Twentythree

Getting up early and heading outside the regular tourist circuit could lead to an unforgettable experience this autumn.

When looking at lists of sightseeing spots in Kyoto, there are certain names you’re going to see time and time again. Gion. Arashiyama. Fushimi. And while those districts are justifiably famous for their beautiful teahouses, bamboo grove, and torii-tunnel shrine, being famous also makes them pretty much perpetually crowded.

The trick, then, becomes to look for places in Kyoto that are beautiful but not famous, and one of the best ways to do that is by expanding your itinerary to include parts of the city that aren’t immediately recognized by name to the wider international tourist community, such as Yamashina.

The Yamashina neighborhood isn’t all that far from the city center, as it’s just a five-minute train ride east by local lines from Kyoto Station. However, Yamashina lies beyond Gion, Yasaka Shrine, Kiyomizu Temple, and the other attractions that are commonly thought of by travelers as the eastern edge of downtown Kyoto. That little bit of extra buffer from the package tours gives Yamashina a less congested, more tranquil atmosphere, but it still boasts stunning traditional scenery at Bishamondo Monzeki.

▼ Bishamondo Monzeki

▼ Walking route from Yamashina Station to Bishamondo Monzeki

Originally founded in the year 703, this temple has occupied its current location since 1665. A 15-minute walk north from Yamashina Station, Bishamondo Monzeki is tucked into the foothills of Mt. Bishamon, and its most striking feature is a stone stairway flanked by maple trees, whose falling form a canopy and carpet of crimson once the leaves show their fall colors.

Ordinarily, Bishamondo Monzeki is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., or from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. during the winter months. However, if you’re an early riser, there’s a way to see the temple grounds before they’re open to the general public, via an offer from JR/Japan Railway Company’s EX online travel booking service. This early admission allows you onto the grounds from 8 a.m., and reservations (1,800 yen [US$11] per person) can be made here for November 22, 28, and 29, or December 5. Those dates all fall nicely into the late-November-to-early-December window when Bishamondo Monzeki’s maples usually reach their peak beauty, and if you’re wondering when the rest of Japan’s autumn leaves will be changing color, we’ve got a forecast for that too.

Related: Bishamondo Monzeki official website
Source: PR Times, EX, Bishamondo Monzeki
Images: PR Times
Insert images:
● Want to hear about SoraNews24’s latest articles as soon as they’re published? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!

The purchasers are unknown, so let’s call them “anonymous individuals” or “AI” for short.

There is perhaps no better example of an independent business than the neighborhood used bookstore. But like many such businesses these days, it can be really hard to make ends meet as they compete with cheaper chain stores or faster and more convenient electronic alternatives.

So at first, it must have been a huge relief when a number of used book stores, in various parts of Japan, started getting huge volume orders for high-end books on non-fiction topics like history, medicine, and philosophy. However, when more and more such orders kept coming in at bizarrely regular intervals, things started to get creepy.

One bookstore in Tokyo sold more than 1,000 books in total to a single shipping address, but when the owner looked more closely, he noticed that each order was made at inhumanly precise intervals. Another owner in western Japan said that he received an order for tens of thousands of books from a company overseas. And in almost all cases, the orders are for non-fiction books rather than the usually top-selling fiction and manga titles.

Many of these orders are shipped to a logistics center in Okayama Prefecture, but when approached by the media, they refused to divulge who or where the purchaser is. Meanwhile, according to trade data, a major Japanese book distributor had sold over 50 tons of books in the United States in the last year but also declined to give specifics about what the sales entailed.

Those in the used book business, however, are growing increasingly concerned that these are being used to train AI models. Earlier this year, AI firm Anthropic revealed that they had been purchasing books to train their Claude AI chatbot and that it was a common practice in the industry. In most, if not all, cases, the books are destroyed in the scanning process and rendered useless afterward.

