On Feb. 25, a fire broke out in a Las Vegas condo. In it, the body of James Lacella, 48, was discovered. According to investigators, Lacella had been dead for days prior with a bullet in his head. The fire was apparently a cover-up. ABC Las Vegas affiliate KTNV reported that police were able to…
Tomorrow is White Day in Japan. I’m supposed to give sweets to women who gave me chocolate on Valentine’s Day. Feeling proactive, I made cookies this weekend for my wife, my mother-in-law, and my sister-in-law—only to discover that my sister-in-law had made cookies for me and my family! These are some of them. You can…
With Sony’s PlayStation Suite, Xperia smartphone owners can enjoy PlayStation titles on their handsets. Starting today, Sony revealed the 21 PlayStation 1 titles that can be downloaded for ¥600 (US$7.30) a pop on the Xperia NX and Xperia acro HD via PlayStation Suite. They are: Addie no Okurimono：To Moze From Addie, Arc the Lad, Bealphareth,…
Photographer Holger Mette created this Tokyo time lapse video over the span of last month with only a Canon 5D mk2. The result is spectacular. Mette aims to shoot other cities as well in timelapse. For more, check out his travel blog Tokyo in Timelapse [Japan Probe]
Korean boy band Dong Bang Shin Ki (DBSK or “Tohoshinki” in Japan) unloaded a laser light SPECTACULAR during a broadcast on local television. While the show took place in 2008 (so old!), it’s recently become a meme in Korea, where it continues to amuse the internet—especially of late. The show inspired Photoshops and comparisons to…
Do you like sci-fi anime Neon Genesis Evangelion? Do you have thousands of dollars burning a hole in your pocket? Have I got a deal for you. Gainax, the company behind Neon Genesis Evangelion, is offering life-sized plugsuit wearing statues of Eva characters Asuka Langley Soryu, Kaworu Nagisa and Rei Ayanami Each figure costs ¥430,000…
To promote Street Fighter X Tekken, Capcom roped in a handful of women to cosplay as the fighting game characters. Dubbed “Miss St. X”, the women are bikini models and starlets. One, however, stands apart when wearing funny shoes and throwing big, heavy balls. See, Rina Ohtsuka, who is cosplaying as Tekken‘s Nina, is a…
No wonder a former Japanese Olympic snowboarder is so into otaku (“geek”) culture. It seems there a whole group of snowboarding otaku, decked out in unabashedly nerdy attire. These photos are from the ski slops of Nagano Prefecture. Besides the cosplaying snowboarders, there are geeked out snowboards, called “ita-board”. They feature anime and video game…
Western games are getting increasingly popular in Japan. But they’re still a small slice of the pie. Just ask ZeniMax Asia’s Tetsu Takahashi. ZeniMax Media, of course, owns American developers id Software (Doom) and Bethesda Softworks (The Elder Scrolls) as well as new Japanese studio, Tango Gameworks, with Shinji Mikami (above). Mikami, best known for…
It’s a period of time in nearly every Japanese boy’s life. Sometime before preschool starts and shortly after it ends, kids become enamored with Ultraman. Some never outgrow their fascination with the towering superhero who flies to earth to kick monster butt. I don’t blame them. Ultraman is badass. Ultraman debuted in Japan during the…
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I am obsessed with Instagram. I think it’s the most wonderful thing. Ever. It’s not, I know, but I am finding myself spending significant amounts of time on it. So when I heard there was an app that incorporated Instagram, I got all excited. Talk about easily excited! It’s called InstaMatch, and it’s a card…
Earlier this year, four junior high school students apparently broke into a shuttered love hotel. Love hotels are the Japanese equivalent of “no tell motels”, where couples can meet for trysts. They typically offer complimentary condoms. These four junior high students supposedly stole a huge amount of unused rubbers from a shutdown love hotel. One…
This Sunday was the one year anniversary of the Tohoku Earthquake. Around the country, people paused at 2:46pm—the moment the quake first hit. On Saturday, I noticed a display at a shopping mall of manga art from some of Japan’s most famous manga artists. Each of them drew pictures and wrote encouraging messages. The result…
Newly released Blades of Time is a spiritual successor to X-Blades, a hack-and-slash game noteworthy if only for its risqué Japanese style character design. Blades of Time is the game’s spiritual successor. Kotaku has covered the title before (here), but honestly, this title hasn’t been on my radar. At all. It stars Ayumi, who appeared…
You think only male nerds are scary? Wrong! Japanese voice actor Shinnosuke Tachibana is so freaked out by some of his female fans that he actually asked them to stop tailing him. As pointed out by Japanese site OtaNews, late last week Tachibana, who does voice work for Inazuma Eleven and Konami dating games, uploaded…
She really does! This is Rui, and she’s done a myriad of cosplay, including a handful of fighting game characters. Her gaming father instilled a love of video games in her from a very young age. Besides Street Fighter Zero 3, favorites include Final Fantasy IV, Final Fantasy VI, and many, many others. Rui is…
Anyone who films himself or herself ranting about a ban and posting it online might have issues. Anyone who does that while wearing a plastic bag might be nutso. In this video, a PS3 owner, who was apparently banned from the PlayStation Network, bitched and moaned—while wearing a several snuggies and a plastic bag on…
This weekend the Hodare Festival got underway in Niigata, Japan. Hodare means “male genitals”, and the centerpiece of this Shinto fertility festival is a giant wooden penis. Measuring 2.2m and weighting 600kg, the wooden penis in enshrined and carries religious significance. People believe praying to it or touching it can bring marital bliss and fertility…
Fighting game players are particular about their sticks. They have every right to be considering how important it is to play with a sturdy stick and tough casing. That’s what the Drop FireDragon stick aims to deliver—something tough, sturdy, and metal. But does it? Right out of the box, so much of the FireDragon hits…
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