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Japan

Photo of the Moment: Asakusa Kids Closeup, Tokyo

© jamesfischer Why … so … serious?

Bizarre Japan: The Most Fantastically Strange Video You’ll See All Day

We admit it: we’re obsessed with Japanese culture, particularly the more bizarre aspects. The commercial below is by far the strangest Japanese advertising video we’ve seen in some time. And that’s saying something. It only helps that we have no idea what they’re saying (only that the potato chips at the end are evidently loaded [...]

Photo of the Moment: Sea of Red at Inari Shrine, Kyoto

© ajari

Never Look the Monkeys in the Eye (and Other Essential Tips from Kyoto’s Mount Arashiyama)

All around us, the forest breathed. Raindrops plonked against leaves. Neon-green moss coated the stones below my feet. For the first time in five days of Kyoto sightseeing, my two friends and I were alone: Just us, the trees, the mountain… and the monkeys. Maybe we should have noticed the lack of other visitors at [...]

Photo of the Moment: Approaching Narita at Sunset, Japan

© Joi

Rabu Hoteru: Lost in Japan’s Love Hotels

Amy Baker explores Japan’s Rabu Hoteru’s, or Love Hotels, and finds “when in Japan, do as the Japanese”.

The Newest In Tokyo Haute Couture: The Anti-H1N1 Business Suit

© Théo La Photo Being a Japanese businessman can’t be the easiest job in the world. Your day consists of getting physically shoved into a train, spilling out the door 30 minutes later, only to get yelled at by your boss all the time once you get to work. We haven’t actually confirmed the getting [...]

Japanese Scarecrows Predictably Weird, Creepy

© Tokyo Times This gallery came as somewhat of a surprise to us. Nothing in our experience had prepared us for a Japanese product that was weird or creepy or lifelike or weird and creepy and lifelike all at the same time. So we didn’t really have a framework for understanding this story from the [...]

Photo of the Moment: How to Pray the Japanese Way, Kamakura

© kalandrakas From the photographer: It is very easy to pray at a shrine like the Japanese people do. First, step up to the large wooden box and bow 90º to the shrine. Then throw some coins into the box. Typically a 5 yen coin is used because it signifies good luck, but 1 yen [...]

Photo of the Moment: Rain or Shine at Disneyland, Tokyo

© kalandrakas

Photo of the Moment: Ozakajo Castle, Osaka

© JoopDorresteijn Via Wikipedia: Originally called Ozakajō, it is one of Japan’s most famous castles, and played a major role in the unification of Japan during the sixteenth century of the Azuchi-Momoyama period. Osaka Castle is situated on a plot of land roughly one kilometer square. It is built on two raised platforms of landfill [...]

Photo of the Moment: Tsukiji Fish Market, Tokyo

© taggle burman

Photo of the Moment: Dolphins Dance, Japan

Dolphins Dance, Japan © kalandrakas

Annual ‘Crying Sumo’ Baby Contest Held in Tokyo

The annual baby crying contest was held at the Sensoji Temple in Tokyo last Sunday. At least 80 babies participated in the traditional contest that determines which baby cries first as a pair is held aloft by two sumo wrestlers who persuade them to cry. If both babies begin bawling at the same time, the [...]

Japan Celebrates Annual ‘Festival of the Steel Phallus’

Festival of the Steel Phallus, Japan © Saya M. Every year, hundreds of camera wielding tourists gather around the Kanamara Shrine in Kawasaki, Japan to see something they’ll never get to see in their home towns – a large, twelve foot pink representation of a penis being held aloft by chanting men, and paraded down [...]

Japan’s Annual Naked Man Festival

A bizarre ancient festival in the city of Okayama brings together lucky amulets, wooden sticks and men in white diapers, like the ones worn by Sumo wrestlers. In ancient Japan, the festival marked the culmination of the 14-day New Year festivities, during which monks presented paper amulets to the elders of the community. The demand [...]

