Tag: weird | RocketNews24

weird

We Use Lotteria’s Ramen Burger to Make a Bowl of Ramen Noodles, Restore the Natural Balance of the Universe

6 hours ago by Casey Baseel
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On May 17, Japanese hamburger chain Lotteria’s ramen burger went on sale in the Tokyo area. Comprised of a slab of seasoned pork and a handful of noodles sandwiched inside a bun, with a cup of broth on the side, the sandwich is a collaboration between Lotteria and the popular ramen restaurant chain Musashi.

Representing the convergence of two of fast food’s all-stars, the ramen burger has been a hit, with lines stretching out the door when it went on sale. But our stomachs are fickle masters, and we decided to tear the two star-crossed lovers apart once again by using the ramen burger to make a bowl of ramen noodles. Read More

With Title “Happiest Place on Earth” Already Taken, Amusement Park on Cebu Island Makes Its Claim to Be the Sleepiest

yesterday by Casey Baseel
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When you’re a kid, theme parks are a place where your dream can come to life. Wouldn’t it be great to feel that excitement once again?

In search of that childlike wonder, one of RocketNews24’s reporters recently visited the Lecian Grand Carnaval amusement park in Mandaue City on Cebu Island, in the Philippines. While it doesn’t have the high-tech animatronics and pyrotechnics of Disneyland, it offers plenty of old-fashioned attractions like a tilt-a-whirl and haunted house, plus a life-endangering roller coaster and very lenient napping policy. Read More

Trapped in a Glass Cage in the Philippines, Mario Has No Mouth with which to Scream – The Shocking World of Knock-Off Plush Dolls

2 days ago by Casey Baseel
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Recently, one of our correspondents was strolling through a shopping mall in Mandaue City on Cebu Island in the Philippines. As he passed an arcade, one of the attendants flagged him down, asking if he wanted to try to win a stuffed doll in one of their crane games.

Intrigued by the offer, our reporter peered into the machine’s glass case, at first thinking he saw popular Japanese anime characters Doraemon and Testuwan Atom (also know as Astro Boy internationally). Closer investigation though, revealed that the arcade was filled with cheap, yet somehow incredibly endearing, knock-offs.

3 days ago by Casey Baseel
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Like many people who moved to Tokyo in their youth, most of the time I’ve spent in Japanese taxi cabs has been directly preceded by heavy drinking. In the country’s urban centers, people primarily get around by train and subway. However, both of them stop running around midnight (for now?), at which time you can see a mass of people stumbling towards the station like Cinderella if she’d spent less time on the dance floor with the prince and more at the ball’s open bar. Once the trains stop, they don’t start again until about five in the morning, and since staying out all night drinking only seems like a good idea until your buzz wears off at around 2:30 a.m., if you missed the last train the only way you’re getting home is by taking a taxi.

Like taking a cab ride anywhere else in the world, the drivers use radios to communicate with the dispatcher and other cars in the fleet. I could never understand what Japanese taxi drivers were saying to each other, but the reason why isn’t because I was liquored up (OK, so it wasn’t only because I was liquored up). It turns out cab drivers in Japan have a whole set of jargon and code words that you won’t find in any textbooks. Read More

Shield Your Rocket: Waterproofing a Smartphone with a Condom

3 days ago by Preston Phro
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I’m sure that there are those of you out there who use their smartphones in the tub. Soaking while you surf the Net and watch movies is just pure bliss, ain’t it? The bathtub smartphone is simply awesome! And slightly dangerous…

What you really need to pay attention to is waterproofing. Certainly there are special accessories and ziplock bags, but recently there’s been one…unique method running around the Internet rumor mills. What the hell am I talking about? Using condoms for waterproofing! Read More

Korean Remote Controlled Turtle Project Making Slow But Steady Progress

4 days ago by Casey Baseel
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One year when I was in junior high school my parents gave me a radio controlled car for Christmas. It was the perfect gift for a young boy right in the middle of dealing with the most awkward, confusing psychological change that comes with puberty (no longer thinking riding a bike is cool, but still being too young to drive a car). I loved that R/C car, so much that I kept playing with it outside as it started to rain one day, eventually frying the circuits so that it never ran again.

