Bringing you yesterday's news from Japan and Asia, today.
wtf (Page 26)
It’s been nearly three days since we last reported on the arrest of a sexual deviant inventing a new way to get himself arrested by throwing pee at young women. So we’re clearly long overdue for another guy pushing the envelope of creepy crime.
On 24 August, Kanagawa Prefectural Police picked up Joji Kondo for stealing three seats from women’s electric bicycles in a housing complex at around 4:00 in the morning. After searching Kondo’s home they uncovered a further 200 seats.
Who doesn’t love a nice Sunday at the beach? It’s that one day of the week when we can all kick back and soak up some rays while listening to the relaxing sound of waves lapping against the shore.
At least some of us can while many other people still have to work on Sundays, including those in the Russian Navy who were doing a training exercise. However, it would appear this time they decided to make a detour and sneak their enormous hovercraft onto a locally popular beach on the Baltic Sea for some fun in the sun of their own.
Ladies and gentlemen, put down your smartphones, close your Nintendo DSes and power off your controllers. Even if you once thought that you were “kinda pretty good” at Tetris, you should know now that you will never, ever win.
Shared on YouTube earlier this week, the following video shows Japanese player keroco blitz through the game’s “clear mode” and send 40 lines of blocks to digital oblivion in an epic 19.68 seconds, setting a new world record in the process. Doesn’t sound so fast? Check this out.
We always suspected that the weatherman didn’t know what he was talking about, but this is just crazy.
It has recently come to light that the NHK Nagoya broadcasting office has been accidentally switching the weather reports for two prefectures. And you’ll never believe how long it took someone to notice.
Avid readers of RocketNews24 might have noticed our series of articles earlier this month about Japan’s latest fad, freezer diving. This year’s summer heat wave has inspired a whole string of idiotic people to climb into convenience store freezers as a way to beat the blazing weather.
Now, whether it’s a result of Japanese media hype or individual inspiration, pictures of people inside fridges and freezers are popping up all over the world. The latest country to join in the craze was China.
The Internet is full of sample sentences and letter structures to use when writing business mail, cover letters, or press releases. They’re an invaluable resource if you wish to be taken seriously, especially when you’re not used to writing letters for professional purposes.
Now, the Japan Post is extending their helpful how-to section to include more than just business examples. They’ve got sections for season’s greetings, ceremonial matters (such as invitations and notifications), and even personal letters! Apparently, the art of letter writing is so lost on Japanese people that they require a standard format to follow for the confidence of writing to one another. There are 19 categories outlined in the personal letters section, including advice, requests, and even marriage proposals! It’s like Japan has been taken back to the days of passing notes in middle school! “Do you like me? Check yes, no, or explain your decision using the standard letter format outlined by the Japan Post.” Read More
When summertime comes, it’s usually a case of the less clothing the better, and this year’s Asian heat wave has proved to be particularly cruel. It’s common sense to shed layers when working outside in this broiling weather. But I’d say that shedding an entire layer of skin is taking it a step too far!
This month, a very peculiar Twitter picture has been making the rounds. Looking at the label, it would appear that we have a real, live lizard-man on our hands! But be warned, it’s not a pretty sight.
Imuraya Confectionary is a Japanese sweets company that specializes in the sale of adzuki (sweetened red bean) products. They pride themselves on sticking to traditional Japanese flavors and sticking to their strange marketing strategies just as hard.
Recently, Imuraya made a pair of official Twitter posts cautioning people against the stiffness of their top-selling Adzuki Bar! This frozen slab of bean paste is a summer favorite across Japan, but according to Imuraya’s own assertions, they can crack your teeth!
Observed by those who don’t play them, video games may all seem a little bit peculiar. Mushroom-eating plumbers stomping hammer-throwing turtles, ultra-violent military shooters whose protagonists bound across battlefields shouldering rocket launchers while hurling grenades and taking bullet after bullet to the chest, and of course the hordes of zombie titles that, like their lumbering stars, simply won’t die. For those accustomed to the rules of these digital worlds, though, this all makes perfect sense.
There are occasionally, however, a few titles that even the gaming elite would recoil from wearing an expression somewhere between “ermahgerd” and “turd sandwich”, and YouTube-based ZoominGames believes they’ve identified the cream of said crop. So let’s take a look at the channel’s “Top 5 Weird Games” one by one and see if they’re really they freaky affairs they’re made out to be. Oh, and did we mention that all five happen to have been made in Japan…?
A friend of mine once shared an image with me of the product recommendations section from Amazon.com, which showed a copy of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 paired with a bulk pack of adult daipers. Apart from shut-ins who would rather soil themselves than leave their military-based shooter and go to the bathroom, it’s hard to imagine why Amazon’s super computers would suggest that the two products were a perfect match.
An equally odd product pairing appearing on Amazon JP caught the attention of Japanese netizens earlier today, but rather than giving them a good chuckle it has quite freaked them out.
The importance of the hand luggage inspection area at airports simply cannot be underestimated. Sure, they’re time consuming and can be an irritating experience for frequent fliers, but without them it would be impossible to ensure the safety of passengers on board aircraft. However, despite procedures becoming ever more stringent in recent years, it hasn’t stopped some passengers looking for ways to slip prohibited items past security. At one Chinese airport, for example, one man recently tried a quite bizarre tactic to smuggle his pet turtle onto the plane: pretending it was a hamburger.
