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Kotaku EastJapanPachinko Company President Murdered In Japan
Masaki Uchigashima, president of Nagoya-based pachinko machine maker Takao, was found stabbed to death in the company parking garage. Aichi Prefecture police are calling it a homicide. ANN reports that the 39-year-old pachinko president was stabbed multiple times in the head and the stomach. According to authorities, Uchigashima’s suit was disheveled as though he put…
By Brian Ashcraft Published October 25, 2018 -
Kotaku East
The Birth Of Japanese Arcades
Every business has a starting point. For Japanese arcades, one of them was on department store rooftops. Yes, Japanese arcades have their roots in the carnival type games often seen at local religious festivals. But way before coffee houses installed tabletop cabinets to capitalize on the late 70s Space Invaders craze, there were game machines…
By Brian Ashcraft Published October 25, 2018 -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Voodoo Doll
What if voodoo dolls came alive and turned into K-Pop idols? We’ve all had that dream, right? No? Just me? Okay, then. VIXX debuted in 2012 and is well-known for preferring a slightly darker, moodier side to their album concepts than most of their contemporary boy groups, which is well-represented here with Voodoo Doll While…
By Seung Park Published October 25, 2018 -
Kotaku EastJapan
Fake Ultra Rare Yu-Gi-Oh! Card Leads To Arrest
Lorelei The Symphonic Arsenal was a prize card at the 2008 Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championships. There are only six in the whole world. Six real cards, that is. According to YTV and MBS, 29-year-old Shunki Iwasaki allegedly sold a fake Lorelei The Symphonic Arsenal to a 20-something year-old Kyoto woman for 400,000 yen ($3,556) through an…
By Brian Ashcraft Published October 24, 2018 -
Kotaku EastJapan
After Cocaine Allegations, Yakuza 4 Gets A New Voice Actor
In Yakuza 4‘s original PlayStation 3 release, the character Masayoshi Tanimura was played by actor Hiroki Narimiya. The upcoming PS4 remaster, however, will feature another actor. Narimiya made a name for himself as a popular TV and movie actor, starring in the live-action adaptation of Phoenix Wright as well as 2016’s Assassination Classroom: Graduation flick.…
By Brian Ashcraft Published October 24, 2018 -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Bbi Ri Bba Bba
Halloween is nearly upon us, and for the rest of this week, I’ll be dropping some tracks that fit the mood. First up: this very-awkward-to-properly-Romanize song. (The English language’s lack of a hard “b” letter makes talking about K-Pop somewhat trying at times, and this isn’t the first time we’ve encountered a tongue-twister title thanks…
By Seung Park Published October 24, 2018 -
Kotaku EastJapan
Spot What’s Wrong With This Japanese TV Screenshot
Akira Ikegami often appears on Japanese TV to explain difficult news topics or discuss history. He’s incredibly famous and has been on TV for decades. Earlier this week, he discussed French history. People noticed something off. On the recently aired Akira Ikegami Walks Through Modern History, he introduced Liberty Leading the People In Japanese, the…
By Brian Ashcraft Published October 23, 2018 -
Kotaku EastJapan
The First Official Harry Potter Cafes Coming To Japan
For a limited time, two Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts themed cafes are heading to Japan. Called the Wizarding World Cafe, they will open on November 9. There are other unofficial Harry Potter cafes, but this is apparently the first official one. The cafe will have two locations—one in Tokyo and the other in Fukuoka—and…
By Brian Ashcraft Published October 23, 2018 -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Nobody
Yours truly is easing back into things from a weeklong vacation, so let’s dip our toes back into the pool with a classic track that I already know backward and forward. And by “classic”, I’m obviously referring to the late 2000s, as that was the era that I first dove headfirst into this genre and…
By Seung Park Published October 23, 2018 -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Heartbreaker
Okay, I admit it: after listening to Lies over and over for yesterday’s column, I got sucked into a black hole of Big Bang’s music. After a journey through basically their entire discography, I arrived here: the song that put G-Dragon on the map. Heartbreaker was this Big Bang member’s big breakthrough solo debut, and…
By Seung Park Published October 12, 2018 -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Lies
I’ve used a lot of words to describe a lot of songs in this column, but I rarely call songs iconic—because words have meaning. Big Bang’s Lies is iconic. I can’t think of many songs that have withstood the test of time as well as 2007’s Lies. More than a decade after its release, it…
By Seung Park Published October 11, 2018 -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: All Night
Out of all former Sistar members, Soyou has probably been the most successful at striking out on her own, thanks to a robust pre-breakup solo and collaboration discography that set the baseline for her continuing success in K-Pop. The Latin/jazz inspiration in All Night is clear from its opening chords and makes me wish that…
By Seung Park Published October 10, 2018 -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: First Love
Does any song capture all of the shy, timid flutterings of a schoolyard crush as well as First Love does? I’m inclined to say no. Epitone Project is a one-man band under Kim Sae Jeong, who appears to have debuted around 2006 (as with most indie artists, the exact date is lost to history) and…
By Seung Park Published October 9, 2018 -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Bongsuki
Bossa Nova and Korean indie? Works better than you think. Rose Motel is an indie band that debuted in 2011. Bongsuki is part of their debut single album, You’ll Never Get Married Like That Bongsuki is notable for its lyrics, which were written in a Busan dialect instead of the standard Korean. As a result,…
By Seung Park Published October 3, 2018 -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Cider
Norazo has gone through some changes since the last time we featured them, but the central concept has remained the same: producing wacky, irreverent music couched in some truly addictive beats. Sprite-like beverages are known as cider (sa-ee-da) in Korea, and somewhere along the line, the word has come to mean something very specific in…
By Seung Park Published October 2, 2018 -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: How People Move
Get up and dance, because Akdong Musician’s How People Move is all about—you guessed it—dancing. Plus, it’s Friday. Do you really need an excuse? This brother-sister duo, stylized as AKMU, is mostly known for their acoustic pop, from which How People Move was their first significant departure. (I covered one of their acoustic pop examples,…
By Seung Park Published September 28, 2018 -
Kotaku East
Trend for Female Geeks: “Painful” Anime Bags
In Japanese, they’re called “ita-bag” (痛バッグ) or, rather, “painful bag.” And for the country’s female geeks, they’re one surefire way to express their fandom. For years now, geeky car owners have shown their love for anime, manga, and video games with “ itasha” (painmobiles). It’s been said that “ita” refers to the pain inflicted on…
By Brian Ashcraft Published September 27, 2018 -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Love City
Nine Muses is one of the most mature-concept, refined girl groups active right now, so it wasn’t surprising to see them fit like a glove into Love City’s cosmopolitan pop-inspired music. 2017’s Love City is Nine Muses’ latest release at the time of this writing, after an exodus one year earlier that saw Hyuna, Minha…
By Seung Park Published September 27, 2018 -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Day By Day
While I normally try to link to official music videos whenever possible, today is an exception—because the music video for T-ara’s Day By Day is fucking 16 minutes long, and no one has time for that. I’ve linked to a dance version, which also doesn’t even start the song until a minute into the goddamn…
By Seung Park Published September 25, 2018 -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Lightsaber
Yes, that Star Wars—the one from a galaxy far, far away—made a K-Pop song. Lightsaber, a 2015 song by EXO, was released for the purposes of marketing Star Wars: The Force Awakens in Asian countries, where the intellectual property didn’t have as much pull as it does in America. (It still doesn’t, really; do a…
By Seung Park Published September 21, 2018