Brian Ashcraft

If you live in Japan and own Grand Theft Auto V, good news. GTA V Online is finally rolling out in the region on November 7. It gets its own server, which might bother some players. Others won’t care.

North Korean Camo Actually Isn’t That Awful

Wow, the North Korean troops in the above image sure stick out! If anything, their camouflage uniforms make it easier to spot them. Camo isn’t supposed to do that. Good camo, anyway. The above image recently appeared on 2ch, Japan’s largest web forum, in a thread titled “The North Korean Army’s Camouflage Uniforms Are Terrible.”…

Want To Be Alone? Here’s a $600 Cardboard Box

Maybe you want privacy. Or maybe you want to sing karaoke or talk online. Or maybe you want to be alone. Good news, there’s a box for you. A six hundred dollar box. It’s called “danbocchi,” which is a pun on the Japanese word for “cardboard” (“danbooru” or 段ボール) and “lonely” (“bocchi” or ぼっち). Danbocchi…

Halloween Doesn’t Get Any Scarier than… Hayao Miyazaki?

If you think this is wonderfully creepy (it really is), just wait. This Halloween costume of famed animator Hayao Miyazaki can get creepier. Shame we couldn’t get the below photo in GIF form. The multiple Miyazaki heads make up for that. These photos, courtesy of Twitter user ryokutya55, were taken at the Kawasaki Halloween parade…

This Winter, Become a Humanoid Fleece

We’ve seen full zip hoodies before, but this full-zip static-free fleece covers more than your chest. This covers your entire body. This is the “Humanoid Fleece.” The Humanoid Fleece is designed to keep you warm—around people you really, really trust. It’s also designed so you can wear it while going to the bathroom. Going on…

Why Nintendo Had to Kill the Wii [UPDATE: Wii Not Quite Dead!]

Strange that Nintendo killed the Wii, huh? It just stopped making the console [UPDATE: in Japan, at least]. So sudden! Odder when you consider that the Famicom, released in 1983, was on sale in Japan until 2003. But the Famicom (NES, in the West) was followed by the Super Nintendo. And the SNES was a…

Japanese Hotel Rooms Don’t Get Much Cheaper Than This

Traveling to Japan on a budget? Need a place to stay? Don’t mind people having sex all around you? Well, have I got a hotel room for you. Enter hotel San Patchi. It’s located in Juso, which is a stone’s throw from the bustling Umeda district. It’s not the best of neighborhoods, sure (they filmed…

Five years after its Western release, Advance Wars: Days of Ruin is finally hitting Japan—as a Club Nintendo Platinum Reward. The game was previously delayed several times in Japan and then cancelled.

No, China, Master Chief’s Battle Suit Is Not Real

The U.S. military is working on new “smart armour.” And state-controlled China Central Television recently covered the gear by passing off fan-made Halo battlewear as U.S. military concepts. This is not a joke. The program was New Defence Observations, a military show (read: propaganda), on Channel 7. On the October 19 episode, which is recently…

Welcome To Nightmares, Sleepy Humans

Oh, I wasn’t planning on sleeping tonight anyway. Or tomorrow night. Or the night after that. Finnish photographer Perttu Saksa created this series of photos taken in Indonesia, titled “A Kind of You.” They depict Jakarta street monkeys wearing doll heads. Saksa’s site notes, “Modern city culture has turned the old tradition into eerie and…

According to a Japanese arcade, Ultra Street Fighter IV will be released next April in Japan. Kotaku is following up with Capcom and will update this story should the company comment.

Local Chinese Government’s Photoshop Is As Crappy As They Come

Look, if you’re going to be in the propaganda business, you need to remember one thing: Get Photoshop right! According to China News (via HugChina), the above photo supposedly features the vice mayor of Ningguo county and other officials “visiting” a 100-year-old woman—a very small one hundred year old woman, surrounded by a halo and…

A Hello Kitty Toilet Just for Cats

Over the years, Sanrio has put Hello Kitty on seemingly everything: from beer andmelons to airplanes and lingerie. Add a kitty litter box to the mix. The Kitty toilet has an odor eliminating, antibacterial mat as well as deodorizing antibacterial litter. The actual toilet looks a little pinker than the promotional art (compare below): Surely…

Of Course, People Are Dressing as Kim Jong-un for Halloween

Not lots of people, mind you. Three, as far as I can tell. But there’s still time before Halloween. According to Redditor joowee, “I did not want to go the typical route of dressing up as a sexy character for Halloween this year.” So Jowee, instead, dressed as the sexiest man alive. Joowee wore the…

In this iOS Game, You Beat Up Hentai Characters

Has it come to this? I guess it has! In iOS game Punishment Punch Girl, your job is to dish out a beating to pervs. Noritaka Funamizu, who designed and co-designed several Street Fighter games, oversaw the development of Punishment Punch Girl. So, this iOS game does have a pedigree. 女子高生に××されちゃうヘンタイが大集合 [Famitsu via Siliconera] To…

Unseen Tetsuya Nomura Sketches From the 1990s

These days Square Enix’s Tetsuya Nomura busies himself with Final Fantasy XV and Kingdom Hearts III. But let’s take a look back in time, before he was the famous game designer he is today. Takashi Aki, who worked as a planner on Final Fantasy V and FFVI, was recently cleaning up and discovered a handful…

Chinese Buildings with Fake Windows Painted On

In the city of Qingdao, a new apartment complex is raising eyebrows. Some of the windows, it seems, aren’t windows. They’re paint. China’s iFeng reports that on one side of the buildings, there are “false windows” that were painted to look like the real deal. From a distance, it is hard to tell that they…

The PlayStation 4 has a day-one patch when it goes on sale on November 15 in the West. However, when it launches in Japan next February, the console will come with the patch pre-loaded on the console.

Who Thinks Japan’s Owl Cafes Are a Hoot?

Forget cat cafes. Or black cat cafes. Or penguin bars. Japan’s latest novelty cafe is the “fukurou cafe” (フクロウカフェ), or the “owl cafe.” Owl cafes like Fukurou no Mise (“Owl Shop”) and Tori no Iru Cafe (“The Cafe with Birds”) started getting noticed online in Japan late last year. This summer saw more owl cafes…

I Wish I Could Make a Transformer Like This

Japanese Twitter user Dori Asuka made this Golden Warrior Gold Lightan robot from candy boxes. It even transforms. Incredible, huh? But making the papercraft was no easy task. Anime Golden Warrior Gold Lightan aired in Japan during the early 1980s and followed the adventures of a young boy and a gold cigarette lighter than turned…