But things would have been different if my parents had been researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, or KAIST. First, everyone would have been surprised by how two Korean scientists ended up with a Caucasian son with blond hair. And next, they could have hooked me up with a controllable water-resistant reptile, like the remote controlled turtle KAIST is currently developing. Read More

Hungry for Justice (and Bento), Alleged Kobe Thief Turns Himself In

4 days ago by Casey Baseel
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Hyogo Prefecture has a bit of a reputation for culinary excellence. Besides being the home of Kobe beef, it’s also famous for French and Chinese cuisine, along with boasting some of Japan’s best octopus. But could Hyogo’s food be so good that alleged criminals would give up their freedom for it?

On May 12, police at the Nagata Ward Precinct in Kobe took a suspected thief into custody. The unemployed 32-year-old man, whose name has been withheld, turned himself in, saying, “I want to eat the tasty food Nagata Precinct serves prisoners in its holding cells.” Read More

To Mexico in Chains: The Tale of Three 16th Century Japanese Slaves

5 days ago by Preston Phro
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In 1597, Japan was reaching the end of the Warring States period and starting to unify under the rule of Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi. At the same time, which was 15 years after the Tenshô embassy (the first Japanese embassy to Europe), three Japanese men were completing their (unwilling) journey to Mexico, of all places.

Using records from the Inquisition found in the National Library of Mexico, Lucio de Sousa (University of Evora in Portugal) and Oka Mihoko (University of Tokyo) have discovered conclusive proof of the men’s journey to the New World. They’ve also managed to piece together a few details of their stories.

5 days ago by Preston Phro
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Forgetting stuff at the copy machine is one thing when you’re at work and everyone already knows about all your weird little obsessions (we’re looking at you, whoever’s making copies of horse-riding advertisements and Jell-o recipes), but it’s entirely different when you forget your stuff at a public copy machine. Someone might even take pictures and tweet them for the whole world to see!

6 days ago by Casey Baseel
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The company Edit, based in Tokyo’s Chiyoda Ward, produces a variety of notebooks. Most of them come with specialized forms on each page, such as a cooking notebook with separate boxes for ingredient names, amounts, and cooking directions. The company’s more unique offerings include a pitcher’s notebook with a three-by-three grid to mark each throw as high or low, inside or outside, and a horse racing journal to record bets, wins (hopefully), and losses (inevitably).

The pages of Edit’s newest big seller are completely blank, though. What’s more, if customers follow the instructions for using it, they’ll never be able to refer back to what they wrote, because the pages are designed to feel good as you rip them into shreds. Read More

Catch-22: Guys Interested in Small Breasts are Probably the Type of Guy Girls Should Stay Far, Far Away From

6 days ago by Mike
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New research from Japan takes a look into the psychology of male bewb preference and is shedding some unfavorable light on the inner workings of the small breast-loving male mind, resulting in an unfortunate catch-22 for small-chested women: the type of guy who appreciates your size is probably also a pervy weirdo.

6 days ago by Casey Baseel
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The Saudi Arabian television program Hawatel Kaizen (a combination of the Arabic word for “thoughts” and the Japanese for “improvement”) is a series of reports by Arabic reporters in which they share things they have been impressed by in Japan. A Japanese TV show in turn did a feature on Hawatel Kaizen, in which the panel of Japanese TV personalities were amused by the enthusiastic responses of Saudi reporter, Ahmad, to things Japanese citizens take for granted.

So in an effort to be as international as possible, RocketNews24 brings you an English recap of a Japanese TV program reacting to another program in which a Saudi Arabian reporter reacts to Japan. Read More

Gas Attack! Can Holding In Farts Be Bad For you?

6 days ago by Preston Phro
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You’re on a date with the most amazing person you’ve ever met. It’s all going well, and you know you’re not going home alone tonight. But as you finish up your meal, it hits you out of nowhere: the stomach rumbles of a vicious fart. Your mind races: what to do?! Should you hold it in or break wind and try to blame it on the waiter?

Well, today we have a translation of a Japanese article about this very topic! Now you’ll know what happens when you hold in those Silent-But-Deadlies.

May 13, 2013 by Casey Baseel
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No discussion of the pantheon of video game heroes is complete without mentioning HAL Laboratory’s Kirby. Including his recently-released 20th anniversary collection, the adorable pink puffball has close to two dozen appearances under his belt, which is an impressive feat for someone who lacks a waist.

