Bringing you yesterday's news from Japan and Asia, today.
weird (Page 155)
Here in the northern hemisphere, winter is upon us. For those whose main transportation is a scooter, it’s an especially hard time of year. Having all that wind rushing by your body is cold, cold, COLD! Even a scooter with a windshield offers little protection, and wearing heavy-duty protective clothing is a real pain.
China thinks it has the answer for this cold conundrum, but your ego may not like it.
Women in Japan were feeling a little left out when the charity breast squeeze event came into town this past summer. Sure, some women like to squeeze a boob every now and then, but there was never any naughty public happening created with ladies in mind. That is until now.
For a limited time only, the women of Japan can enjoy sandwiching themselves between two bathrobe-clad foreigners without having to donate a single yenny.
Gachagacha or gachapon are vending machines that spit out little toys or other small items in a plastic egg. For a few bucks, you get not only a new anime figure or phone strap but also the thrill of submitting to the luck of the gachapon. Where I come from, you might find a similar machine dispensing stickers or candy in the front of a big box store, but there wasn’t much choice and the appeal wears off sometime before junior high. Here in Japan though, gachapon have an endless and ever-changing variety of contents, along with enthusiastic collectors of all ages. Entire stores exist simply to house hundreds of gachapon, and with all that variety, there’s sure to be some serious weirdness in there. This is Japan, after all.
We’ve scoured the Net to find nine of the most bizarre for your viewing pleasure.
Stereotypically, Japan really loves their sense of social conformity and the comfort of their unchanging rules. The socialization of Japanese children into upstanding and unobtrusive citizens starts young and is encouraged by the country’s educational system. Rules regarding clothing and classroom behaviors are necessary in any nation’s school setting, but the institutions’ attempts to control their students seem particularly far-reaching in Japan.
Still, there are some rules that even the people who grew up within the Japanese system find particularly confusing, if not downright misinformed. When asked in an online survey how many people felt that their school had some weird sorts of rules, 12.5 percent of respondents answered, “yes.” That may not seem like a very high number, but when asked to go into detail about these unconventional guidelines, the results were still rather surprising. Here’s a short list of weird guidelines upheld by some of Japan’s schools.
When you’re a little kid, any slightly long object turns into your own personal phone. The remote control, a banana, maybe even a sausage have all served as substitute talking devices for children not quite old enough to have their own fully-functional mobile device. But frozen treats, no matter how perfectly sized, have always been out of reach as a play phone, transforming into a puddle of sticky goo before the purple dragon had his turn to talk. But now you can be the envy of all those 5-year-olds yammering like fools on their pickle phones with the icePhone case that looks like a real crunch bar or popsicle.
While making a hobby out of adoring Japanese idols is a perfectly acceptable pastime, we here at RocketNews24 know that with so many ways to indulge, from plumbing to college courses to ramen, some idol enthusiasts may find themselves with a full-blown case of “idol addiction.” Luckily, there is a hotline for those wanting to find out how to enjoy their idol worship in moderation!
Japan cranks out a huge number of corporate and regional mascot characters, and each one is required to be cute, right down to its name. Unfortunately, sometimes a moniker that sounds perfectly fine in Japanese doesn’t have quite the same inoffensive ring to it in English.
Of course, naming choices can have unfortunate implications for Japanese speakers as well, like with Akita Prefecture’s cute little garden eel character called Chinanabo. In Chinanabo’s case, however, there’s enough evidence to make us think his creators are in on the joke.
Oh boy, look at that thing. Just, wow. What is even happening here? There are so many colors, and this Escher-esque perspective trick where you’re looking down at the sushi conveyor belt but seeing the customers head-on all at the same time…
As the title of this bizarro infographic suggests, this is ostensibly a guide to using a kaiten conveyor belt sushi establishment. We’re actually very appreciative someone took the effort to make this since it’s pretty easy to accidentally commit a crime if you don’t follow the kaiten sushi rules perfectly.
One of the most distinctive aspects of Japanese comics and animation is the size of the characters’ eyes. From a design standpoint, larger eyes make are easier to emote with, and some of anime and manga’s most expressive, and thus memorable, characters have had some of the biggest eyes. As the eyes became bigger, anime artists were left with less and less space to draw the nose and mouth, both of which are often tiny compared to those of Western cartoon characters.
But there’s only so much room on the face, and now we’re seeing the twistedly logical conclusion to the big-eyed trend in the growing popularity of otherwise cute female manga characters with only one eye.
Hate tomato juice? Maybe you’ll like sparkling tomato juice.
