AU Hikari is a broadband service for subscribers in Japan including internet (yeah, 1GBps), tv, and digital phone. Their most recent commercial uses a Rube Goldberg machine to highlight the “power of optics”. Rube Goldberg machines are referred to in Japanese as a Pythagoras Device or sometimes by the eponym “Pythagoras Switch” (named after the popular…
Momotaro aka The Peach Boy is a very well known Japanese folktale. It’s most often depicted with cute characters, although the story itself is an action packed battle starring Momotaro and the monkey, pheasant, and dog he befriends in his travels. Pepsi Japan has picked up the story and began releasing a series of commercials…
I was perusing through some of the recently added tv shows on Hulu the other day (I have Hulu Plus so I can watch on my devices), and noticed that some live action Japanese tv shows have been added for (I believe) the first time. They seem to be shows also available on the “DramaFever”…
A weekly staple for fans of the Japanese comedy team Downtown, and their friends is set to come to an end. The gang on Lincoln will be calling it quits. The show started up in October of 2005 and will be finishing a successful run on Tuesday, September 10th. Mimura from “Summers” posted a message…
One of the longest running manga in English translation in the US, Ranma 1/2, the unique story of a boy who was cursed to turn into a girl whenever he is wet by cold water. Hot water lets him revert to his original form. (Incidentally, his father turns, not into a girl, but into a…
The YouTube Japan official blog recently announced the creation of a Tokyo Metropolitan Government channel. It is all in Japanese but has some surprisingly interesting videos (unlike a lot of the other YouTube channels of Japanese government agencies… I’m looking at you MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology) because I had high…
When I first moved to Japan it was rare for people to have email and NHK was pretty much my only way to watch any American tv… due to these extenuating circumstances… yes, I have seen every episode of Full House, and far too many episodes of Airwolf than I should have. As the internet…
We reported back in April that model/actress Koyuki, who is also well-known in the United States had married uber-popular actor Kenichi Matsuyama who may be best known abroad for his work in the Death Note live action movie series. (Koyuki and Kenichi Matsuyama Get Married) On September 3rd, they announced that Koyuki is pregnant. She…
If you are living in Japan and need a football fix, there are several things you can do from some of the underground live feeds that are more often used to broadcast soccer matches all over the world. I relied on these for a while but found them to be unreliable, and to sometimes be…
The internet is alive with comments about how bad the Aqua Timez rock band’s lead vocalist Futoshi’s rendering of Kimi Ga Yo. Now, in defense of Futoshi, that is a hard song to do well and is definitely out of his genre. Aqua Timez is a fine band, especially as Japanese rock bands go, so…
Lady Gaga recently showed up at an MTV Video Music Aid Japan event recently with her eyes closed the whole time. The pop star showed up wiearing sunglasses but surprised the crowd when she removed them. She had anime style eyes painted on her eyelids and did the entire press conference with her eyes closed…
Hitoshi Matsumoto of the comedy duo Downtown, recently told fans he had a big announcement to make. Known for having a playful and almost sadistic sense of humor at times, fans didn’t know what to expect until he announced that his film, “Big Man Japan” (Dai-Nipponjin in Japanese) was picked up for a remake by…