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First World Problem: Trying to Say Your Coffee Order, Becoming a Quivering Blob. Here’s an App to Help the Wannabe Coffee Connoiseur.

First World Problem: Trying to Say Your Coffee Order, Becoming a Quivering Blob. Here’s an App to Help the Wannabe Coffee Connoiseur.

As we all know, part of Starbucks’ appeal is its big menu and many choices, which naturally lead up to customizable orders. Seeing people rattle off all the options that comprise their beverage of choice is almost enough to make you develop an inferiority complex for just wanting a plain coffee. Read More

Danish Variety Store “Tiger” in Osaka Can’t Keep Up With Japanese Shoppers, Shuts Down Soon After Opening

Danish variety store, Tiger, had recently opened up its first store in Osaka, Japan, in the shopping area known as American Village. Little did they know about the propensities of the Japanese shopper.

Or maybe they just didn’t give them enough credit. In this case, it was the intensity of Japanese shoppers that resulted in the store having to unexpectedly shut down. Despite having the experience of managing stores in 16 different countries, Tiger underestimated the insatiable drive of Japanese people to shop, even if it meant queueing in line for hours and hours.

All this trouble for the European answer to the 100 yen shop... Read More

Possum Cat Plays Dead(?) in the Heat [Video]

Summer can be tough. Some days are so hot that it’s difficult to do much more than idly lie there as the heat drains you of your energy. And just imagine how bad it is if you’re covered in fur.

At first glance this kitty is just sprawled out on a sofa, but as the camera moves around (up and down, circling around, even going right up to the cat’s face), you’ll notice that it doesn’t even move its eyes.

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Mariners’ Kawasaki and his Roadrunner/Coyote Fake Steal Brings Smiles to New York

Sunday afternoon, Seattle Mariners shortstop Munenori Kawasaki was on first base and showed off a sweet little fake steal move before pedaling back to first. It got not only the commentators but team members on both sides chuckling a bit. Read More

What’s The Best Thing You Ever Said To Your Teacher (To Make Them Completely Lose It)?

We’ve all had teachers with a variety of temperaments. Some were cool, mellow. Some awkward, or just characters. （But hey, teachers are human too and they have to put up with students’ quirkiness as well).

Have you ever said or done anything that pushed your teacher over the edge, even for just a second? Below are an assortment of such utterances taken from a 2ch thread titled “Tell Us Something You Said That Pissed off Your Teacher.” Some of them may sound weird, and you may be shocked at the violent reaction of some of the teachers, but you need to take into account that some forms of hitting are still considered acceptable in Japanese schools. Read More

What A Disgrace! Was This Olympic Boxing Match Fixed? Referee Expelled

In my career as a journalist, never have I seen such a debacle. The match in question was a bantamweight match, between Azerbaijan’s Magomed Abdulhamidovand Japan’s Satoshi Shimizu. On five occasions in one round, Shimizu knocked down Abdulhamidov, who also received a two-point penalty. The judges ended up awarding victory by judgment to his opponent, who was the one who spent more time on the canvas, and the referee didn’t stop the match as he would reasonably expected to during one of these downs, nor did he even start counting down a single knockdown. What exactly is going on with refereeing in the London Olympics? Read More

You Can Do It! A Collection of Inspirational Quotes and the Famous People Who Made Them

With the start of the Olympics just around the corner, we bring you a collection of quotes from people of varying degrees of fame and glory, some sure to make you think.

Prayer alone doesn’t give you courage. You need to make the effort and pray.

– Evander Holyfield, boxer who, among other achievements, unwillingly fed Mike Tyson his ear.

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McD’s “Miami Fries”, Only in Italia! We Went to Have a Taste

They don’t mess around in Italy. Next to the regular french fries on the McDonald’s menu, you’ll find Miami Fries. Customers regularly substitute these fries with the combo sets. Read More

The Return To Cassette Tapes (Or Did We Ever Truly Leave Them Behind?)