Photo of the Moment: Morning Commute, Japan

© *Solar ikon*

Japan’s Male Geisha Emerges

With Japanese women paying to enter clubs where beautiful young boys dress and act as bashful schoolboys to please them, it was just a matter of time before the male geisha emerged. A new trend in Japan has gender roles reversed as successful women pay suave young men to spend an evening with them, flattering [...]

Japanese Grave Maker Develops High Tech Gravestone

It was just a matter of time before the dead got high tech, and Japan is unsurprisingly showing the way. A Japanese grave stone maker has developed grave stones with embedded bar codes in them. When visitors visit the gravesites of their dead relatives, they can take a picture of the tag with their cell [...]

Cosplish School Opens in Tokyo

To the long list of English language hybrids around the world, you can add a new dialect – Cosplish. It has its origins in Tokyo, and more specifically, in the slang used in cos-play, or costume play, which has fans of anime and manga comics dressing up and speaking like the animated characters. If you’d [...]

Bizarre Japanese Art of Inemuri

Japanese Art of Inemuri “To be asleep, but present.” This is the Japanese art – or gift – of ‘inemuri.’ In the most sleep-deprived nation on Earth, the Japanese talent for falling asleep anywhere – on trains, in elevators, during meetings – is both necessary, and admired. In Japan’s workaholic culture, falling asleep out of [...]

Bizarre Culture: ‘We Are the World’, Japanese Style [Video]

We Are the World is among the most famous and unmistakably recognizable songs of the last twenty-five years. It’s the only time I can recall during which such a massively famous group of music superstars simultaneously collaborated and produced a single song. … written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie, produced and conducted by Quincy [...]

Japan’s New Fetish Cafe Caters to Train Maniacs

If you have a thing for trains, railroads or nubile young railroad conductors, you might want to head Japanward, and check out the Little TGV bar in Akihabara, Japan (where else?). The bar, which opened February 21st, features waitresses dressed as railroad clerks, railroad themed decor, and is run by a fictitious railroad company called [...]

First ‘Schoolboy’ Fetish Cafe Opens in Japan

More fetishes from the Land of the Rising Sun. The success of homoerotic romances and manga comics has fueled the growth of an industry that’s targeting the female otaku – women who are also fans of animation movies, computer games and comics. In short: all things geeky. Tokyo’s Edelstein Boarding School At Japan’s first schoolboy [...]

Bizarre Culture: Japanese Marshmallow Eating Contest [Video]

Were I given an entire lifetime to imagine some of the ideas seen on Japanese game shows, I’m not confident I could devise anything nearly as bizarre as this: I’m honestly jealous of the sheer amount of creativity the writers of these shows are able to muster.

Going Green with a Vengeance in Tokyo

Tokyo has never been known for its vast parklands. Green space accounts for just four percent of the city, compared to twelve percent in New York. The rapid reconstruction efforts post World War II ensured that Tokyo quickly evolved into a concrete jungle with skyscrapers clogging the city, and every available inch used up. Now, [...]

Tokyo Says “No Smoking” in Taxis

As a rather apt follow-up to this video review of Tokyo’s coffin hotels … Tokyo has joined the growing list of cities to enforce stricter restrictions on smoking in public. After Paris’ cafes, it’s Tokyo’s taxis that have become smoke-free zones. Two Tokyo taxi associations initiated the ban on lighting up inside, responding to the [...]

Coffin Hotels of Tokyo [Video]

I’m positively fascinated by all things Japanese, and particularly the Capsule (a.k.a. “Coffin”) hotels of Tokyo. Geobeats explains: Somewhere William Gibson is smiling.

Japan to Introduce World’s Fastest Maglev Train – Over 300 MPH!

The Central Japan Railway Company (J R Central) plans to build a maglev train between Tokyo and Central Japan. At a projected speed of 310 miles an hour or 500 kilometers, the train has already been billed as the world’s fastest maglev train. A maglev train uses electromagnetic force rather than an engine to propel [...]

Japanese Underwater Toilet Provides Patrons a “Loo” with a View

Akashi, Japan’s Mumin Papa Café – built at a cost of $275,000 – offers this underwater restroom (or “loo” if you like) with a view to its patrons: I can’t imagine this is too healthy for the fish’s psyche.

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