Category: Japan (Page 3)

Japan

Experiment hints that humans aren’t necessarily evil after all

6 days ago by Andrew Miller
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A research group from Kyoto University conducted an experiment into the behavior of babies when shown an animation depicting a scene of bullying. During the experiment, a high percentage of the babies showed a deep interest in the party being bullied. It is thought that the tendency to sympathizing with the weaker party reveals the essentially benevolent nature of humankind.

6 days ago by Master Blaster
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On 12 July at 2:08 am, in a hospital in Kyotango, Kyoto, Jiroemon Kimura passed away due to natural causes. Since his birth on 19 April, 1897, Mr. Kimura had gone on to live the longest life of any male in the world: 116 years and 54 days. During his life he bore witness to the evolution of modern Japanese society, falling under the reign of four emperors and all but one of Japan’s Prime Ministers.

6 days ago by John Stuart Translations
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Cutting 50 percent of blue light while allowing 85 percent of visible light through, these new glasses are a must-have for any hardcore gamer or corporate desk slave.

6 days ago by Master Blaster
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This summer, Hooters is opening a pair of beer gardens in Osaka and Tokyo for a limited time. Although there have been a pair of Hooters restaurants in Tokyo, this is the first time the American franchise has made it down to Osaka.

Always eager to bring you the best news from Japan sprinkled with a variety of cultural insights, we headed down to the grand opening to give you two reviews: one from a guy who used to live up the street from a Hooters in his home country of Canada, and the other from a Osaka native who had never even heard of the place. Together we can see if Hooters Osaka maintains the lively atmosphere of the chain in America but also caters to Japanese sensibilities. You know… because we’re really into marketing science and stuff.

6 days ago by John Stuart Translations
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Most people prefer to open their curtains in the morning to find bright, clear skies waiting for them, but with the arrival of the rainy season (known as 梅雨 tsuyu, and written with the characters for “plum” and “rain”) here in Japan we‘ve got a long stretch of wet weather ahead. If that has you down, perhaps channeling your inner superhero when you wake up in the morning and stepping out with this ninja sword umbrella will brighten your day. And if fantasizing about slashing enemy combatants isn’t your thing, maybe the romaine lettuce-inspired Vegetabrella from Tokyo Noble is what you need to put a smile on your face.

Take a look at these five rainy day inspirations helping ensure Japan stays dry during drizzling days of June.

Jun 13, 2013 by Mike
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The spider crab is the largest living crab on the planet and, as its name suggests, looks like the terrifying offspring of the unholy mating of a coconut crab and a Goliath tarantula. So it’s no wonder that watching one of these monstrosities shed its entire exoskeleton is nightmare-inducing, as this video shows.

Jun 13, 2013 by Casey Baseel
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Among the numerous luxuries the Conrad Tokyo provides guests is the hotel’s extensive list of amenities, such as uniquely-scented soaps, shampoos and rubber duckies to make bath time in your opulent, free-standing tub just that much better.

Of course, these pale in comparison to the perks offered for the traveler who books a room in the hotel’s newest promotional package, which include a 552-horsepower mid-engined supercar.

Jun 13, 2013 by Andrew Miller
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With a wealth of health information at our fingertips, most of us try to take good care of our bodies, getting our five fruit and veg a day and enjoying coffee and alcohol in moderation. It’s not always easy to maintain a healthy lifestyle while holding down a job or taking care of a family, though, so foodstuffs like pre-cut vegetables or ready-made side dishes often find their way into our fridges. But despite carrying a healthy image, are the ready-to-eat vegetables and ready meals found at your local convenience store really as nutritional as they’re thought to be?

If Japanese food specialist Kiyotaka Minami’s latest book “The 19 Food Habits that are Bad for the Body” is to be believed, these pre-packed time-saving gems could actually be doing our bodies more harm than good.

Jun 13, 2013 by Mike
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Culture Japan’s Danny Choo gives us an inside look at one of Shinagawa’s automated bicycle vaults, proving once and for all that they are not operated by tiny elves working under illegal labour conditions.

Our favourite part is when the official explains that the vaults keep bikes safe from “the weather and pranksters.” Damn those pranksters, stealing our bikes! Not funny this time, you guys.

Jun 13, 2013 by Philip Kendall
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Bulletin boards in Japan are hot with rumour and speculation today after videos recorded by an as yet unidentified Japanese male threaten random knife attacks on members of the public at stations in Japan, with Fukuoka’s Hakata Station ultimately named as the spot where the attack will take place.

Although neither the following article nor the videos within it contain any graphic imagery, some readers may nevertheless find their content disturbing.

