Twentythree

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
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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
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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）
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”Cat? Cat?!? Caaaaaaaaaaat!”

Konami’s Metal Gear series gets its name from a series of giant military robots that appear in the video game franchise, with the protagonist’s goal often being the destruction of that iteration’s warmech. It’s rare for players to actually pilot a Metal Gear, though. Ironically, the most iconic equipment that Metal Gear players actually use is something that lies on the complete opposite end of the technological complexity scale: a cardboard box.

▼ A cardboard box array set up at the venue of the Tokyo real-world Metal Gear game we played

Metal Gear was a pioneer in the stealth genre, and staying out of enemies’ sight has always been a key to success in the games. Eventually you can get access to fancy gadgets like optical camouflage and items to scramble electronic security infrastructure, but a cardboard box to hide in has always been a reassuring item for Metal Gear fans to have, and now it can be one for their cats too.

OKS Gear, a U.S.-based game merchandiser, has announced that it’ll be releasing an officially licensed Metal Gear scratchpad cat box. And yes, Metal Gear’s lore is deep enough that there are multiple versions of the cardboard box that have appeared over the years. The cat version is based specifically on the Love Box/Love Pack that appears in Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, initially released for the PlayStation Portable handheld system in 2010, but also included in the Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 2 remaster bundle which came out last month for current-gen consoles and PC.

As shown in the above video, the in-game Love Box is big enough for two, but the for-pets version is scaled down and looks to be single-feline size. The plan right now is to offer it at the upcoming CatCon convention in Pasadena, California as an event-exclusive item on October 10 and 11, but OKS Gear does have an online store, so hopefully a Metal Gear box of some sort will sneak its way into the inventory list at some point.

Related: CatCon official website, OKS Gear
Source: Twitter/@Metalgear via Anime News Network/Ken Iikura-Gross
Top image: Twitter/@Metalgear
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We find out if 7-Eleven delivers on its promise to enhance the size and texture of its pizzas.

7-Elevens in Japan are a cut above those in other places of the world, with hot food so good you’d hardly believe it was from a convenience store. One of the chain’s most popular hot food options is its pizza, baked in dedicated in-store ovens to give it a freshly made texture and flavour.

However, for some reason, 7-Eleven recently decided the pizzas were due for a revamp, announcing that they would be enhancing the chewiness and increasing the size by approximately 30 percent, without changing the price.

The change went into effect on 15 September, so we immediately ordered the new pizza for delivery – yes, 7-Eleven delivers pizzas through the chain’s official 7NOW delivery app – choosing the Margherita (780 yen [US$4.94]) out of the two options, with the other option being Teriyaki Chicken, for 880 yen.

▼  The first thing to surprise us was the box itself, which had changed from a slightly octagonal shape…

▼ …to a plain square one.

If this was one way for the company to cut corners in an effort to revamp the pizza without changing the price, then we had no complaints. The box still looked great, and when we lifted the lid, we found a pizza inside that measured around 23 centimetres (9 inches) across.

Having reviewed the pizza a while back, before the change, this was roughly 3 centimetres bigger than before, amounting to an increase in diameter of around 15 percent, which, when doing the math, equates to an increased surface area of around 30 percent.

▼ Having confirmed that the size increase was no exaggeration, it was now time to give the pizza a taste.

Taking a bite, the flavours of cheese and tomato gently spread through the palate, accompanied by a satisfying chewiness. The flavour and texture were excellent, and we noticed that our teeth seemed to sink further into the dough than before.

According to the chain, a special method has been used to increase the moisture content of the dough, and as you work your way through each slice, the added chewiness becomes more evident, and more addictive, thanks to the extra hydration.

▼ The moisture content comes at no expense to the base, either, as it still has a good thickness.

▼ The crust is nice and chewy too.

Being able to improve the size and texture of the pizza while maintaining the price, flavour and thickness is no easy task, yet 7-Eleven manages to pull it off impressively. When we reviewed the previous pizza, we described it as occupying a position somewhere between a frozen pizza and one from a specialist pizza restaurant, and that position is now even more firmly established in our minds.

In fact, the pizza may now be occupying special territory as a brand in its own right, with a signature flavour, texture and price that reflects 7-Eleven’s commitment to delivering satisfaction for its customers. Like the chain’s highly acclaimed smoothies, the pizzas really are worth stopping by for.

Photos ©SoraNews24
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