Kagome, a Japanese manufacturer of fruit and vegetable juices, has just announced the sale of Tomash, a carbonated tomato beverage. The drink is made from a combination of tomato juice mixed with lemon and ginger ale, and believe it or not, it’s back by popular demand.
A recent appearance by a new mascot in Tokyo’s Shibuya ward saw young women flocking to take commemorative pictures. When our reporter encountered the mascot, officially named “Mr. T Stain,” women were following it around with squeals of delight, making the surrounding men extremely jealous. But why is Mr. T Stain, who could be in the running for weirdest mascot, so popular with the ladies? It has something to do with a toothpaste commercial featuring a very eccentric pop star.
This year’s breakout anime hit Attack on Titan snuck up on a lot of people. Sure, previews for the TV series made it look like a fun adventure, but is wasn’t until sometime after it premiered that the franchise became the international success it is today, despite the comic it’s based on having been around since 2009.
Why didn’t more people, from the very beginning, realize just how much entertainment Attack on Titan has to offer? Maybe the story’s antagonists, naked giants who look like anatomy textbook illustrations, were just too repugnantly grotesque. Maybe, being creator Hajime Isayama’s first serial, the artwork on its heroes was a little too rough around the edges. How much more immediately accessible would Attack on Titan have been if they had all been replaced with a more traditionally pleasing aesthetic, like a bunch of cute cats?
Thanks to this feline-infused recreation of the show’s opening animation, now we know.
Out of all the rail and subway lines crisscrossing Tokyo, the most well known and heavily used is the Yamanote Line which encircles downtown Tokyo. Stations along the Yamanote serve some of the city’s busiest business, education, and entertainment districts, and the result during rush hour is train cars that are so packed it’s comical (for everyone except the passengers themselves, of course).
This month, however, the Yamanote Line was the site of a gathering quite a bit more intimate than its usual pressed mass of sleeping white-collar professionals, as a couple held their wedding ceremony onboard one of its trains.
When dining out in Japan, there is a commonly accepted truism that you get the tastiest example of a particular type of food by eating it in a restaurant that specializes in it. For example, if you want good ramen, you go to a place that serves that and little, if anything, else.
Speaking of Japan’s favorite noodle dish, popular wisdom also holds that the dingier the ramen restaurant, the better-tasting the food.
So imagine our surprise when we discovered that the Yona Yona Beer Kitchen, a classy restaurant with a full menu in Tokyo’s swanky Nagata-cho neighborhood, can also whip up a bowl of ramen that’s as delicious as it is visually striking.
We understand it’s hard to save money. With so many cool Gundam theme cakes and Sailor Moon accessories around, who wouldn’t be trying to empty their coin purses and pocketbooks to exchange their hard earned cash for awesome novelty goods. Sometimes, our spending gets a little out of control and we have to save a little, employing various tactics to try and see an increase in the bank account.
But what if your wallet started inching away, undulating like some sort of deranged caterpillar in hopes you forgo your next splurge. And what if you ignored the weirdness of the movement, picked up said wallet, and it started screaming at you? No, we’re not making this up. One company in Japan hopes to curb your spending with a “living wallet.”
It’s safe to say that no one you see at Starbucks is there because they want to stretch their java-buying budget. With locations in more than 60 countries (and seemingly every branch in the Tokyo area at maximum capacity every day between 3 and 7 p.m., the Seattle-based chain must be doing something right, but sometimes it’s hard not to feel a bit surprised at the prices they charge.
But the next time you’re sitting in a Starbucks in Japan or America, pretending to sip from an empty mug because you’re not quite ready to disconnect from the free wi-fi but don’t feel like laying out the cash for another cup, consider yourself lucky. You’d be paying a lot more for your latte if you were at a Starbucks in China.
Burger King is bringing on the bizarre burgers once again with their new “Kuro Ninja,” a burger with a black bun and long, thick strip of bacon protruding out of one side. We’re not sure if ninjas ever stuck their tongues out at their enemies, but if they did and they were somehow magically transformed into a burger, this is what they’d look like.
Given the less assertive role of the Japanese Self-Defense Force compared to a conventional military, it’s natural that the organization’s recruiting tends to be on the low-key side. The JSDF does indeed do invaluable work in disaster-relief and humanitarian missions, but the pitch to recruits is less hunting down the world’s villains and more holding the fort and being ready to lend a hand when people are in need.
Accordingly, the JSDF Coordination Office for Kagawa Prefecture, located on Shikoku, the smallest of Japan’s four main islands, has decided to go with showcasing the soft power-look of cute anime girls in its recruitment efforts.
