Brian Ashcraft

The World’s First Kit Kat Store Is Opening in Tokyo

Japan is famous for its Kit Kats. The country has a slew of unique flavors that simply aren’t available elsewhere. On this month, it will get the first Kit Kat specialty store on Earth. Called Kit Kat Chocolatory, the store will open on January 17 at the Seibu Department Store in Tokyo’s Ikebukuro. It will…

A Collection of Japanese Katana Fails

Japanese katana are not only legendary, but sharp! You have to know what the hell you are doing. These experts most certainly do. But while practicing, they’ve cut up their fair share of successes—and failures. Before we look at their fails, here are over nine minutes of katana cutting perfection, courtesy of YouTube user shachiNT…

Fried Scorpion? Osaka Restaurant Serves Up Unusual Eats

If you ever visit Osaka, be sure to try one of its most famous dishes, “kushikatsu” (串カツ). Typically, it’s fried pork on skewers. One restaurant’s menu is anything but typical. The place to go for good kushikatsu (also called “kushiage” or 串揚げ) is Shinsekai. The neighborhood is rather rundown, and it’s hardly the nice part…

Hideo Kojima Taunts Us with Ground Zeroes on the PS Vita

Boy, that Hideo Kojima! First, he torments us with Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes on the PS4, and now via Twitter he’s teasing the game’s Remote Play for the PS Vita. The nerve. In these stills, you can see how Ground Zeroes apparently looks when running on the Vita. Nice, it seems! I’d like…

Meet Korea’s Most Infamous Character: Poop Man

This is Dongchimee. In you live in South Korea, you might be familiar with him. He’s into dookie and other shit. Note: Some readers might find this article’s content objectionable. The cartoon character is totally into collecting poop, doing poop experiments and wearing a dung hat, notes website Simply2Suitcases. Dongchimee is friends with flying laxatives…

Today, the official website of actor Kane Kosugi issued a correction and apology, stating the actor wasn’t starring in a prequel calledTekken – A Man Called X, but rather, a non-Tekken movie with the temp title Agent X. “We would like to apologize for the ineptitude on our part,” stated Kosugi’s official site. Not sure…

Young Couple Funded Gaming Habit By… Robbing Gamers

Twenty-four year-old Jun Kanemaru met his girlfriend, a runaway, via an online dating site. Once a couple, they allegedly stole from arcade gamers in Tokyo’s geek mecca Akihabara. Today, Fuji News Network reports that the unemployed Kanemaru and his unemployed girlfriend were arrested for allegedly stealing a wallet from a woman’s purse. At the time…

Korean Calendar Doodles Make the Days Fly By

Why just look at your calendar when you can draw on it? That’s what Ruliweb community member “Zaku” does. Zaku doodles on his calendars to mark when he has “work” (출근) and when he has “overtime” (야근). Days that aren’t colored in are days off. From the looks of it, he works overtime on the…

Japanese Town Gets Official Lupin The Third License Plates

Well, this might be the best Japanese town then, no? Starting April 1 (this is no joke!), the city of Sakura in Chiba, Japan is issuing 3,000 limited edition Lupin the Third motorcycle license plates. According to the city’s official site, the image of Lupin is from the first anime series. Lupin the Third‘s creator…

Inside One of the World’s Biggest Game Companies

Nexon, perhaps best known for Maple Story, was founded in South Korea. Its headquarters is now in Tokyo, however. We are not going to look in its headquarters. Instead, let’s have a look in its new South Korean digs. As pointed out by Han Kyung and GameFocus (via tipster Sang), Nexon moved into this office…

Man Paralyzed After Playing an Arcade Game

Two months ago, a 29 year-old man visited a game center in Foshan, China, while waiting to get his phone fixed. To pass the time, he tried a boxing arcade game. Three days later, he woke up, unable to speak or move his body. According to Shenzhen Satellite Television, the man, given the alias “A.…

Japan’s Latest Photo Trend: Hair Smiles

Forget duck face. And sparrow face. The latest photo trend to hit the streets of Tokyo’s Shibuya is to look down when someone snaps a pic. Kinda defeats the purpose of taking photos, no? The latest photo trend to hit the “gal” (ギャル or gyaru) subculture was recently covered by Japanese television and has become…

Sasuga Minami, the kid’s show host with bad words on her costume, has issued an apology Minami said the language on the outfit was “not on purpose,” adding that she didn’t know or recognize what was written. “I am truly sorry,” Minami wrote, adding, “The onus for this is entirely on me.”

Is Japanese Society Ready for These Adults? Are You?

Brace yourself Japan! You have some new, fully fledged members of society with truly outrageous fashion. Today is Coming of Age Day (成人の日 or Seijin no Hi) in Japan. It is for all of the country’s youth who turned 20 years old in the past year. They are now officially adults and fully-fledged members of…

Not Everyone Is Thrilled with This Sailor Moon Parody

Last month, Korean pop group Sistar transformed into “Sailor Star” for a commercial to promote online Korean shopping site 11st. Some aren’t happy about that! Online in neighboring Japan, online commenters wondered if the online shopping site got permission to use the Sailor Moon imagery. “I thought [Korea] hated Japan?” wrote one commenter on 2ch,…

One of Japan’s Oldest (and Most Hardcore) Gamers Passed Away

On January 11, famed actress Keiko Awaji passed away in a Tokyo hospital from esophageal cancer, reports Nikkan Sports. She was 80 years old. And she loved JRPGs. Awaji has acted in over 160 feature films, including Akira Kurosawa’s 1949 classic Stray Dog. Later in life, she became well-known online as a hardcore gamer—so much…

Oh God, They Are Making Another Tekken Movie [Update]

You remember the last one, don’t you? A movie so bad that the games’ lead developer actually apologized. If you haven’t wiped that from your brain, there’s apparently another live-action Tekken happening. According to Cinema Today, actor Kane Kosugi (Godzilla: Final Wars, DOA: Dead or Alive) announced that he’s starring in an upcoming Tekken film…

Hong Kong Candy Commercial Is “Surprisingly” Sexual

I bet you’ve never seen a commercial like this one for Hong Kong’s Rio Burgundy Grape Mints. Can’t get enough of these grape mints? Well, here’s almost forty seconds of outtakes. Enjoy! Rio Mints HK [YouTube] To contact the author of this post, write to bashcraftATkotaku.com or find him on Twitter @Brian_Ashcraft Kotaku East is…

Hardcore Studying in China Looks Absolutely Frightening

Exams! If you are a student, you have them. And probably hate them. But your methods of staying awake probably aren’t as interesting—and downright scary—as these. Recently on China’s Weibo, photos are currently depicting the ways some students stay away as they cram for exams, whether that be with clothes hangers or scarfs or whatever.…

Nintendo Reportedly Censored Butts for Americans. Cartoon Butts.

Americans aren’t delicate! And they like a good cartoon butt as good as anyone else. Yet, Nintendo of America apparently removed cartoon butts from Chibi-Robo. In the video below, you can see the Japanese version of 3DS game Chibi-Robo Photo Finder compared with the American version. In the original Japanese version, you can see a…