Jun 13, 2013 by John Stuart Translations
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Calling all MacHeads! Can’t wait to get your hands on that ever-so-sexy Mac Pro introduced at the WWDC a few days ago? Not to worry, Amazon Japan has you covered, almost. Check out the New TUBELOR (black) from ideaco which can be yours for a mere 3,465 yen (about US$36). Though it doesn’t come with dual GPUs, PCI Express-based flash storage or high-performance Thunderbolt 2, with a little work on your part, this piece of just-as-sexy office hardware could have your co-workers drooling with envy, and, bump you to the top of your office’s cool colleague rankings.

Jun 13, 2013 by Casey Baseel
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There are plenty of difficulties in learning Japanese, from the thousands of kanji characters you have to memorize to the fact that the language doesn’t have a future tense. Pronunciation, though, isn’t that big of a hurdle. Japanese contains only 47 syllables to master, which may sound like a lot, but is in actuality pretty paltry compared to most other languages.

One of the biggest effects this limited pronunciation repertoire has is that Japanese is filled with homonyms. For example, kyoushi could mean either “a teacher” or “death by way of insanity.” Where there are words that sound alike, there are puns, and now where there are puns, there’s the president of Domino’s Pizza Japan.

Jun 13, 2013 by Andrew Miller
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Two youths were arrested by Aichi Prefecture police on June 11 after they placed a plastic bag full of dog feces and lit fireworks inside a police box, showering the small room with the bag’s contents.

Jun 13, 2013 by Philip Kendall
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Japan’s Toyota Motors has announced that it will display its Camatte 57s concept car at the Tokyo Toy Show 2013, which begins tomorrow. The family oriented three seater is designed to be so simple that “even a child could drive it”, and features a body that is fully customizable by the owner, with 57 individual panels that can be attached and removed entirely by hand.

Jun 13, 2013 by Casey Baseel
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Something every guidebook mentions about table manners in Japan is that, while almost every restaurant and home keeps a bottle of soy sauce on the table, it’s there to add to things like sashimi and grated radish, and not to be poured on white rice.

This isn’t to say that people in Japan always eat their rice plain, though. A recent Internet popularity poll pitted four of the country’s top rice toppings against each other in a battle royale.

Jun 12, 2013 by Master Blaster
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For those learning Japanese, manga can often be a good text. With the help of pictures and rather short sentences we can read along without much effort and perhaps enjoy the studying process a little more.

Well it turns out a member of the Embassy of Afghanistan in Tokyo thought the exact same thing. While out on a stroll last Sunday he picked up a particular manga that he thought would help him learn both the Japanese language and what Japanese people think about religion.

Jun 12, 2013 by Rachel Tackett
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Anyone who has ever worked in a library could probably tell you that wiping down the covers of the books in the children’s section is one of the most grimy and disgusting tasks you could ever be assigned. I’d personally rather clean the toilets with a wet wipe to be quite honest! Thankfully, in order to counteract at least the living layer of grime found on these and other books, many libraries in Japan have installed a Bacteria Elimination Box to kill off any harmful little microbes that previous patrons might have left behind. It’s the perfect piece of equipment for bibliophilic germaphobes exploring the stacks!

Jun 12, 2013 by Casey Baseel
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So here’s a tricky question: do desserts count as masculine or feminine food? On the one hand, a slice of chocolate cake is just as bold a statement of your culinary decadence as a nice fried pork cutlet. In either case, it’s at least a little wild and macho to eat something with such shaky nutritional value yet unquestionable deliciousness, similar to how I rationalize eating a pack of ham out of the fridge when I’m too lazy to go buy bread for a sandwich as being a natural result of my raging testosterone.

On the other hand, sweets are, well, sweet. Truly red-blooded males can’t even bring themselves to utter the word “sweet” unless they add “taste of revenge” after it while clenching a fist and glaring at the horizon.

Thankfully, Japanese convenience store chain Family Mart is here to help end this confusion with a line of desserts tailor-made for everybody born with a Y chromosome.

Jun 12, 2013 by Preston Phro
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Every city has its bad parts and areas to avoid, but there’s no denying that these less favorable areas give even the poshest urban centers something to talk about. While Kowloon Walled City no longer exists, its fixture in popular imagination will likely persist for decades, if not centuries.

In 1987, the city housed 33,000 people in 6.5 acres and was largely lawless, though informal social structures naturally emerged among the citizens. The city, as you might expect, has been the inspiration and setting for many fictional works, from books to movies to video games. And, now, it’s provided inspiration for a unique business venture in Japan.

Jun 12, 2013 by Philip Kendall
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Microsoft’s forthcoming Xbox One console will not be released in Asia until late 2014, despite the fact that it will launch in the West in November this year, it was revealed last night.