The likelihood that this is what their stock is being used for has left Japanese booksellers feeling conflicted. On one hand, the sudden boost in revenue is nice. On the other, having your stock of acquired human wisdom be sent to a shredder in order to feed a technology that may one day wipe out your own business is not an overly pleasant thought.

Online comments regarding this news seem to be split right down the middle, with some decrying this as the possible end of civilization and others believing that giving more Japanese culture and concepts over to foreign AIs might ultimately make the technology more useful to Japanese people.

“The books are cut, scanned, and tossed. And how faithful is this digital reincarnation? If the AI just devours it, then we risk losing our own history.”
“Books weren’t made for this. Foreign interests are exploiting Japan, and this represents an overall spiritual poverty around the world.”
“One time I asked an AI about a typo in a rather obscure book, and it could identify the exact page and line where it was. That’s when I knew it had been used for training.”
“Considering the current state of the used book market, shouldn’t these shops be thrilled?”
“A lot of them would have just been thrown away and incinerated anyway. Just don’t sell those things any rare or valuable books.”
“This is terrifying. I don’t go to bookstores much, but if I ever pop into one, I’d hate to see a bunch of empty shelves.”
“It looks like a win-win for both sides.”
“I’m worried that if AI gets better at Japanese, fraud attempts will become more believable.”
“If they aggregate all these old books into AI, I wonder if connections that humans haven’t seen will be revealed.”
“We’re getting to a point where if data centers go down, our whole culture goes with it.”
“In a lot of ways, used bookstores are like graveyards for books that no one buys, so export them and put them to good use.”
“At least they’re paying money for it, rather than stealing it from the Internet.”

There is also the issue of copyright and how Japanese law applies to the practice of destructive scanning to train AI models. Japan has some rather unique conditions for fair use in this regard.

First, a book’s copyright can be infringed upon on the condition that the infringer is not enjoying the content. I think we all can agree that AI models are not enjoying the works, which would make the action legal. However, there is also an exception where, if the infringement creates an “unreasonable prejudice” against the copyright holder then the act is not legal. Unreasonable prejudice means that the action obstructs the copyright holder’s ability to earn revenue on their work, and while you can certainly make the argument that AI does that, proving it in court is much harder.

Clearer legislation needs to be made to deal with this complex issue, but it would seem AI is growing at a much faster rate than lawmakers work, so we probably won’t figure this out until a lawmaking AI is developed to do it for us.

Source: NTV News, Hachima Kiko, BBC
Photos ©SoraNews24
● Want to hear about SoraNews24’s latest articles as soon as they’re published? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!

Parkside stop to rest turns out to be very costly.

On the night of September 23, a 38-year-old office worker in Osaka had been enjoying some drinks. Or maybe he hadn’t started knocking them back until after midnight on the 24th. Either way, in at some point in the pre-dawn hours his intoxicated fatigue became too much for him to handle, and he sat down to rest on the edge of a sidewalk-side planter at the edge of Nozaki Park in the city’s Kita Ward.

At around 3:50 a.m., he was approached by two men, who called out asking “Are you all right?”, to which the drunk man replied “I’m fine, so leave me alone.” However, it turned out that these two men weren’t actually offering help, and were instead looking to take his belongings.

▼ The section of the park where the encounter took place

While the man was still seated, the robbers suddenly shoved him, knocking him backwards so that his back was flat against the ground. They then grabbed his bag, which he says contained his wallet and roughly 1 million yen (US$6,300) in cash, and before running off, they removed and stole the victim’s shoes too.

▼ A CG reenactment of the incident

The man suffered a scraped elbow in the attack, but did not sustain any serious injuries. With his safety confirmed, many online commenters have been asking the same question: Why was he carrying so much cash?

