Japanese artist Mari Miyazawa plays with her food. Like, a lot. As a parent, she sent off her kids with homemade bento lunches, that much is normal; but where Miyazawa differs from most mothers is that her bento creations are works of art.

They’ve been featured in photo exhibitions and on TV shows in Japan and abroad. You’ve probably seen bento art before, but Miyazawa is maybe the most prolific and skilled of the many bento artists out there.

Bento art is called キャラ弁 in Japanese, a combination of the word for “character” and “bento,” and Miyazawa is a master at creating different characters using lunchtime materials.

Bento Theater

Not content with just her amazing bento box art, Miyazawa has dipped her toes into animation as well. Her YouTube channel is full of what she calls “Bento Theater.”

You can find a whole playlist here.

Do It Yourself

Maybe the best part about Miyazawa’s YouTube channel is the instructional videos; she’s kind enough to show us all how she whips up her amazing culinary works of art.

Putting together these dishes might not be especially easy or practical for you to do. Still, Miyazawa’s artistry is inspirational and might be enough to encourage me to

• Official site
• YouTube channel
• Facebook page

via Metafilter

When we visited Japan earlier this year, we visited the famous Jigokudani Monkey Park (which you can read more about here), a place where Japanese macaques bathe in natural hot springs.

I thought it was pretty funny that the monkeys were so spoiled in such a human way; the monkeys bathe in the same kind of tub a person would use.

What I didn’t realize until recently was that monkeys aren’t the only animals in Japan who get treated to a relaxing, hot bath.

At Nagasaki’s Bio Park, its collection of capybara, a type of rodent from South America, get spoiled with a hot bath in the winter time.

In the summer, the capybara get another seasonal treat: watermelon.

At Bio Park you can actually walk up and pet the adorable, docile capybara as evidenced by this video:

But not everything is rosy for Bio Park’s capybara. During feeding time they have to compete with their greatest natural enemy—the swan:

Strangely, Bio Park’s capybara aren’t the only ones in Japan who get special treatment. Up in Ishikawa, its zoo’s capybara also get to enjoy hot baths in the winter:

And in Fukuoka’s Torias Hisayama Zoo, the capybara lounge with other animals (like kangaroo and meerkats) in front of a heater to keep warm.

All in all, I’d say life is pretty good for capybara in Japan. Even though they’re far from their native South America, they get the royal treatment.

Wallpapers & Animated GIF

Once again, our illustrator Aya has provided desktop backrounds and animated GIFs. Enjoy!

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It’s edgy, it’s innovative, it’s in your face. It’s also super sexy. But could it be… too sexy? Japan’s latest advertising fad is sweeping the nation, offending, arousing, and selling product faster than you can say, “Damn, baby – you want fries with that shake?”

The Science of Absolute Territory

The premise behind this new advertising scheme is taking advantage of something known as zettai ryouiki or “absolute territory”. Zettai ryouiki is the exposed area of skin between the hem of a woman’s shorts or skirt and their leg wear. Often, a woman’s zettai ryouiki will garner more attention than any cleavage she might be sporting.

Since zettai ryouiki is defined by the length of the stockings, socks, or boots she’s wearing (I’m hooked and I can’t stop staring), Japan has developed a ranking system to define the grade of zettai ryouiki on a girl. It’s as obvious to me as it is to anyone that only grades A and B are to be considered true zettai ryouiki.

Zettai ryouiki focuses on young and innocent sexuality and is most often worn by girls who are somewhat aware of their attractiveness but not so much that they’re going over the top with it. Fun fact: many tsundere characters find themselves sporting zettai ryouiki. Had you noticed?

The Advertising

Of course someone would find a way to monetize this leggy phenomenon. A company calling themselves Absolute Territory has started to hire girls to sport ads on their zettai ryouiki, earning up to $125 a day. Over 1,300 girls are already participating in this new marketing fad and the only requirements apart from being a female (sorry Koichi) is that you must be over 18, and have at least 20 social media contacts.

The girls have to wear the ad for at least eight hours during the day, taking pictures and uploading them to social media periodically to prove they’re keeping to their end of the bargain. Since men’s eyes would naturally wander to the girl’s milky white thighs anyway, Absolute Territory is taking advantage of this by placing an ad there.

Everybody from RocketNews24 to Green Day has been hopping on this advertising bandwagon. Not everyone, however, is keen on the idea. The Okinawa Convention and Visitors Bureau along with their prefectural government put the kibosh on any plans to make use of this new advertising stating that placing ads on the thighs of young women to advertise Okinawa is not in line with the prefecture’s brand image.

When they were still toying around with the idea, the offices received numerous complaints bashing the sexy plan as “undignified” and “not an appropriate use of taxpayer money”.

Since this sex advertising would be funded with government money taken from the people, it’s obvious that some would be outraged at the thought. Fortunately the government decided to kill the plan before it went into action. Even though they knew the campaign would definitely be effective in getting the attention of young people and males, they didn’t want to do anything to harm the overall image of Okinawa.

So tell me, what are your thoughts on this new advertising trend? Is it too sexy for use? Does it ruin the image of the people and companies who use it for advertising? Do you think this trend would ever catch on in your home country? Let us know in the comments!

Growing up in a computerized world, I’ve never really thought too much about the problems faced by people using typewriters.

It’s pretty damn hard to make a Japanese typewriter (known in Japanese as a 和文タイプライター). Instead of the simple 26 letters in the English alphabet, Japanese has 48 hiragana, 48 katakana, and thousands and thousands of the Chinese-derived kanji characters.

