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Smokers Find New Haven in Japan, But for a Price

Smokers Find New Haven in Japan, But for a Price

It’s getting tougher to be a smoker in Japan. It was once a paradise for tobacco lovers, who were free to light up in workplaces, restaurants, bars, on the street, and pretty much any darn place they pleased. Add to that the low price of cigarettes and the ever-present vending machines, and you couldn’t swing a tanuki without hitting a smoker. In recent years, though, smoking has been banned on the streets and in offices, the taxes on tobacco have gone up, and more and more public spaces are going smoke free. The government even announced recently that they are launching a 10-year plan to cut the smoking rate nearly in half.

While this trend has tobacco companies shaking in their boots, one company has turned it into a golden business opportunity. For just 50 yen, Ippuku (roughly “a cig” in Japanese) offers smokers a comfortable, indoor place to take a 15-min smoke break. Read More

46 things that surprise foreigners in Japan

46 things that surprise foreigners in Japan

Japan is a weird, amazing, amusing and confusing place, and I’m not just talking about the maid cafes and pornographic manga. Even things that your average Japanese would consider completely commonplace and boring can be captivating for foreigners. After exhaustive research (well, some research anyway), Rocket News has compiled this list of 46 things visitors to Japan find surprising.

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How a Prius Can Make You Dinner

Toyota announced this month that it will be a releasing a system for using your Prius plug-in hybrid as a big ol’ battery. The key feature is an inverter which will allow you to plug household electronics directly into the car through a water-proof cable. Read More

New Cyber-Attack Warning System Makes Cyber-Warfare Look as Cool as It Does in the Movies

Have you ever watched a movie where a group of unbelievably attractive looking hackers broke into some government organization by constantly typing on their keyboard like they were typing an essay? Yet according to the display they were opening and closing executable files.

Sadly when alleged cyber-attacks occured during the South Ossetia War there were probably no fancy CGI effects showing neon blue wires interacting with each other while Scarlet Johansson with a poor Slavic accent convinces a Putin-looking Sean Penn to move all the nuclear data to a back-up server – constantly typing all the while.

No, the reality is probably just a bunch of sweaty Russians crowded around a blinking DOS prompt. That is, until now, as Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) have developed a new cyber-attack alert system called Daedalus.  And let me tell you, cyber warfare has never been sexier!

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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

The RockeNews24 Cooking Class – We Mix and Solidify Ten McDonald’s Hamburgers to create One Huge Hamburger

You know that we at RocketNews24 love to do crazy things with McDonald’s foods, like cooking a Big Mac Value Meal in a rice cooker or ordering different burgers without the buns.This time, we did a little experimenting with 10 McDonalds hamburgers and a unique cooking product that we’ve been fascinated with, called “Matomeruko Easy” (which would roughly translate to “Easy Mix-N-Solidify Powder” in English). Read More

Cool, Cute and Eco-friendly! Supermarket Shopping in Summer Made Easy with New Hello Kitty Cooler Tote Bag

As you probably are already aware, Hello Kitty is definitely one very busy cat! In some of our past posts, we’ve seen her being baked into golden brown treats, or collaborating with Sadako from the “Ring” series. This time, Ms. Kitty will help make your shopping experience at the supermarket more environment-friendly and hassle free (on top of adding an element of cute, of course), with the new “Hello Kitty Premium Basket Cooler Tote Bag“. Read More

Are You Ready to Confront the Most Terrifying Toilet Paper in the World?

If you were terrified by the Ring series featuring Sadako, you may want to steer clear of this particular brand of toilet paper. But, you may ask, how can toilet paper be terrifying? Well, once you read about this unique toilet paper, I think you’ll agree that it’s one scary product! This toilet paper, made by tissue and toilet paper manufacturer Hayashi Paper, has printed on it a novella by Koji Suzuki, the author of the original Ring novels! And the best part? It’s now going to be available in English! Read More

Finally Put an End to Mobile Phones Slipping Out Of Your Shirt Pocket with K-Pocke

I can’t recall how many times mobile phones and mp3 players have slipped out of the front pocket of my shirt.  Always ending with that cringe inducing thud as my precious device hits the cold hard ground.  There was even one incident involving a turtle pond and now-gone iPod Classic that I can’t bear to go into.