“Shady.”
“Having a really hard time understanding who you’d go out and get drunk while you’ve got a million yen on you.”
“The robbers are the worst people in this story, but even still, there’s no good reason to put a million yen in your bag before going drinking.”
“If you’ve got that much cash on you, just go straight home without drinking all night.”
“Having a million yen in cash makes you think it’s got to be money that you can’t be open and upfront about.”
“The criminals probably somehow knew he had that money on him.”
“Did the robbers know he was on his way to meet up with someone and followed him?”
“Japanese safety is becoming a myth.”
“We’re living in a time when it’s not safe to stumble home drunk anymore.”
“Maybe it was some kind of insurance scam?”
“Do the robbers have some kind of a footwear fetish?”

Addressing the last comment first, the obvious reason for the robbers taking the man’s shoes is that it’d make it harder for him to chase after them. As for the startling amount of money he had on him, that’s actually kind of complicated.

While incidents have been on the rise recently, Japan still has very little street crime, and cash payments are prevalent, including for things, and at locations, that would be very unusual in many other countries. Several kinds of tax and utility payments, for example, can be made in cash at convenience stores 24 hours a day, and many online retailers also allow customers to place their orders through their website, then render payment, in cash if they wish, at convenience stores. If someone were planning to make several such payments in one fell swoop, they might have quite a few bills on them.

The area around the park is also rather urban. It’s located only about a five-minute walk from Umeda Station, one of Osaka’s main rail hubs, with a number of office and condominium high rises nearby. The victim himself lives in the neighborhood, and, ostensibly, there could have been some legitimate business or living expense-related purposes that the cash was earmarked for.

▼ Another video showing the park and surrounding neighborhood

Even with all that taken into account, though, a million yen is still far beyond what most Japanese people would consider a common-sense amount be carrying, by a wide enough margin that doing anything other than taking it directly home or to render payment is reckless. Carrying around that much cash while drunk is a baffling, understandably suspicion-arousing amount of risk to accept.

That said, the victim himself is the one who contacted the police and reported the incident, which doesn’t seem like something he’d do if the stolen money was also dirty money, and at this time the police are proceeding with the investigation with the robbery itself as the only crime that’s taken place.

Source: FNN Prime Online, Sankei Shimbun, YouTube/読売テレビニュース, YouTube/日テレNEWS
Top image: Pakutaso
● Want to hear about SoraNews24’s latest articles as soon as they’re published? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!

Human hearts and minds will be at the core of the OrySNACK Kyoto experience.

You might be surprised at what you see when you walk into a place that calls itself a “snack bar” in Japan. Instead of hot dogs, French fries, and other quick and cheap bites to grab during a ballgame or between amusement park rides, in Japan a snack bar is an actual bar that serves light fare to be paired with its drinks. Customers are encouraged to take their time and leisurely enjoy not only their food and beverages, but also chatting with the bartender, who’s usually affectionately called the “mama” or “master” of the establishment.

However, even if you know all that, you might still be surprised when you walk into a new snack bar that’s opening soon in Kyoto, because the mama/master at the counter will be a robot.

OrySNACK Kyoto, as the bar is called, is not part of AI venture companies’ continued efforts to encroach on as many aspects of life as possible. Instead, human “pilots” remotely control the robot bartender, which is the latest model from Tokyo-based Ory Labs.

When it began building avatar robots, Ory Labs’ initial goal was to give children and adolescents who are unable to attend classes in-person (either due to physical or mental health issues) a way to have a presence within their schools and form bonds with classmates. Ory Labs then realized that its inventions could produce similar benefits for adults who’re unable to work outside the home. The OriHime robot’s remote controls allow it to be piloted even by someone who’s lying down, and this feature, the designers say, means that it can be controlled by individuals with spinal cord injuries, muscular dystrophy, ALS, and SMA.

In addition to the economic benefits of improved work opportunities, Ory Labs believes that projects like OrySNACK Kyoto can provide a sense of purpose and interpersonal connection. “OrySNACK Kyoto is not just a place that serves drinks,” the organization says, but a place for creating connections between the people who gather there. One of the reasons Kyoto was chosen as the location is that the city draws a wide range of travelers, both young and old, domestic and international, thus presenting the robots’ controllers with opportunities to speak with a diverse group of customers. A previous iteration of OrySNACK, held in Tokyo this past summer, offered English-proficient robot bartenders, though it’s not clear whether that’ll be an option for the Kyoto bar.

