If you only have Akihabara on your anime shopping bucket list, you’re missing out on the many shopping areas that are filled to the brim with every type of anime merchandise you can imagine. Gachapon? Check. Hello Kitty collab toys? Check. Themed makeup products? You …Read more »
A social media lifestyle app in Japan known as Gravity conducted a survey with women ages 20-39, asking them what they spend their money on for fun. There are plenty of necessities out there that paychecks go to—rent, groceries and bills, to name a few—but …Read more »
Hello Kitty has collabed with just about every major franchise you could think of and then some. However, there’s one area in which Miss Kitty & Friends have yet to appear in…LEGO. Are you as surprised as we are?! While it seems like a no-brainer—it’s …Read more »
Sometimes people get crushes on fictional characters, like ones from anime and manga. More rarely, sometimes people get unofficial marriages with these characters. Akihiko Kondo, a man who unofficially married Vocaloid Hatsune Miku, has created a group called Association of Fictosexuality. It is a place …Read more »
Media Do International, Clover Press and Shueisha are all working together on a Kickstarter for the English translation and publication of romance novel Love Like the Falling Petals, which has been a bestseller in Japan and received a live-action Netflix adaptation. The Kickstarter is currently …Read more »
Universal Studios Japan closed down for a while because of COVID. And after it opened its doors again, it still kept a lot of restrictions in place. This included forbidding guests from hugging or high-fiving mascots, due to sanitary reasons. However, with more COVID restrictions …Read more »
The life-size Gundam down in Yokohama — you know, the one that can move and stuff — has just been given a major upgrade: it can now play rock-paper-scissors. Now that’s impressive. To demonstrate its finger-curling prowess, the RX-78-2 will go up against, well, whoever …Read more »
Itasha cars are a section of fandom where people deck out their cars after their favorite anime, manga or video game franchise or character. It’s been growing in popularity in Japan since it began about two decades ago, and The Japan Times covered the topic, …Read more »
Nice find from ANN’s Kim Morrissy on the Twitter this week: a trading card shop in Akihabara, Tokyo’s mecca for otaku merch, has apparently had enough of smelly customers. The official Twitta account for the shop announced a new shop policy on Twitter this week: …Read more »
Exeggutor, the Poké-ambassador for Japan’s Miyazaki prefecture, has shown its likeness on manhole covers, buses and even planes from the area. The Pokémon is returning to its airplane theme, but this time around the airplanes are even more bursting with all things Exeggutor. To be …Read more »
Many people have a New Year’s Resolution to get healthier this year, and the One Piece Fitness BragMen gym is here to help with that. Yep, the Shibuya area of Tokyo is home to a One Piece-stylized gymnasium, plus a café that serves healthy foods. …Read more »
Ghibli Museum is a tourist attraction people have flocked to for more than two decades, but there’s a special homage to the movie My Neighbor Totoro that most people have missed. So, more than 20 years after opening, the Ghibli Museum thought it might share …Read more »
Lots of people get crushes on pop stars (or idols as they’re sometimes known in Japan). But how seriously do people take these crushes? Tameny, which is a matchmaking and wedding coordination business in Japan, decided to find out. They surveyed 2,400 men and women …Read more »
The hotly anticipated SPY X FAMILY musical stage play is set to debut this spring, starting in Tokyo on March 8. In April it will move on to Hyogo Prefecture and in May it will be over in Fukuoka. That’s still some time away, and …Read more »
One of the things that makes the Bleach manga special is how each opens with a poem. In 2021, a karuta collection of these poems were offered to people who were part of “Klub Outside,” mangaka Tite Kubo’s official fanclub. But apparently there’s a larger …Read more »
Brianna Fox-Priest
Danica Davidson
Matt Schley
