adventure

Bungee jumping in Japan at the longest pedestrian suspension bridge on the mainland

Come face-to-face with the mystical dragon that resides in the Ryujin River. 

Read More

Will Yomiuriland’s Pokémon Wonder attraction be a good place to play Pokémon GO? We investigate

And how is Pokémon Wonder, anyway?

Read More

Japan Travel: Exploring Manabeshima cat island

A travel destination packed with cats, not tourists. 

Read More

Japan Travel: Explore a mysterious hidden octagonal tunnel in the mountains of Kyushu

Come with us as we take you off the beaten path to a spot tourists are yet to discover.

Read More

Japan Travel: Explore a hidden cave on a tiny monorail roller coaster thrill ride in Nara

Step away from the mainstream and discover the mysterious side of Japan.

Read More

Spectacular video footage from inside North Korea by travel vlogger【Video】

This incredible new video was released by a Lithuanian-born entrepreneur documenting his mysterious 7-day trip to North Korea.

Read More

Sea to summit: Expat hikers trek from the Japanese coast to the peak of Mt. Fuji in awesome video

Tell someone you climbed Mt. Fuji, and they’ll ask “Where did you start from?”, because there are paved roads that can drop as much as half-way up the mountain. Of course some say you haven’t climbed Fuji unless you started from its base, but even that wasn’t enough of a challenge for these three foreign outdoorsmen, who decided to start their hike from miles away from Fuji at the seashore, then journey from Japan’s lowest point to its highest, making this awesome video along the way.

Read More

Final Fantasy XV team’s “location hunt” video looks suspiciously like awesome adventure vacation

As the graphics in video games have become increasingly sophisticated, a new and unexpected expense has surfaced for design teams hoping to make their game’s environments as realistic as possible: the so-called “location hunt.”

While in the good ol’ days of pixel graphics, design teams could just look at some photographs or even paintings of real-world locations for inspiration, modern gaming’s open, 3-D worlds demand level and object design so advanced that it becomes a near-necessity for teams to travel to locales that closely resemble the digital worlds they’re hoping to create,  getting actual eyes on, say, that volcanic mountain they plan to have the player venture through, or checking out the minute curves and angles of some military hardware they plan on dropping into the game.

Ironically, though, while the “location hunt” is still considered work, outside of the unlucky design team that has to go inside of a volcano for that epic RPG boss fight or something, these excursions can actually end up looking suspiciously like a vacation. Just ask the Final Fantasy XV design team, who recently posted a YouTube video of their location hunt.

Read More

Man creates series of videos documenting his attempt to walk from China to Germany

You may not realize this, but the English version of RocketNews24 (there’s a Japanese site too!) has only been around for a mere five years! Believe it or not, cool and quirky things happened around Japan and Asia before we started writing about them, so there are years worth of interesting things that we didn’t get to tell you about. Sometimes, like today, we bring you stories from the past, because they are so cool, they should see the light again.

Today we take you back to a story that started on November 9, 2007, when Christoph Rehage, a 26-year-old German, started his 45,000-kilometer (27,962-mile) walk across China. He documented his adventure in various mediums, but most notably, in a five-minute time-lapse.

Read More

We bought 21 packs of roasted shellfish to try to find a pearl – but did we get lucky?

Did you know that FamilyMart sells 108 yen (US$0.90) packets of “roasted shellfish strings?” They’re made from Hokkaido-raised scallops, and just like clams and oysters, scallops can produce pearls underwater. Even the packages come with this warning: “please be careful not to swallow any pearls that the shellfish may have produced while you eat them.”

Well that’s a challenge if we ever heard one! We bought 21 packets of roasted shellfish strings and went on a pearl diving adventure. Did we end up finding one? Read on to find out!

Read More

Japanese explorer to attempt harrowing solo trek to North Pole

Do your eyes light up with excitement at the prospect of exploring remote land untouched by humankind? Even if your idea of adventure is a new brand of cup ramen, we think everyone can be impressed by Japanese explorer Yasunaga Ogita, who will make a second attempt at a gruelling solo trek to the North Pole. And the nearly 800-km journey will be made all the more difficult since Ogita plans to hike through some of the world’s coldest and harshest terrain without any supplies other than what he alone can carry.

Read More

Taking the Ferry From Japan to Foreign Lands: a New Adventure!

If we asked you your travel plans for your next trip abroad, you would probably come up with a flight plan.  It wouldn’t occur to most of us to take a boat.  The fastest way to get from point A to point B particularly when B is overseas would have to be flying.

A ferry ride to foreign lands, compared to air travel ,may not be the most efficient way to go, but the sense of embarking on an adventure on the high seas, makes up for it!  From an island country like Japan, surrounded on all sides by water, taking a ferry trip overseas is actually very reasonable.

Although it is not widely known, there are several  ferry routes leaving at regular intervals from various ports across Japan.  Where do these ferries go?

According to information from the Travel site Tripgraphics, ferries leave regularly for destinations in China, Korea, and Russia.  There are frequent ferry departures to 8 ports of call in these three countries.  Doesn’t it tickle the imagination?  At the very least, you can’t help but be curious.  What would a sea voyage be like? Read More