▼ OrySNACK Kyoto will be serving sake from Kitagawahonke, a brewer that opened in Kyoto’s Fushimi district in the year 1657.

Previously, Ory Labs has arranged for OriHime robots to work shifts in cafes and fast food restaurants, but bartending allows for yet another avenue of applications for the technology, and with closer interaction with customers too. OrySNACK Kyoto will also be the debut for a newly developed model of the robot, the OriHime-D.

Ory Labs says that its long-term hope is for one of its robot pilots to someday own and manage their own bar remotely. For the time being, though, OrySNACK Kyoto will be a limited-time event inside the soon-to-open Bookhome bookstore in Kyoto’s Shijo Karasuma neighborhood. There’s currently a crowdfunding campaign going on via Japan’s Campfire website, but the roughly 7.4 million yen (US$47,000) it’s raised is already around 150 percent of its target, and the campaign still has three weeks to go. In other words, OrySNACK Kyoto will definitely be opening on December 4, as well as having pre-opening seatings for certain backers from November 19, so if you’d like to secure your seats, the robot bar’s crowdfunding page can be found here.

Source: Campfire, PR Times
Images: Campfire
● Want to hear about SoraNews24’s latest articles as soon as they’re published? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!

New walk-through gates are designed to speed up the flow of passengers, but there’s something tripping them up.

With the cyberpunk masterpiece Ghost in the Shell set in the year 2029, we’ve been increasingly looking around us, wondering when the tech in our everyday world will catch up to reflect the high-tech animated worlds on screen.

So when our roving reporter Seiji Nakazawa stumbled upon a “walk-through facial-recognition ticket gate” during a trip to Osaka recently, his sci-fi sensors immediately pulled him towards it, urging him to give it a try.

▼ Seiji made the discovery at Osaka Metro’s Dobutsuen-mae Station.

Apparently, all you need to do when using the gate is simply walk through it. Called “Face Pass”, this new ticket-gate technology looks totally sci-fi, and Seiji felt compelled to walk through the bright lights, but he felt slightly worried that there might be some catch that would prevent him from being able to proceed through them, making him look like a fool in the process.

▼ The bars above the ticket gate made it look like an airport security checkpoint.

Though Seiji had never seen a gate like this before in real life, it’s not the first of its kind, as the technology was introduced at two stations on the Tobu Tojo Line in Tokyo in July.

▼ In Osaka, you can find them at Dobutsuen-mae Station and Namba Station as well.

As Seiji stared at the contraption, he hoped someone might use the gate to help give him an idea of how it might work, but it seemed like everyone had the same sort of reservations about the system as Seiji.

Taking a closer look at the instructions posted at the gate, Seiji suddenly realised why it wasn’t so popular. In order to use it, you need to register as an “eMETRO member” and record your facial image data, which is something a lot of people are yet to feel comfortable doing.

Reading further, Seiji realised that in addition to registering your personal details, and your facial features, you also have to “Set your facial image on your digital ticket.” Seiji was totally stumped by this, as he had no idea what a “digital ticket” was. The process was already looking so complicated that he understood why people might want to give up at this point, but he decided to persevere, for the sake of journalism. After completing the member registration and facial-image registration on the eMETRO website, he headed over to a station attendant to ask about the final “digital ticket” step.

Upon asking staff for help with the digital ticket, the attendant said, “Facial recognition, huh? I’m not really sure about that”, and started rummaging around through some materials at the back of his workspace. He then handed Seiji a sheet of paper explaining how to register for facial recognition and, as if feeling apologetic about not being able to help further, he said, “Sorry, but take a look at this.”

Seiji flashed him a thankful smile, but inside he felt this was all falling flat. If the railway employee didn’t know anything about it, would Seiji really be able to set this thing up on his own? Feeling slightly overwhelmed, he took a breath and studied the pamphlet, only to find that he now needed to install the eMETRO app.