For many parents, one of the hardest things to accept is that their children are growing up. Every milestone on the path to adulthood seems like it comes too soon, whether it’s finishing school or moving out of the house. Perhaps there’s no greater shock than the day a doctor tells you your child is carrying a fetus. Especially if your child is two. And, especially, if your child is a boy, as was the case for one family in China.
Red light district sushi restaurant in Tokyo shows us just how wrong we were about it
Starbucks Japan adds a Motto Frappuccino to the menu for a limited time
McDonald’s new Happy Meals offer up cute and practical Sanrio lifestyle goods
Japanese ramen restaurants under pressure from new yen banknotes
Akihabara pop-up shop sells goods made by Japanese prison inmates
French Fries Bread in Tokyo’s Shibuya becomes a hit on social media
Pokémon Sleep camping suite and guestrooms coming to Tokyo Hyatt along with giant Snorlax burgers
All-you-can-drink Starbucks and amazing views part of Tokyo’s new 170 meter-high sky lounge
Tokyo Tsukiji fish market site to be redeveloped with 50,000-seat stadium, hotel, shopping center
Beautiful Red and Blue Star luxury trains set to be Japan’s new Hokkaido travel starsMcDonald’s new Happy Meals offer up cute and practical Sanrio lifestyle goodsAll-you-can-drink Starbucks and amazing views part of Tokyo’s new 170 meter-high sky lounge
More foreign tourists than ever before in history visited Japan last monthJapanese ramen restaurants under pressure from new yen banknotesFrench Fries Bread in Tokyo’s Shibuya becomes a hit on social media
Studio Ghibli releases new action figures featuring Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind characters
New private rooms on Tokaido Shinkansen change the way we travel from Tokyo to Kyoto
Starbucks reopens at Shibuya Scramble Crossing with new look and design concept
Studio Ghibli glasses cases let anime characters keep an eye on your spectacles
Beautiful Ghibli sealing wax kits let you create accessories and elegant letter decorations【Pics】McDonald’s new Happy Meals offer up cute and practical Sanrio lifestyle goods
Studio Ghibli releases Kiki’s Delivery Service chocolate cake pouches in Japan
New definition of “Japanese whiskey” goes into effect to prevent fakes from fooling overseas buyers
Our Japanese reporter visits Costco in the U.S., finds super American and very Japanese things
Studio Ghibli unveils Mother’s Day gift set that captures the love in My Neighbour Totoro
New Japanese KitKat flavour stars Sanrio characters, including Hello KittyAll-you-can-drink Starbucks and amazing views part of Tokyo’s new 170 meter-high sky loungeMore foreign tourists than ever before in history visited Japan last month
New Pokémon cakes let you eat your way through Pikachu and all the Eevee evolutions
Disney princesses get official manga makeovers for Manga Princess Cafe opening in Tokyo
Sales of Japan’s most convenient train ticket/shopping payment cards suspended indefinitelyMcDonald’s new Happy Meals offer up cute and practical Sanrio lifestyle goods
Sold-out Studio Ghibli desktop humidifiers are back so Totoro can help you through the dry season
Japanese government to make first change to romanization spelling rules since the 1950s
Ghibli founders Toshio Suzuki and Hayao Miyazaki contribute to Japanese whisky Totoro label design
Doraemon found buried at sea as scene from 1993 anime becomes real life【Photos】
Tokyo’s most famous Starbucks is closed
One Piece characters’ nationalities revealed, but fans have mixed opinions
We asked a Uniqlo employee what four things we should buy and their suggestions didn’t disappoint
Princesses, fruits, and blacksmiths: Study reveals the 30 most unusual family names in Japan
French Fries Bread in Tokyo’s Shibuya becomes a hit on social media
Pokémon Sleep camping suite and guestrooms coming to Tokyo Hyatt along with giant Snorlax burgers
All-you-can-drink Starbucks and amazing views part of Tokyo’s new 170 meter-high sky lounge
Tokyo Tsukiji fish market site to be redeveloped with 50,000-seat stadium, hotel, shopping center
Beautiful Red and Blue Star luxury trains set to be Japan’s new Hokkaido travel stars
New private rooms on Tokaido Shinkansen change the way we travel from Tokyo to Kyoto
The oldest tunnel in Japan is believed to be haunted, and strange things happen when we go there
Randomly running into a great sushi lunch like this is one of the best things about eating in Tokyo
We put the internet’s “techniques for emptying your bladder with morning wood” to the test
Anime girl English teacher Ellen-sensei becomes VTuber/VVTUber and NFT
We tried Korea’s way-too-big King Tonkatsu Burger at Lotteria 【Taste Test】
Five uninhabited Japanese islands you can buy right now
Can you make instant udon noodles with room-temperature water? We find out
SoraNews24 Taste Test: Korean Feces Wine