Kirby has also gotten a bit of free publicity from website TV Tropes, with its “American Kirby is Hardcore” entry, which catalogues how the images of Kirby and other fictional characters are “toughened up” in marketing to make them more appealing to U.S. audiences.

In recent years, Kirby’s earned enough gamer goodwill to be as cute as he wants to in any market. Even still, we’re guessing he would have had a tough time of it initially in overseas markets if HAL had stuck with the character’s original name. Read More

Who Needs a Cherry on Top? Osaka Café Crowns its Parfaits with Cake

May 11, 2013 by Casey Baseel
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Tokyo’s restaurants may have more Michelin stars, but for many Japanese foodies, the real culinary action is in Osaka. Particularly if your tastes run more towards good honest grub than haute cuisine, Japan’s second largest city is the place to be.

The people of Osaka enjoy a good meal so much that they coined the phrase kuidaore, to eat until you collapse. But even with this image firmly entrenched in our minds, the city has found a new way to surprise us with its gastronomic decadence.

On a recent day out in Osaka, our reporter stopped by a café and ordered a truly hard-core parfait. It wasn’t that the parfait was so big, and no, it didn’t contain any shocking ingredients. What blew our minds about this parfait was its topping.

It was a slice of cake, and it was so big it wasn’t even trying to fit into the glass.

May 11, 2013 by Rona Moon
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A picture speaks a thousand words, so they say. But if pictures could actually talk, sometimes you wish they would just shut up and go away. Other times, no matter how awful or shocking a picture may be, you somehow can’t tear your eyes away and you stare in bewilderment, struck by new fears for the future of humanity, wondering why cameras were ever invented if they were just going to be used to chronicle mass pool orgies of blow-up dolls.

If you can shed light on any of these shocking images, comments are very welcome. Japanese netizens were mostly left dumbstruck by the level of perversion. More bizarre amateur photography coming up after the break! Obviously, NSFW…

May 10, 2013 by Casey Baseel
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Video games have made pretty steady progress into the cultural mainstream. Even people who aren’t gamers themselves can at least see the entertainment potential of a Mario title with its breezy fun, or the sweeping adventure of a Final Fantasy.

A genre many people have a harder time wrapping their heads around, though, is the dating simulator. Sure, driving games like Gran Turismo let us tune and race cars so expensive we can’t even talk the dealer into giving us a test drive in real life. And while Japan does have a royal family with princesses, the country’s lack of fire-breathing dragons means our chances of having to pick up sword and shield to go rescue them are slim, at best. But a game about going on dates? Couldn’t we just, like, ask someone out in real life?

Apparently some developers feel the same way, and have decided to spice up their dating sims with scenarios that take full advantage of video games’ unique style of escapism. Read More

The Branomics Bra: Keeping Politicians’ Busty Promises

May 10, 2013 by Preston Phro
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This Wednesday, underwear manufacturer Triumph International’s Japan team held a product-release event for its bra that “reflects the times.” On display at the biannual event was the Branomics Bra, based on the Abenomics “Three Arrows” policy. Arisa Watanabe and ALISA, poster girls for the company, wore the bust-increasing garments, striking various poses for the attendees. (As far as we know, tickets to these events are not publicly available. Rats!) Read More

Baby’s First Warmachine: the Perfect Mech for Your Tiny Supervillians!

May 10, 2013 by Preston Phro
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As with most weeks in Japan, robots seem to be dominating the news, but this one’s much cuter and waaaay more alarming.

Sakakibara Kikai (or Sakakibara Machines), a well established manufacturing company in Gunma Prefecture, has released a video of their KID’S WALKER CYCLOPS out for a test drive. (No buildings were destroyed by errant missiles in the filming of this video.) Read More

When Two Amazing Worlds Collide: Welcome to the World of Cat Sushi!

May 8, 2013 by Oona McGee
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There’s a new breed of sushi in town, and it’s called nekozushi (cat sushi). These unusual creatures live in an alternate reality, travelling between worlds on colourful sushi train plates, stopping to stare at passers-by for just long enough to get them thinking, “Did I really see that?” before zooming off again. Rare sightings have been reported over the years but no-one’s ever been able to really prove the existence of a sushi cat. Until now.