▼ Begrudgingly, he installed the eMETRO app.

Finally, the true nature of the digital ticket was revealed. It’s not a pay-as-you-go system like a transit IC card – instead your facial data needs to be linked to one of the metro’s unlimited-ride passes, like its “26-hour unlimited ride pass” for 1,000 yen (US$6.34).

Every step of the process seemed annoyingly complicated. Taking more deep breaths to help maintain his patience, he went to purchase the 26-Hour Ticket…only to find he needed to register a credit card to complete the purchase.

After what seemed like forever, Seiji was now at the final stage. Having completed all the necessary steps to use the system, all that was left to do was enable the “Use facial-recognition ticket gate” setting in the ticket details, and he should now be able to pass through with just his face.

▼ The time had come! LEEEET’S GOOOOOOOO!!!!!

Entering the gates, Seiji felt his sense of elation come crashing down to earth, as the ticket gate stopped him in his tracks with a big x and the message: “Authentication failed”

▼ “You mother#*@%!!!”

SeijI was overcome by a sudden urge to kick the acrylic door that snapped shut in front of him. After going through the painful signup process, why was he now being denied?! Calming himself down to take a closer look at the ticket details, he saw that “Facial recognition setup failed” was being displayed in red in the upper right corner.

He took another look at the pamphlet the station attendant had given him, and saw a note in the corner that said: “Facial recognition may not be available due to high traffic or other factors.” The same thing was written on the display, so Seiji figured the button should automatically become active again after a few moments, allowing him to enter once more. However…

▼ …no matter how many times he tried to go through, it just wouldn’t work.

He tried at least six times, and despite leaving time between attempts, every single one failed. After looking at the timestamps on the photos he’d been taking, he realised he’d spent about an hour and 20 minutes trying to get himself through the gates, and with his energy now depleted, he finally gave up and passed through the gate beside it, using the transit card on his phone nstead.

So, in the end, Seiji never got to step into the futuristic cyberpunk anime world of his dreams. One person did, though, because while Seiji was grappling with the signup process, he saw an individual walk through the gate like it was second nature. It proved to him that the system does actually work for those who’ve set it up right, and it also gave him a tantalising glimpse of how seamless the procedure is. The walk-through was blink-and-you’ll-miss-it fast, so much so that Seiji reckons you could practically sprint through the gates without slowing down.

Disappointed that he couldn’t try it firsthand, Seiji felt a pang of regret over the whole experience, and the 80 minutes he’d lost on it. The registration process is so complicated and time-consuming that he now knows why gates like this remain largely unused.

Rather than speeding up the flow of passengers, the gate stands quietly, like a display piece in a showroom, taking up space that could otherwise be used by card-carrying passengers. Although the technology is there, humans are yet to embrace it, and Seiji says that until the app becomes more user-friendly, the situation is likely to stay that way.

Perhaps one day when he’s feeling up for it, Seiji might attempt to use these gates again, but for now, he won’t be showing his face there again.

Images ©SoraNews24
● Want to hear about SoraNews24’s latest articles as soon as they’re published? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!

A solution for when your trips down memory lane are blocked by a phone that won’t turn on or hold a charge.

Leave a battery in an empty state for too long, and it’ll eventually lose its ability to charge through conventional means. That’s the fate that’s befallen many flip phones, which were set aside when their owners transferred to smartphones. Unfortunately, having an unchargeable phone means that any old photos, texts, or other memories it contained are locked away…or they would be, were it not for a special program by KDDI, one of Japan’s major phone service providers.

Recently, KDDI held an event in Tokyo called Cell Phone Memory Restart (Omoide Keitai Saikido in Japanese). If you’ve got an old phone that won’t hold a charge, you can bring it and have KDDI use its special equipment to get it powered on again to help you preserve the memories inside. KDDI’s technicians are happy to restart cell phones from other carriers too, not just their own company’s.