Unsurprisingly, it’s really hard to come up with a typewriter that can incorporate 1,000+ characters, but people still tried their damndest to make it work.

In 1929, a man named Kyota Sugimoto invented the first Japanese typewriter and, in the decades that followed, many more people tried their hand at making a better Japanese typewriter.

They came in various shapes and sizes, but the underlying pricinple was more or less the same. You used a giant plate full of the 1,000+ characters included on the typewriter and gradually steered the plate to the character you wanted.

But it gets even more complicated. Some typewriters had interchangeable characters, some wrote vertically, others wrote horizontally. Apparently, certain characters, because of their complexity and the surface area, required more force than others. All in all, not very user friendly.

These typewriters might have given writing a certain formality and uniformity, but they were also basically slower than handwriting and really, really complicated.

Fortunately nowadays, Japanese people don’t have to deal with these cumbersome, complicated machines; computerized word processing has more or less solved the problem much more simply and elegantly than Japanese typewriters.

Still, there’s some mystique in these intricate devices. Even if they don’t make life especially convenient, they’re a fascinating relic of a time when Japanese was trying to bridge the gap into the modern world.

Read more: Gatunka – Japanese Typewriters

Japan, more than any other country, seems to have mastered the art of using adorable pets for internet fame. In the past we’ve covered some of Japan’s greatest cat videos (including the incomparable Maru), and the adorable combination of an old Japanese lady and her odd-eyed cat, and a little Japanese boy and his best friend.

So I wasn’t surprised when I discovered Purin the Super Beagle, an extremely talented dog owned by a man living in Shibuya, Tokyo. Purin is, embarrassingly enough, probably smarter and more talented than I’ll ever be.

Purin (Japanese for “custard”) first caught my eye when I found this video of her catching a ball in mid-air with her paws. It’s a cute video, not only because of Purin’s talent, but the softly excited「やった！」from the owner with each successful catch.

Beagles are notoriously smart, so it makes complete sense that Purin’s range of tricks doesn’t stop there. She can also jump rope:

Skateboard:

And maybe most impressively, she can catch a sword. The trick is based on an old samurai trope called 真剣白刃取り, where somebody stops a sword at the last minute with their bare hands.

Fortunately, Purin’s owner uses a foam sword, which is probably for the best since Purin seems to want to bite it anyway.

You can find more pictures and videos on Purin’s YouTube channel, and her Facebook page.

In the early 90^s, Kyoto University had a problem. A statue on campus kept getting vandalized over and over, without any sign of stopping.

Students kept making their own additions to the statue of educator Hikoichi Orita, including face paint, clothing, props and just plain ol’ text and scribbles.

By 1994, the university was so fed up with all of the graffiti and vandalism that they put up a sign next to the statue. It said:

折田彦市先生は、第三高等学校の校長として京大の創設に尽力し、京大に自由の学風を築くために多大な功績を残した人です。 どうかこの像を汚さないで下さい。

総合人間学部

To paraphrase in English: Hikoichi Orita was a great man who contributed a lot to this school, so stop vandalizing his statue.

Unsurprisingly, the sign didn’t a damn thing to stop the vandalism. By 1997, the university decided to permanently remove the Orita-sensei statue; but even that didn’t stop people from messing with him.

Nowadays, instead of defacing the long-gone statue, people simply build their own, complete with pedestal and sign.

Every year, new, fake statues pops up on campus in place of the Orita-sensei statue around significant dates (like exams and such), featuring a different character in place of the seminal Kyoto University figure.

Gym leader Brock/Takeshi from Pokémon

Mr. Contac, the mascot for cold/flu medication Contac

Fujiya mascot Poko-chan

Twitter bot @nisehorn

Children’s TV show character Tendonman

A Kamen Rider character

Superman character from the manga Dr. Slump

Snack mascot Noppo Toppo

I feel kinda sorry for Hikoichi Orita; I’m sure he would have liked to be remembered as an educator and major figure in Kyoto University history, instead of an oft-defaced statue.

At the same time, the legacy of the Orita-sensei statue has made Hikoichi Orita much more notable than he might have otherwise been. After all, how else would I know about this minor 19^th century historical figure?

To the Kyodai students who carry on the tradition of pranking the Orita-sensei statue, even though it’s been gone for almost 20 years: I salute you.

While the Tofugu team was in Japan, we were hanging out with some graduates of Kyoto University, one of Japan’s finest schools. We asked them about their alma mater, and they showed us a YouTube video of Kyodai’s graduation ceremony.

It wasn’t what I was expecting. Students from this prestigious school were cosplaying at their graduation, walking up to the stage to accept their diplomas as Power Rangers and anime characters.

I don’t know if these people are otaku or just wanna have fun at the end of a very important part of their lives. I’ve looked into it a bit since we got back home and found more graduation cosplay from Kyodai, including Spider-Man conducting the Kyodai graduation band:

Hey, it’s the guy from the commercials!

Unsurprisingly, Kyodai isn’t the only school in Japan with some costumed graduates. The Kanazawa College of Art’s graduation ceremony this year was full of cool, weird, and interesting costumes from its graduates. It seems like there were more people in costume than not.

Legendary game designer Shigeru Miyamoto is a Kanazawa College of Art alumni, so there’s plenty of Nintendo cosplay to go around.

Leave this place, Kumamon! You have no power here!

What’s your favorite costume? Did you dress up at your graduation ceremony? Tell me in the comments!