At 12:30 p.m. on Sunday, August 4, Northeastern Japan started to shake. On the Japanese shindo scale, the quake measured between 3 and 4 (overhead lights sway and objects rattle, but some people who are on the move may not notice it) in most areas, a ‘low-5’ at its strongest. Thankfully, there are thought to have been no casualties as the tremor was relatively short-lived, and with the quake of March 2011 and weeks of resulting aftershocks having been far stronger, the people of Tohoku are now fairly hardened when it comes to smaller rumbles.
Curiously though, no sooner had the earthquake passed than a few jokesters began sharing the above image from the Japan Meteorological Agency, along with messages of “LOL” and ‘Why do I suddenly feel like I want to go to Northeastern Japan?”
Hey, you got a minute to spare? Actually make that a couple dozen minutes. We’d like to share a few hundred of the wildest and funniest gifs getting circulated around the net in Japan.
Of course cats are well represented here but we also got dogs, spiders, manatees, lions, (no tigers), bears, monkeys, turtles, and people all injuring themselves and each other. Watch and marvel at feats of strength of these animals and people, and enjoy even more the cringe-worthy carnage that ensues when they don’t quite make it. Get an eyeful of a guy getting bitten in the nuts by a rottweiler. Enjoy military misfires, cats in zero gravity and the magic of Coach Raphael Benitez. Both faked and real hypnotically looped images are here for your amusement.
Without further ado, sit back, grab a snack, and enjoy these 252 animated gifs. Happy Friday, everyone!
Summer in Asia is hot. Like, really, really hot. Seeing mirages hot. Cooking whole English breakfasts on the sidewalk hot. But no matter how hellish the summer heat gets, we will never, ever, ever set foot in this Chinese lake.
The above is the Hieronymus Bosch-esque hellscape of what is quite possibly the world’s most crowded summertime attraction: a lake in Suining City, China.
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.
We saw how monster parents can ruin the lives of rural potato farmers, but how do their demands impact the teachers closest to them?
Horribly of course, as some Tokyo area teachers have revealed, particularly when it comes to swimming class. According to an interview with Excite News Japan, school staff are growing increasingly worried with parents’ request to put their sons in one-piece swimsuits.
We don’t mean something cool like wetsuits either. These moms insist that to the best way to combat the indecent exposure of a topless boy is to put him in a girl’s swimsuit. How’s that for logic?
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.
Under normal circumstances, Japanese people have an open aversion to unnaturally colored foods, especially blue. This is true even of sports drinks and birthday cakes. Without even addressing the never-ending debates over artificial food colorings and health, something about the color blue appears unappetizing to their taste buds.
However, in the overwhelming heat of summer, the color blue also carries with it the connotation of something cool and calm. Could the implicative promise of a refreshing counter to the summer sun override this instinctual revulsion against imbibing something blue? After hearing about a certain Thai food restaurant that serves bright blue dishes, we decided to send one of our more adventurous culinary reporters to check it out.
Red light district sushi restaurant in Tokyo shows us just how wrong we were about it
Tokyo Tsukiji fish market site to be redeveloped with 50,000-seat stadium, hotel, shopping center
Japanese ramen restaurants under pressure from new yen banknotes
Beautiful Red and Blue Star luxury trains set to be Japan’s new Hokkaido travel stars
Pokémon Sleep camping suite and guestrooms coming to Tokyo Hyatt along with giant Snorlax burgers
New private rooms on Tokaido Shinkansen change the way we travel from Tokyo to Kyoto
McDonald’s new Happy Meals offer up cute and practical Sanrio lifestyle goods
French Fries Bread in Tokyo’s Shibuya becomes a hit on social media
Mt. Koya planning to instate visitor’s tax to cope with huge tourist numbers
New line of modern samurai fashion for fall/winter will make you warm and coolMcDonald’s new Happy Meals offer up cute and practical Sanrio lifestyle goods
All-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 charactersNew 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
New private rooms on Tokaido Shinkansen change the way we travel from Tokyo to Kyoto
McDonald’s new Happy Meals offer up cute and practical Sanrio lifestyle goods
French Fries Bread in Tokyo’s Shibuya becomes a hit on social media
Mt. Koya planning to instate visitor’s tax to cope with huge tourist numbers
New line of modern samurai fashion for fall/winter will make you warm and cool
Starbucks Japan adds a Motto Frappuccino to the menu for a limited time
Secret Kitchen bento serves Japanese flowers, birds, wind and moon in a box, but is it worth it?
Japanese company starts project to restore Nakagin Capsules to capsule hotel
The oldest tunnel in Japan is believed to be haunted, and strange things happen when we go there
Cardcaptor Sakura Chinese Cafe opens in Tokyo, coming to other cities with special merch【Pics】
TeamLab Planets: Walk up a waterfall and catch koi fish at new digital art museum in Tokyo
Louis Vuitton’s fancy new bags look like anime character merch to people in Japan【Photos】
A trip to hell on Japan’s ‘vomit ship’: Is it as bad as everyone says it is?
Muji’s Sofa Made From Air review: Is Japan’s most sought-after portable couch worth the hype?