Cell Phone Memory Restart is a periodic program with iterations all around Japan, and while there’s no fee for the service, reservations are required. Our Japanese-language reporter Natsuno Futon managed to secure a slot at the event held at KDDI’s Ginza 456 showroom in Tokyo’s Ginza neighborhood.

So on the day of her reservation, Natsuno grabbed her Toshiba Win-model flip phone, which she hasn’t used in roughly a decade, and went to revive it.

Honestly, Natsuno is still very fond of the way it looks. The standardized form and thin bezels of modern smartphones mean there’re only the most miniscule of differences between one device and another, but back in the day cell phone design was an extended expression of personal style.

Flicking it open for the first time in years, Natsuno was happy to learn that the hinges still work fine. On the other hand, more than one button’s plate had fallen off, and while she can still press on the pads underneath, the phone won’t turn on anymore.

Or, at least, it won’t turn on with the standard, consumer-grade charger it came with. As the KDDI staff member pulled the battery pack out of Natsuno’s phone, she explained, in laymen’s terms, what the issue is. “Essentially, your battery has forgotten that it’s a battery, so we’re going to give it a reminder,” the attendant told her.

Doing this requires a much more specialized apparatus than a regular old AC adapter, one that plugs directly into the battery pack.

After a few minutes of waiting, the staff told Natsuno that her phone was ready, and that they’d let her do the honors of turning it on.

With a sense of nervous excitement, Natsuno pressed and held down the power button…and sure enough, her phone came back to life!

As it went through its startup sequence, though, Natsuno had a new source of nervousness. Like we mentioned above, it’s been roughly 10 years since she used this phone, and she couldn’t remember what her wallpaper photo had been. What if it was something incredibly cringey, a foolish part of her younger life that was so necessary to leave behind that she subconsciously scrubbed it from her memory?

Thankfully, it didn’t turn out to be anything all that embarrassing.

Greeting Natsuno from inside her screen was professional baseball player Masahiro Araki of the Chunichi Dragons, who play their home games in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture. Natsuno grew up in the neighboring prefecture of Gifu, which has no pro baseball team of its own, making her one of her hometown’s many proximity-based Dragons fans. Though he’s now retired, Araki spent his entire 23-year career with the Dragons, and even the KDDI staff recognized him. Together with Natsuno they took a quick trip down memory lane, chatting about the team at the time and its last championship, plus the ensuing parade where Natsuno took the picture on her phone.

Things got even more nostalgic when Natsuno started looking through her phone’s photo album. There were photos of friends and family, of happy times (like the day she moved into her first apartment) and sad times (like the day her first car got into a fender-bender).

▼ There were also pictures of very happy days, like the one on which Natsuno ate this parfait.

Though the phone’s camera was considered high-quality at the time, it’s obviously been far surpassed by current technology. And yet, the lack of megapixels and automated color correction didn’t diminish the visual appeal of the photos that had been slumbering on Natsuno’s cell phone. If anything, the lack of megapixels and automated color correction made for an even more emotional connection with the broad-stroke sentimental mood of reminiscing about a moment from your past where you can’t recall all the details, but clearly remember the way you felt.

As part of the Cell Phone Memory Restart service, KDDI will also print out a large-size copy of one picture of your choice. Natsuno decided on a photo of herself that her dormitory roommate had taken of her during her freshman year of college. KDDI puts the image up on its projection wall so you can see the details clearly, and then they give you your printed copy (like the battery recharge, there’s no fee for this).

And while Natsuno is keeping these details to herself, having her phone powered on again also let her reread emails and text messages from back in the days when correspondence was stored on the device itself, not in a cloud network.

Ah, but aren’t you just going to have to say goodbye to all those photos and messages again once you get home from the event and your battery drains? Not necessarily. KDDI’s technicians say that following the Cell Phone Memory Restart’s procedure to revive the battery, it should once again be able to charge via an ordinary AC adapter. What’s more, if you no longer have an adaptor that works with your phone, at the Cell Phone Memory Restart they’ll give you one to keep, for free, provided they have stock available.