Sony is releasing a new product, their HF Series cassette tapes. There will be 10, 60, and 90-minute versions and prices are expected to range from around 100 to 230 yen for individual tapes, though they’ll also be available in 10-packs. Possibly in consideration for its target clientele (hint: not the young), Sony has made the printed font big, as well as made the labels and index sheets easy to write in big letters. As could be expected, the netizen response to this unveiling has been colorful … Read More

One Man’s Junk Food is Another Monsieur’s Gourmet

There’s this new potsticker (aka gyza, aka dumpling) restaurant that opened in Paris, that people are actually lining up to get into. We wondered what all the fuss was about, so we went there to check it out ourselves. Read More

Science, Enhancing the Ways We Can Mess With Each Other’s Minds

Maybe, along with the drive to to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before, we also want to explore our minds and consciousness. And maybe inevitably that sometimes comes out to be inventing new ways to mess with our own heads. And so, the eggheads at Riken Research have developed the “Substitutional Reality System“. Read More

No Escape! Fuji-Q Highland’s New Unforgiving Maze

This July 28, Fuji-Q will open the doors to its new attraction, “Fortress of No Hope”. They say they’re aiming for a 0% success rate of escape from the walk-through maze building. Guests will contend (presumably enjoyably) with innumerable doors, halls, and rooms, all under a time limit. In addition, you progress through levels of increasing difficulty, with more and more hidden clues and invisible doors. Read More

Lemony Life Hack – Squeeze More Juice From Your Lemons!

Whether it’s a savory slab of salmon, or a sweet cheesecake, lemon juice can enhance a multitude of foods. But the squeezing of lemons to get their fresh juice is often tedious and seems to bear little reward. How do you all normally squeeze lemons? Most people typically cut it in half and get to squeezing straight away. But there’s a method that will yield much much much more juice, as we present below:  Read More

“Before-Death” Visions – Reports from the Afterlife

Actually, the subject is quite pertinent and the method of reporting isn’t quite fantastical or illogical. A group of doctors in Miyagi Prefecture, Japan, conducted a survey of what people reported just before they passed away. The overall finding was that about 40% reported seeing their parents and other such deceased people before dying themselves. The subjects perceived them as coming to meet and escort them into the afterlife, resulting in a more comfortable transition into death. Read More

The Story Behind the Beautiful Photo of the New MacBook ‘Mountain Lion’ OS

One of the MacBook Pro desktop backgrounds featured on Apple’s website shows an astoundingly exquisite azure pond with bare trees coming out of the water, covered in snow. It will be one of the backgrounds included with OS X Mountain Lion, to be released this July. We’ve found out a bit about the photographer responsible for this particular work… Read More

Cockroach-Killer Spider (aka Fighting Nope with More Nope)

Ah, the rainy season is upon us here in Japan. Actually, this applies to folks everywhere in humid climates, but there’s a certain creature that rejoices in this environment, known for its shininess and disconcerting nimbleness and reflexes. That’s right: the cockroach. Have you set up your home defenses for this summer?

Read More

Mindreading App (Shut Up and Take More Of My Free Will Away)?

At first glance, this tech news report seems to be telling us of an intriguing augmented reality app that’s scary good. When you point your camera at an object, it can automatically read your mind about what you’ll want to do next on the internet with respect to that object, like get a coupon for it or research about it on Wikipedia. Which would bring to mind various questions, such as, is it like auto-fill/auto-complete, remembering what you or others have done before, taken a few steps further? Is it selectively taking you to a website that’s ultimately aiming to get your money? Is it inviting you to give up your free will and just be satisfied with the website it saw fit to jump you to? How does it know what you want to do? Read More

Capture Highway Wackiness, Prove Your Driving Skills with this Rearview Mirror with Camera and LED Display

Now you can capture random moments of craziness or novelty happening while you’re driving with this new in-car camera / rearview mirror from Hamwha. It looks more or less like a normal rearview mirror but has an internal camera pointing forward to record what’s happening in front of your vehicle. Read More

Epic, Heart-Melting Lip-Dub Proposal (video)

Still making the re-post rounds on the internet is this sweet, heartwarming and funny musical marriage proposal, “Isaac’s Live Lip-Dub Proposal“. Isaac Lamb got together over 60 friends and family, most certainly planned and rehearsed, and on the day of reckoning, invited his unsuspecting fiancee, Amy, over to be met by his brother …

Read More

Use Your Sushi … On Your Smartphone

So you want to keep your smartphone on your desktop, but you don’t want to lay it flat to get inadvertently smothered by paperwork or worry about some careless mungo putting their coffee mug on it. Or you want to watch some videos on it so you prop it up against your coffee mug but the phone slides down and you actually want to drink your coffee at some point. Read More

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