Featured

weird (Page 181)

Fireworks festivals are held across Japan during July and August, despite summer being the country’s wettest season. The inevitable result of this game of atmospheric roulette is that sometimes the pyrotechnic display gets rained out.

Such was the case last Saturday at Showa Park in Tachikawa, the westernmost of Tokyo’s major population centers. Last year’s show drew over 750,000 people to the park and surrounding streets, so when the skies opened up shortly before this year’s similarly-scaled festivities kicked off, it sent a horde of people dashing back to Tachikawa Station, where they were greeted by a leaking roof that only added to the confusion.

Given the situation, it’s easy to understand how someone might drop some of their belongings, like a wallet or cell phone. How a piece of intimate apparel ended up unaccounted for, however, remains a bit of a mystery.

Read More

Green men pitching trouser tents and hat-wearing horses: the mascots of Japan

Japan’s mascot obsession is known by those even marginally familiar with the country’s culture. Characters like Hello Kitty and her signature silhouette are recognized in countries across the globe, and thanks to the wonders of the internet we’re able to learn more about other cultures than ever before. But something I find that many people don’t realize about Japan is the sheer breadth of things that get their own mascots. Take, for instance, Japanese prefectures.

Read More

Any well-stocked Japanese kitchen needs a bottle of dashi, a salty cooking stock usually made with dried bonito. Dashi is sometimes combined with soy sauce, and the resulting mixture, called dashi-joyu, is commonly used to prepare soups and season a number of ingredients.

As such a ubiquitous part of Japanese cooking, you can buy dashi-joyu at any supermarket. And if you happen to be at a certain few parking lots in Hiroshima or Okayama Prefectures, now you can get it from a vending machine, too.

Read More

They’re back! Newly designed iPhone underpants now come with censored home buttons

Looking for a fresh pair of undies for your smartphone? We thought so! Bandai has just announced a new line up of their hugely popular SmartPants brand smartphone underwear. This time, SmartPants2 come in eight new designs, a pixelized home button sticker, and a exceptionally weird promotional video.

Read More

Build your own dumpling with this plastic model kit from Amazon Japan

Tired of the same old plastic model kits? Have you built more Gundam than your wife is comfortable with? Put together enough miniature planes, trains, and automobiles than you care to admit? Well you’re in luck! We’ve found a totally bizarre but somehow completely awesome plastic model kit that you’ve probably never built before.

Read More

Lotteria to offer bizarre milkshake flavor based on horror flick The Ring

Apparently, if you could taste fear, it would taste like cool lemonade.

Starting July 27, Japanese burger chain Lotteria will offer a limited-time lemonade shake flavor themed after classic Japanese horror icon Sadako – the unmistakable and absolutely horrifying long-haired ghost girl from The Ring.

Read More

In Japan, there are roughly 450 national highways wandering their way through the country, connecting the various cities and prefectures.

Their sizes and conditions obviously vary widely depending on location and usage, but for the most-part they all share one thing in common: cars can drive on them. But on 338.2 meters (about 425 yards) of National Highway 339 in Aomori Prefecture, not a single car, truck, scooter, or motorcycle is allowed.

Why? Because it’s actually a staircase!

Read More


  • Jul 14, 2013

In the name of beauty — This drastic beauty regimen is not for the faint of heart

Beauty — they say it’s only skin deep. Regardless, we all know there are plenty of people out there who would go to great lengths for what they believe to be a chance to look even just the slightest bit more beautiful. Yes, obsession with beauty can run deep and strong. But just how far would you be willing to go to look prettier or younger? Would you be willing to actually go under a plastic surgeon’s knife? Or if that’s too much, would you be comfortable with receiving botox shots once in a while? What if it was a completely non-invasive procedure that may do wonders for your skin, but one that involves having certain living organisms crawl over your face? Well, some people may be prepared to endure great hardships in the name of beauty, but this is one treatment you have to be pretty brave to try!

Read More

Hello, School Nurse! Japanese website lets you exchange emails with licensed youth caretaker

There are certain trappings to the ideal vision of high school in Japan. A schoolhouse with surprisingly lenient rooftop access policies is one. A bevy of beautiful, earnest coed equipment managers cheering you on in the big game is another. And no set of rose-colored school days is complete without a kind, patient, nurturing school nurse.

If you’re past your teens, most of these are now out of reach. Contrary to what anime and TV dramas have shown us, Japanese educational institutes don’t even let their own students eat lunch on the roof, much less some random guy trying to turn back the clock. Putting your grown-man strength to use in youth athletics is similarly out of the question.

Thanks to a new website that launched this month, though, it’s not too late to have another chat with that school nurse.

Read More

Classic Ghibli anime impresses with its story, makes some viewers want to kill themselves

Sometimes, it’s only after the fact that you realize just how close you came to dying.

