Category: CULTURE

The World Cosplay Summit 2013, the international cosplay event being held this year for the eleventh time, will take over Nagoya from July 27th to August 4th. Cosplayers from all over the ...

Just when you thought the Han-ryu boom must surely be over, along comes an even more ambitious development. Though the fad for Korean girl groups seems now to have passed in Japan, the K-pop boys ...

On June 24th, Ashley Madison, the world-famous online dating service for dissatisfied married people -- or more bluntly, plain cheaters (wannabes included) -- launched a Japanese version of the ...

As clichéd as it might sound, in everyday life we really do take too many things for granted. The virtual world of the Internet makes it seem as though everything can be done instantly at no cost. ...

It's not often that I roll out the R-word -- and when I do, it is generally due to the incredible short change that black people or other Asians get in Japanese popular culture. Usually the silliness ...

While people make charitable donations for (arguably) many different reasons, this year, the annual 24 Hour Television themed "Love Saves the Earth" -- which will be aired on August 24th and 25th -- ...

In 2013, Shingeki no Kyojin (Attack on Titan) became no longer just a popular comic book. It has evolved into a social phenomenon which will be remembered as one of the biggest hits of the decade. So ...

It's the most famous train line in Tokyo. The JR Yamanote Line defines the geography of the city, encircling the center, running a loop around the notorious "empty void" in the heart -- the Imperial ...

Could you tell us a little bit about yourself? How would you describe yourself? I can't remember how many times people asked me these questions. Whether it was during job interviews or random ...

In 1998 the famous guitarist from pioneering visual kei rock band X JAPAN, Hideto Matsumoto (commonly known as just "hide"), suddenly passed away at the age of thirty-three. To remember this, every ...

Starbucks may well have coffee shops in around sixty countries and regions worldwide but other than North America, Japan is the first to reach 1,000 branches. Despite being seen initially as a more ...

There is no doubt that Japanese anime's stories vary greatly from cute, funny, educational, heroic, romantic, horror, erotic to grotesque. Makoto Shinkai's latest animation film "The Garden of Words" ...

Whether you like them or not, Golden Bomber seems to have found their own gold in the entertainment scene. Their latest album titled The Past Masters Vol. 1 which was released on April 24th, topped ...

I usually don’t watch TV dramas, but there is always one or two a year that almost forcibly catch my attention. Legal High was definitely one of them. The drama was first aired last year as a ...

As Japan’s population continues to decline, we see more and more non-human characters pop out and come to life on a daily basis. The yuru-kyara boom which started less than a decade ago is now ...