Kotaku East

Wonderfully Odd Japanese Museum Has “Face Rocks”

What do E.T., Nemo, and Jesus have in common? They all apparently look like stones housed in one of Japan’s most peculiar (and charming) museums: the Hall of Curious Rocks. Located in Saitama, outside Tokyo, the collection is filled over 1,700 stones—over 900 of them are “face rocks.” The museum’s founder, who passed away in…

Tokyo’s Most Unusual Restaurants Offer More Than Food

Some restaurants you go for the food. Not these, though. You patron these because they’re interesting, unique, or down right odd. With the Tokyo Game Show kicking off next month, now might be as good a time as any to look at some, certainly not all, of Tokyo’s most peculiar restaurants and bars. Some of…

Japan’s Smoking Culture Research Society has rushed to Hayao Miyazaki’s defense. According to Yahoo News Japan, the group points out that there isn’t data on the number of smokers when the anime is set. But! Data from 1950 states that 84.5 percent of Japanese men smoked. The second point the group made was putting more…

Killer is Dead: Heavy on the Action, Light on the Plot

Running through a dark heavy world, wielding a katana and cybernetic arm, and battling shadowy twisted freaks. You are Mondo Zappa, executioner for the Bryan Execution Firm, out to kill criminals and assassins. Welcome to the world of Killer is Dead, the latest game from the mind of Suda 51. The game is currently scheduled…

So, How’s That Japanese Manga on Steve Jobs?

The new Ashton Kutcher movie based on the biography of Steve Jobs, Jobs is headed to theaters tomorrow. Sadly, Japan won’t be getting the movie until November. But, in the meantime, Japan has a new manga about the black turtleneck-wearing genius. Titled Steve Jobs and written by the author of the popular Thermae Romae manga…

Japan’s Mysterious Underwater Circles Are Lovely

Behold the ocean’s version of crop circles. But this wasn’t made by aliens or humans pretending to be aliens. A single, small fish made this circle. Last fall, there were the reports of “mysterious” underwater sea circles, discovered 80 feet below sea level off the coast of Japan. Yoji Okata, an underwater photographer with over…

Inside North Korea’s Newest Video Game Arcade

Arcades might be a thing of the past in North America, but they live on in, um, North Korea. The country’s state media recently released photos of an arcade that supposedly just opened on the Rungna Islet in Pyongyang, the country’s capital. The islet is home to the world’s largest stadium, basketball courts, a skateboard…

Explaining Microsoft Windows’ Evolution Is Simple

Over the years, Micrsoft’s Windows OS has changed. It has evolved. There’s an easy way to explain the differences between each version, and it involves houses. Yes, houses. Here ya go, from Windows 95 to Windows 8 with the variations explained using dwellings: Of course, this comparison omits earlier versions, such as Windows 3.0, which…

Anti-Smoking Lobby Goes After Studio Ghibli’s New Film

Studio Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki smokes. A lot. And so do the characters in his latest film, Kaze Tachinu. It’s like nearly every character, save for the female lead, smokes in Kaze Tachinu. If you think about the 1920s and 30s setting, the excess cigarettes make perfect sense: It seemed like nearly everyone smoked in…

Make Any Anime or Game Character Totally Uncool

In Japan, there’s an inexpensive clothing chain called Shimamura (しまむら). Online, people tend to make fun of Shimamura and say it’s “not cool.” But can it make anything seem dorky? One meme tried to find out. Below is an actual Shimamura. Above the shop’s logo, it reads, “Fashion Center” in Japanese. Thing is, many in…

This Taiwanese 3DS Seems Rare

In Taiwan, Nintendo is localizing Doraemon: Nobita’s Number Adventure, which, of course, features the iconic blue robotic cat Doraemon. To mark the game’s release, Nintendo is holding a contest in which five lucky people can win the above 3DS. As Siliconera points out, that makes this one rare—and incredibly collectible—3DS handheld. This Doraemon 3DS Will…

Why There Won’t Be Akira 2

Katsuhiro Otomo created the now classic Akira manga. He brought that to the screen as a groundbreaking anime. And Otomo is not interested in making a sequel. In a Japanese TV interview earlier this summer, Otomo talked about his latest effort, the anime Short Peace. Otomo also talked about why he continued to produce varied…

This Series is The “Daria” of Anime

Halfway through the spring anime season, I wrote two articles covering nine anime—the five anime you should be watching and the four anime you could skip. Yet, readers berated me for skipping one anime in particular. And it’s a good thing they did as My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU is an extraordinarily witty anime. Good…

These Korean Dota 2 Announcers Are Mind-Blowingly Great

Breaking it! Pummels it! Chop it! AHHHHHHHHHHHHH… Oh goodness, this is amazing. The biggest Dota 2 tournament in the world wasn’t only home to talented players, but also to wonderful eSports announcers. This video of Korean casters, via tipster Sang, features some of the best. This is fantastic stuff, highlighted in a terrific clip that…

This Roulette Table is My Favorite Gundam Battlefield Ever

About a month back, the PlayStation 3 got its newest Gundam video game. But unlike past Gundam video games, this one takes place not in a fictional future full of giant robots but rather in a modern day setting where Gundams are small-scale plastic models. In the game itself, you go to an arcade, put…

The Cameo Characters Are the Only Special Thing about Onimusha Soul

Late last week we took a look at the scores of famous Capcom characters that have gotten samurai redesigns in the online social game Onimusha Soul. But sadly, while the cameo characters really are cool to look at, everything else in the game just feels run-of-the-mill for a collectible online card game. When you first…

Japanese Arcade Apparently Bans Smartphone Games

There appears to be a local arcade in Japan with one clear rule: If you are caught playing smartphone games, you’ll get kicked out. Spotted by Japanese Twitter user @komathi_eiki, the sign says that social networking titles and portable games are not permitted. Those who are discovered playing either of these will have to leave!…

Lightning Striking This Japanese Train Is Beautiful and Terrifying

Yesterday in Tokyo, a bolt of lightning struck Tokyo’s Odakyu Electric Railway. The incident looks both stunning and scary. Below, you can see footage of the lightning storm. Skip ahead to around the 1:18 mark to see lightning strike the carriage, which caused a power outage. As IT Media points out, minutes after the train…

Here’s Guillermo Del Toro Looking at a Giant Gundam

Movie director Guillermo Del Toro is in Japan to promote Pacific Rim. He had a big day out in Tokyo that was filled with ice cream and giant mecha. It looks like the best day ever. In this clip from Japanese morning television, you can see Del Toro enjoying, as he calls it, “fat otaku…

Project Phoenix, an indie JRPG with a seasoned staff, already hit its Kickstarter goal—no, make that nearly doubled its goal. Congrats!