After eating dinner a few nights ago, my wife was flipping through the channels on TV. “Oh, that’s right, Whisper of the Heart is on. Do you want to watch it?” she asked.

Now ordinarily a cute girl asking me if I’d like to watch anime with her gets an automatic “Why yes, I would.” But at that point there were just 20 minutes left before the end, and I said I’d rather just rent it from the video store down the street some other time, so we could watch it from the beginning.

That decision may have saved our lives.

Read More

How many fish would you like on your pancakes? ‘Lots, please!’ says Kanagawa café

Just over an hour south of downtown Tokyo, Kanagawa Prefecture’s Enoshima Island and the nearby coastline are a prime summer destination. There’s a little something for everyone, whether you want to frolic in the water or on the sandy beach, visit a shrine hidden deep inside a cave and learn about the legend of the fearsome dragon who fell in love with a beautiful local girl, or just try out your pick-up lines at the numerous oceanfront bars.

This spring, the Aloha Beach Café opened up on Enoshima island. The restaurant specializes in the Hawaiian-style pancakes that are all the rage in Japan right now, but also offers one menu item you could only find on the Kanagawa coast.

Read More

We learn the terrifying secret of Silent Hill ramen

Since 1999, Konami’s Silent Hill horror series has been spooking gamers with its mysterious, reality-bending setting and plotlines, not to mention its collection of grotesque, otherworldly creatures like the appropriately-named Pyramid Head, a giant with a large, triangular head who stalks the game’s protagonist while carrying an enormous blade.

Konami has recently formed a partnership with a number of ramen restaurants across Japan to serve Silent Hill ramen. But just what exactly happens when you use a horror story that’s dripping with gore as the inspiration for food? We headed to Hajime, a Tokyo restaurant that offers the terrifying noodles, to find out.

Read More

Oh, dear heavens! What’s this?

Is Tokyo having freak, concentrated snowfall in the middle of summer? Have Mr. Freeze and Iceman been duking it out in Ginza? Is it a cotton candy terrorist attack??

Read More

We try “snow viewing” ramen

There have been plenty of largely portioned bowls of ramen with so much stuff piled on top that you can’t see the noodles beneath. But this one is probably the weirdest mountain-like ramen we’ve ever seen. It appears to be topped with white foam and is closer to looking like a snowy mountain peak than a steaming hot bowl of soup.

Read More

Tokyo police released a statement earlier this week asking the public for any information they may have regarding an incident that occurred on June 15 at approximately 9:20 a.m. wherein a man called out to a child playing in a local park.

As it transpires, though, all the man is believed to have said to the boy was, “You’ll never play for your country doing it like that!” leaving netizens wondering exactly why there should be any cause for concern.

Read More

Have you ever had one of those days in the middle of summer where just the 100-yard walk to the nearest convenience store and back has you panting and so parched you’d drink right out of the toilet bowl if it was closer than the sink? Well, we haven’t, cause that’s just gross and you should probably seek help if you’re drinking toilet water. Unless, that is, you’re drinking it out of this cute candy toilet!

Read More

Japan Rail searching for couple to get married on Yamanote Line train

Many couples strive to plan a perfectly unique wedding. From nonconventional backyard ceremonies to destination weddings in far off places, there is no limit to the delightfully strange and creative ways people tie the knot. However, JR East is giving one lucky couple the chance at a wedding most people have probably never dreamed of.

Read More

Puberty is a rough age. With your hormones insisting that you’re ready to start making some babies right now, yet your mind, parents, and teachers saying you’re really not, courtship can be difficult. In particular, figuring out an appropriate way to clearly show affection, while still respecting proper boundaries, can be a real quandary. Learning to find the proper middle ground, though, is an important part of growing up.

Or you could just do the like the kids at one Japanese elementary school who said the heck with it and went to town licking each other’s eyeballs.

Read More

Mention Honda to most people, and they’ll think of a successful car company, if still a few rungs below giants Toyota, GM, and Volkswagen in sheer size. But Honda just happens to be the biggest engine manufacturer in the world, providing power for not just for passenger cars, but also motorcycles, scooters, boats, jet aircraft, and even lawnmowers.

Honda’s most die-hard fans point to the company’s racing pedigree and ease with which its engines can be tuned to make more power, both of which factor into its current project of building the world’s fastest riding mower.

Read More

Osaka Obachan are here to rock your world, make sure you don’t go hungry

Typified by the saccharine songs of AKB48, the Japanese idol world is largely the province of the young. One rarely expects to see a singer over the age of 25 among the mini-skirt-clad ranks of the ultra-kawaii groups.

Usually.

A group from Osaka—called Obachaaan—are ready to change that up.

Read More

  2. 1
  3. ...
  4. 178
  5. 179
  6. 180
  7. 181
  8. 182
  9. 183
  10. 184
  11. 185
  12. 186
  13. 187