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We visited the southernmost and westernmost convenience stores in all of Japan…or so we thought

We tried so hard and got so far, but in the end…it turned out to be a disaster.

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Getting a driver’s license in Japan the hard way: The first driving test again

Dead man driving…

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Man confuses plastic food samples for the real thing then gets arrested for trying to steal cash

We’re not sure which was more disappointing: getting caught in the act of stealing, or learning that the food he spotted wasn’t real.

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Literally wipe out your chances of academic failure with prep school’s unique erasers

One school hopes a simple motivational tool will help students get into their dream universities.  

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Sinister cat trips up toddler walking past【Video】

Either this cat doesn’t like children or it has a very sadistic sense of humour.

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Hilarious frog fail sees insect escape certain death

Surprisingly, no animal was seriously harmed during the filming of this video – unless you count its bruised ego.

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Magic fail makes dignity disappear【Video】

Can you spot what went wrong?

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World on high alert as North Korea flexes its video FX muscle【Video】

New video shows that North Korea is possibly in possession of the Action Movie FX app, arguably the most devastating weapon simulation app known to man.

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In the battle of car versus iron rails, iron rails win by T.K.O.【Video】

Though the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, always drive around the giant iron beams.

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Every commuter’s nightmare: doors fail to close on moving Russian subway train

For when you need a little more excitement in your morning train ride!

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Another sensible Pokémon purchase…

At some point we all let our fandom get the better of us…

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Never work with animals: Outtakes from Japanese delivery company’s adorable black cat ad【Video】

Cat can’t quite get his box together, but he still gets an A for effort in the outtakes for Kuroneko Yamato’s commercial.

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Fail News: Popular Japanese mascot falls during ice-skating routine, can’t get up【Video】

Domo-kun is down on the ice and can’t get up! Who can save the furry, brown monster mascot?!?

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Mermaids and Fried Wikipedia: the art of translating menu items into English

Traveling in a country where you aren’t super confident with the lingo can be extremely daunting, and simple acts like ordering food become a bit of a nightmare. If you don’t speak the language, you won’t know what foods are on the menu or how they are prepared. Dictionaries, both paper and electronic, are definitely helpful tools when deciphering a menu and many restaurants also try to provide at least some English—one of the most used languages in the world—on their menus.

But sometimes, for all their good intentions, restaurants fail. While this may make ordering lunch a little bit trickier, it is at times like these that we are blessed with some wonderfully bad translated food names.

Today’s special dishes come compliments of restaurants in Taiwan and China that just couldn’t quite find the right words to describe their respective delicacies. Look forward to dishes including mermaids, fried Wikipedia and confused pizzas after the jump.

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Language fail: 22 funny and embarrassing tales of Japanese language missteps

They say that one of the main reasons so few Japanese people master the English language is because they’re worried about making mistakes or embarrassing themselves. While we do wish more Japanese would break out their English a little more often (get a couple of drinks into your coworkers and you’ll be amazed at how much English they actually know), at the same time we can’t really blame them for being reluctant to speak, because learning a second language as an adult can be tough.

After all, when our words fail us, it can not only result in confusion, but very often shock, laughter, and even anger. Just ask the kind folks who were good enough to share with us their most awkward and memorable mistakes made when speaking – or rather trying to speak – Japanese.

Join us after the jump for 22 tales of language mishaps. Oh, and maybe make some notes while you do so that none of these ever happen to you!

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“Supreme Court Beef” and other translation fails from the new Taco Bell Japan website

Media in Japan, us included, have been all over Taco Bell’s return to the country this week, but talk hasn’t been entirely of tacos. The Taco Bell Japan website was also making news when Japanese speakers noticed it had some pretty terrible and funny English-to-Japanese translations.

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Man arrested for robbery in Shandong had just visited temple to give thanks for not getting caught

There’s something about tales of inept criminality that we just can’t resist, especially when it seems like a case of fate conspiring against the wrong-doer. Like the man arrested for robbery in China’s Shandong province on Thursday who was on his way back from a temple, having gone to give thanks for not being caught.

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Misleading packaging strikes again! iPhone cable unexpectedly comes up short

Don’t you just hate it when you open up a bag of chips only to find that one third of the air-filled bag actually contains greasy goodness. Or how about when you crack open a box of cookies and are greeted with cardboard on both ends, squishing the available cookie space in half. Oh, the disappointment! Well get ready for a similar tale of a girl who thought she was buying a long lightning cable, but found that the product fell short of her expectations after opening it.

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Japanese high schooler fails driver’s license test 20 times, tries to hire someone else to take it for him

How far would you go to pass a test? At all points in our life, tests determine whether we succeed or fail with little remorse for how much grueling effort actually went into studying for it. One test in Japan is extremely taxing and foreigners and Japanese alike shudder at even the thought of taking it. We are talking about the Japanese driver’s license test and one first year high school student from Fukuoka who had failed the written portion 20 times, finally resorted to cheating in order to try and pass it.

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Tech FAIL – Japanese man uses butter to try and turn his normal TV into a 3-D TV

For those who have never been to Japan, the country seems like a high-tech wonderland. There are constantly reports coming out about new technologies, new robots, and new gadgets; you would think every Japanese person is some sort of tech wunderkind! We hate to shatter your dreams, but Japan is just as full of non-techy people as any other country in the world. No thread shows this better than one that recently popped up on 2channel (2ch). While the rest of the world might be trying to look at leaked photos of celebrities, one 2ch user attempted to turn their normal TV into a 3-D TV by applying…butter. Yeah, we aren’t sure how that’s supposed to work either, nevertheless, we present to you…The Buttering!

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