All in all, it’s a thoroughly satisfying, and incredibly generous, event. When she’d left the house, Natsuno had thought she was just going to be having a reunion with her old phone, but it turned out to be a way to visit with her past self too.

The next Cell Phone Memory Restart iterations at Ginza 456 are coming up on October 2-4 and November 6-8, and the complete list of events, as well as reservation request links, can be found here.

Related: Cell Phone Memory Restart
Photos ©SoraNews24
● Want to hear about SoraNews24’s latest articles as soon as they’re published? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!

Chihaya Kisaragi and Imadaketsukimitabemi go moon-viewing together.

In Japan, you’ll find plenty of songs about snowy Christmas Eves, spring cherry blossoms, and beachside summer fun, but there aren’t all that many songs about the fall. All of a sudden, though, we’ve got a very autumn-y anime music video from a very unexpected collaboration: McDonald’s Japan and anime/video game idol franchise The Idolmaster.

As SoraNews24’s highly cultivated readership is no doubt already aware of, in Japan autumn is the time for tsukimi, or moon-viewing. In recent years, this also makes autumn the season of tsukimi burgers, hamburgers topped with a fried egg that resembles a bright, full moon floating in the fall sky.

The anime video features The Idolmaster’s Chihaya Kisaragi singing the song “Kondo Itsu Kimi ni Aeru no Ka na,” or “I Wonder When I’ll Get to See You Again” (which also works as a bit of a pun, as the “Itsu Kimi” part contains the syllables of “tsukimi”).

In the video, we see Chihaya sharing a moon-viewing moment, and some moon-viewing munchies too, with new friend Imadaketsukimitabemi, McDonald’s tsukimi mascot character that the chain introduced in 2020.

はじめまして！
「いまだけ月見食べ美」と言います！

短い間ですが、よろしくお願いします！ pic.twitter.com/eIBvI4Phy6

— マクドナルド (@McDonaldsJapan) September 1, 2026

Imadaketsukimitabemi, whose name translates loosely to “you can only eat the delicious tsukimi [burgers] right now,” is actually the song’s original vocalist. Here’s the video for her version of it, which puts her in real-world environments, kind of like virtual idol Hatsune Miku’s video with VTuber Hoshimachu Suisei from this past summer.

いまだけ月見食べ美
「今度いつきみに会えるのかな」

昨年大好評だったフルMVを、Xにだけ再公開！（最後まで見てね） pic.twitter.com/2ADEHsMbjB

— マクドナルド (@McDonaldsJapan) September 22, 2026

Compared to Imadaketsukimitabemi’s unwaveringly peppy original, Chihaya’s cover of “Kondo Itsu Kimi ni Aeru no Ka na” is decidedly more wistful, with an acoustic guitar arrangement paired with plaintive vocals.

That makes sense, though, because the collaborative video was released on September 24, the same day as McDondald’s Japan’s new Hokkaido Potato Pepper Tsukimi, which marks the second phase of its tsukimi line rollout for this year. In other words, we’re coming into the back half of tsukimi burger season, and when they leave the menu, so too does Imadaketsukimitabemi disappear until next year.

So yeah, there’s a bit of bittersweetness as Chihaya and Imadaketsukimitabemi look up at the autumn moon, and out at Yokohama Bay Bridge, while some susuki, another sign of fall, sway in the night breeze.

But while foods and friends being seasonal in nature means having to say goodbye to them, it also means that you’ll be reunited again someday, so the important thing to do is to live in the moment, cherish every moment you spend with the people who’re important to you, and savor every bite of the tsukimi burger.

Source: YouTube/マクドナルド公式（McDonald’s） via Otakomu, The Idolmaster official website
Images: YouTube/マクドナルド公式（McDonald’s）
● Want to hear about SoraNews24’s latest articles as soon as they’re published? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!