is by fighting blindfolded. After all, a true master of hand-to-hand combat should be able to utilize his other senses to defeat his opponent.

But if one blindfolded pugilist is cool, two blindfolded combatants going against each other must be even more awesome, right? Not always, but it does make for plenty of physical comedy, as this video of blindfolded boxing shows.

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Even after years of living in Japan, I’m always pleasantly surprised by how awesome the highway rest stops are. Not only do the larger ones have food courts and markets with all manner of local delicacies on offer, but the bathrooms are almost always incredibly clean.

Part of the thanks for all that shining porcelain goes to the hard-working cleaning crews, but you also can’t discount the Japanese cultural mindset that stresses not making trouble for others, which in turn keeps people conscious of the importance of using public restrooms in a way that leaves them clean for the next person.

But does this series of photos of cats sitting on toilets mean even the feline guests of Japanese rest stops have an advanced sense of courtesy?

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Balls Floating Atop the Jacuzzi Water Spirit and other supernatural denizens of Japanese gyms

Aside from having a way with words and a pleasant smell, it’s a job requirement at RocketNews24 that every man, woman, and child who works for us be physically fit enough to wrestle a crocodile to submission. As part of his quest to keep in fighting shape, our Japanese-language reporter Nakano regularly hits the gym, because if he doesn’t, who knows when we might decide to give his job to someone with more developed pecs.

Sometimes you find yourself running into some strange characters at the fitness center, as we documented in Nakano’s guide to the most annoying people you might meet at the gym. On occasion, though, their behavior goes so far beyond strange that it’s hard to see it as the actions of mundane human beings, and so today we’re taking a look at Nakano’s illustrated list of five people you might encounter in a Japanese gym shower room that are so weird they must be possessed by evil spirits.

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China’s ‘Rent-a-Foreigner’ industry is booming

Foreigners are being hired to pose as celebrities by Chinese real estate developers to help agents sell property in “ghost towns” by making them appear more animated and worldly, according to a new mini-documentary released by the New York Times.

Thanks to China’s overzealous property development, the supply of luxury apartment complexes in some of China’s most rural areas has far exceeded demand. But that doesn’t stop the sales pitches.

The Times’ David Borenstein traveled to provincial West China where he found firms that specialized in recruiting groups of expatriates who they would then rent out to attend events, the majority of which are hosted by real estate companies.

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Android app allegedly allows users to find and hire muscle to beat up whomever they want

One thing that Apple fans tend to bring out during the enormous Android vs iPhone flame wars is apps. While both systems have a huge number of applications, people often claim that those on iOS are either better or cover a broader range. We won’t even pretend to have an opinion on whether or not this is true, but it looks like Android may have Apple beat in at least one area! Though we’re not so sure Google will be proud of this accomplishment.

It looks like there might be an Android app in China that you can use to find some tough guys to rough people up for you!

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Possibly the most considerate pedestrian crossing button ever installed

Push-buttons at a pedestrian crossing are a pretty standard safety feature at most intersections.

But how long does a push button need to be? And we’re not talking about the length of time waiting once you press the push button, but the length of the actual push button…

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Japan’s awesome, eco-friendly, old-school water heaters (and how to use them)

Japan may seem like a futuristic wonderland, what with its high-tech toilets and their array of functions that clean your bottom, heat your cheeks, and even provide sound effects to cover the natural ones that accompany your bathroom business. But technology is constantly evolving at a rapid rate, and each new innovation replaces something that used to be cutting-edge.

Case in point; every spring, thousands of young Japanese people leave home and move into their first, low-rent apartment to start school or a new job, and you can expect at least a couple will be shocked when they go to take a shower, discover this giant contraption next to the tub, and have no idea what it does.

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Revealed! Japanese companies are putting hidden messages in their packaging!

You may have noticed that Japanese product packaging tends to be completely covered with text in a variety of fonts and styles. If you’ve ever taken the time to read any of it, you’ve probably realised that quite a bit of it seems to be particularly chatty, going beyond the usual product description in order to occasionally impart some philosophical wisdom or advice.

Some companies even go as far as to include hidden messages to communicate directly with the consumer. Check out this gallery of some of the best.

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Apple would rather you not blow up teen couples on your iPhone, asks developer to edit video game

In a lot of ways, digital distribution of video games is a great thing, as it allows developers to easily add new content to a title after its release. It’s a double-edged sword, though, and that same streamlined pathway from programmer to player can also be used to quickly make changes that take things away.

A few weeks ago, we took a look at a smartphone game whose lonely, jaded protagonist and his mystical, jaded companion use their powers to make affectionate couples meet with a host of calamities, including straight blowing them up. Apple, however, is not cool with this sort of vengeful fantasy, and so the iOS version of the game is being toned down and given a new name since the original title, Explode, Real Types! no longer describes the game’s contents.

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