JapanSugoi

Looking for something unique to bring back from Japan on your holiday?  How about these “moe” looking Astrology Condoms which are the product of  Japanese company  Yamashita Latex Industrial Ltd. 山下ラテックス,  a small Japanese firm best known for their Perma Skin, Love Collection and Impact brands of condoms.

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Are you a Doraemon fan?  If you’ve got an iPhone here’s a nifty little  application from Japan that turns your icon set into a smiling Doraemon.  This free ap is from a set of applications from Yahoo! Japan which includes Doraemon manga as well!

Doraemon iPhone app video

“Bad Apple” is a fantastic piece of stop-motion animation from early 2010 from Nico Nico Douga user “shige-ruuu.”  The amazing video was made without using photo-editing software and was created using 6,566 still photos of printed bitmaps!  The images were captured with a webcam, and the effects were achieved by changing the camera position and adjusting the focus, brightness, zoom, exposure and gain.

The original stills and music come from the song “Bad Apple!!” (arranged by Masayoshi Minoshima, featuring vocals by nomico) from the Touhou Project 東方 game series.

Happy Japanese scarecrows in rural Japan.  These photos were taken at the “Scarecrow village かかしの里” located in rural Nakamura district of 中村地区 of Ajigasawa 鯵ヶ沢町 in Amori prefecture 青森県.

In many rural farming areas you can with colorful scarecrows often dressed as anime characters.

Did you know there was a Japanese  anime version of Snow White? The popular fairy tale was remade as an Japanese anime called  The Legend of Snow White (白雪姫の伝説 Shirayuki Hime no Densetsu ) and was broadcast by NHK in 1994-1995.  There were 52 episodes.

“Heart no mori e Tsuretette” by Miki Sakai with Red Dolphins – theme of the beautiful Japanese version of Snow White.

Episode 2 in English

Do you like playing Jenga?  In Japan there is a Jenga  type balancing type game Doraemon Darake ドラえもん だらけ™ ゲーム! which adds a Japanese anime theme.  Instead of wooden blocks, you get 13 mini  Doraemon figurines each with different face expression and the famous Doraemon Time machine which is actually an unstable platform on which you will have to pile up Doraemon’s figure using chopsticks.

This fun game of skill and chance costs  2,700 Yen.

Little Einsteins is a favorite for kids around the world.  The Japanese version is aired on the Playhouse Disney (Japan).   Is your Japanese good enough to watch the Little Einsteins in Japanese? (their voices sound even cuter!)

Eyeshield 21 アイシールド21 is a manga and anime about American football written by Riichiro Inagaki and illustrated by Yusuke Murata. An anime movie was made in 2004 followed by an anime television series in 2005 along with several video games and a trading card game from Konami.  Read more...

In the early 1970′s the story of Spiderman was retold in a Japanese setting in the  Japanese manga (comic) version written and illustrated by Ryoichi Ikegami.  The manga published  from January 1970 to September 1971 appeared in the magazine Monthly Shōnen Magazine.

In this Japanese manga version, a junior high school student named Yu Komori 小森ユウ, is bitten by a radioactive spider, which gave him spider like powers .  Yu faces Japanese versions of villains such as Electro, the Lizard, and the Kangaroo and the manga version also featured counterparts of Aunt May, named “Mei”, and J. Jonah Jameson, who is the publisher of the newspaper Yu works at.  Read more...

How does a cartoon like Handy Manny おたすけマニー translate into Japanese?  Does Manny have a Mexican accent in Japanese?  Watch Handy Manny in Japanese to find out!

Halloween special