If someone was videotaping all these moments in my life it would have made an excellent opening to a commercial for K-Pocke (pronounced like pokemon), a pocket designed so that nothing slips out.

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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?

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Custom Made Notebooks Going Like Custom Made Hotcakes

A bookstore called Sanseido, in the Jinbo book selling district of Tokyo, on 1 April announced that they would be selling custom-made notebooks, and it wasn’t a joke.  In fact, they have been flying off the shelves, which is good because these books are ready to take away moments after ordering them.

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Incredible (and almost impossible) paper craft – this rose doesn’t smell sweet but certainly is beautiful!

Do you enjoy the Japanese paper craft of origami? If you do, here’s a video that’s sure to fascinate you! The video shows an exquisite paper rose being made, and it’s been receiving a considerable amount of attention recently – and not just for the impressive skill demonstrated. It’s actually causing many internet viewers to cry out in frustration, and once you see the video, you’ll know the reason why. 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

That’s no Battle Station! It’s an Ice Sphere – in the Shape of the Death Star!

Okay, we think all of you Star Wars fans out there will love this product! Do you remember being impressed when the Death Star appeared in the very first Star Wars movie accompanied by Ben Kenobi’s famous words, “That’s no moon. It’s a space station!”? Well, now you can create your own Death Star – from ice! Read More

What’s that shadow? It’s a bird, it’s a plane – no it’s the planet Venus, and it won’t be happening again for another 105 years!

We previously brought you a video capturing beautiful images of a “super moon“, but we now have some amazing photos from another astronomical event – the transit of planet Venus across the Sun. The event was observed in Japan on June 6th over a period of approximately six hours starting from 7 a.m. Japan Time. You may want to take a look at these images, because the next time Venus makes a transit across the Sun will be 105 years from now! Read More

Hakone Opens an Evangelion Themed Souvenir Shop, Hopes They Don’t Get Overrun With Fans Again

Following the opening of Evangelion Store Tokyo-01, and with the release of the third installment of the reboot series, Evangelion 3.0: You Can (Not) Redo, a new Evangelion souvenir shop is scheduled to open in the town of Hakone on 14 July.

Hakone, which serves as the backdrop for the Evangelion story (where it’s renamed as Tokyo-3), is happy to be home to the second official Evangelion store, called “Eva Shop” but is also hoping they don’t get a repeat of what happened two years ago.

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Researchers Identify Protein Responsible for the Effects of Aging, Rather than a Fountain of Youth, We May Need a Syphon of Old

A research group headed by Professor Kazunari Komuro at Osaka University believes they have found the chemical responsible for effects of aging like deterioration of muscles.

The nasty chemical responsible for making us old and frail is called C1q. Being able to regulate it in our bodies can possibly lead to treatments and prevention of more serious health problems like heart attacks and strokes.

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[Video] From sick animal to beautiful healthy kitten – one cat’s amazing recovery will warm your hearts!

See this picture of an adorable kitten? Well, just one month earlier, this kitten was a sorry sight – she was very sick and her eyes were closed shut with an infection. Fortunately, she was found by someone kind who gave her the food and tender loving care she so desperately needed, and in the space of just one month, she makes an amazing recovery from a sick little animal to a beautiful healthy kitten! And it’s all captured in a lovely, heartwarming video. Read More

[Quiz] How Well Do You Know Your Japanese Hand Gestures?

Recently we ran an article about obscene gestures in many parts of the world, but now RocketNews would like to turn the lens inwards for a look at Japan’s hand gestures.

You may have some experience with these from spending time in Japan or from Japanese film and manga, but how well do you really think you know the gestures of this country? Take this quiz to find out.

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Smartphone Vs Wine Bottle: Can this New “Shockproof Film” Save the Mobile Device?

While attending Wireless Japan 2012 this year, we were able to see some offerings by the best companies of the mobile industry.  But many times, it’s the small to mid-sized businesses that really aim to make a name for themselves.

Enter Sun Crest Ltd., who shocked many with their line of shockproof screen film protectors.  Although it’s not officially released, we got ahold of a sample and put it to the test with some whacks from a wine bottle.

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