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Survey reveals that the power of storytelling in manga can do a lot for learning more about the world around us.

Was there ever a time growing up when you got yelled at for reading comics instead of studying? At the time, little did those grown-ups probably know that you were actually learning in one of the best ways possible.

Japanese online illustration school Atam Academy recently conducted a survey of 500 men and women of various ages (with the highest proportion in their 30s) to explore people’s perceptions of learning through manga and why it can be such an effective study strategy. Certain manga clearly deal with historical or scientific topics, but others also teach us how to interact with one another and important life lessons. Let’s dig more into the survey questions and responses together.

▼ Even if you learn all about chemical reactions in a manga, we don’t condone playing around without proper supervision–unless it’s to test new scientifically-backed food creations.

Q1: Have you ever felt that you learned something from reading manga?
● 65.4 percent: Occasionally
● 32.4 percent: Often
● 1.6 percent: Seldom
● 0.6 percent: Never

Taking the top two categories together, 97.8 percent of participants responded that they’ve learned something by reading manga. We tend to think that the other 2.2 percent just aren’t very self-aware…

Q2: What have you learned from reading manga?
● 35.6 percent: Historical knowledge
● 20.2 percent: Scientific knowledge
● 15.2 percent: How to interact with others
● 15 percent: Ways of thinking
● 14 percent: Sports rules
● 12.2 percent: Vocabulary
● 4.4 percent: Kanji knowledge

The largest proportion of participants responded that history was the top subject they learned from manga, commenting that it’s easier to understand things like the flow of time, societal relations, and major battles in manga form rather than a textbook. Similar responses were received regarding scientific topics, such as anatomy and physiology of the human body or outer space, due to the presence of visuals and a narrative rather than just factual text.

Branching out a bit, many respondents also pointed out that manga has continuously taught them how to navigate social situations and different ways of thinking for dealing with the many confrontations and reconciliations in life. Especially for those who identify as being on the shier side, manga can serve as a guide for teaching life lessons and how to cultivate a particular mindset for getting along with others.

Finally, from a more technical standpoint, manga can do wonders for learning the rules of a sport or game as well as specialized jargon for particular professions that isn’t used in daily life. Whether you’re just getting into soccer due to the World Cup or have always liked legal dramas, you’re bound to pick up a few new things. Plus, manga geared towards younger crowds usually include furigana (phonetic readings), making them a great way to organically learn kanji as opposed to rote memorization.

▼ One respondent commented that they always saw their parents watching baseball on TV but could never solidly grasp the rules until they read a baseball manga. Now the whole family enjoys watching the sport together!

Q3: What are some reasons why you think you can learn from manga?
● 50.8 percent: It’s easy to understand
● 22.2 percent: It sticks in my memory
● 21.2 percent: There are few reading hurdles
● 10.2 percent: It’s easy to empathize with the characters
● 3 percent: I can read it over and over again

Association is a powerful tool for memorization. It’s much easier to learn a new concept when you can associate it with a particular context, a memorable story, or a favorite character. Plus, there’s usually less of a mental lift to casually pick up a manga rather than a textbook since you’ll genuinely want to keep reading. Manga also causes us to reflect on what we might do in particular situations and can teach us about our values and actions, serving as a mirror for when we encounter similar situations in real life.

Q4: What are the best manga that you can learn from?
● 9.4 percent: Cells at Work! (2015-2021)
● 6.2 percent: Dr. Stone (2017-2022)
● 4.2 percent: Kingdom (2006-present)
● 3.6 percent: Haikyu!! (2012-2020)
● 3.2 percent: Slam Dunk (1990-1996)
● 2.8 percent: Detective Conan (1994-present)
● 2.6 percent: One Piece (1997-present)

The top three manga on this ranking all deal heavily with scientific and historical subject matter while the bottom four all teach technical knowledge, vocabulary, and important advice for living life.

▼ Perhaps we took Coach Anzai’s famous quote in Slam Dunk–“It’s when you give up that the match is over”–a little too much to heart since our team doesn’t actually seem to know when to quit.

Image©SoraNews24

All of the above teaches us not to feel guilty the next time we pick up a volume of a manga rather than a non-fiction text because there are plenty of lessons to be learned. Whether you’re a longtime Detective Conan fan wanting to know more police/detective vocabulary or are trying to learn the history of the unification of China through Kingdom, manga might actually be the best bet for cementing that knowledge in your long-term memory. You may also want to check out the latest research on effective memorization methods related to breathing patterns to use as a further aid in your studies.

Source: PR Times
Top image: Pakutaso
Insert images: Pakutaso (1, 2), SoraNews24
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With barley tea going into glasses as the weather heats up, we find out what goes into making barley tea.

With summertime here, people in Japan are increasingly reaching for one of its favorite drinks to cool off with: barley tea. Barley tea is called mugicha in Japanese, written with the kanji 麦茶, which literally translate as “barley” and “tea,” so it seems like it should be a pretty self-explanatory drink. It’s a mixture of tea and barley…right?

But wait, do you just toss raw grains of barley in with tea leaves during the brewing process? Or is mugicha something else entirely? To learn more, we wanted to pay a visit to a barley tea factory, and Ogawa Sangyo was nice enough to show us around theirs. Located in Edogawa Ward, Ogawa Sangyo is one of only two mugicha makers with a production facility in Tokyo.

▼ The entrance to Ogawa Sangyo’s factory

▼ Company president Keisuke Ogawa, who served as our guide

First thing first: barley tea doesn’t actually contain any tea. Yes, it’s an infusion enjoyed as either a hot or cold beverage, but there are no tea leaves used to make it. Barley tea is, however, truly made from barley.

▼ Sacks of barley, waiting for their chance to become barley tea

Ogawa Sangyo sources its barley from domestic growers, primarily in Ibaraki, Tochigi, and Toyama prefectures. With the country’s number of barley growers declining, securing the quantities they need has become more costly than it used to be, but the company is still committed to using Japanese-grown ingredients, as well as using two different strains of barley, for a more complex and robust flavor.

Before the grains can become barley tea, they have to be roasted, and the roasting process is something else that Ogawa Sangyo is particular about. While many mass-producers use a convection-roasting method, where hot air is blown into the oven, Ogawa Sangyo still goes with a direct-fire technique.

This is a more laborious way to roast the grains, but it also allows for finer control over the intensity of the heat and air flow, and that in turn produces barley tea with a richer flavor and aroma, Ogawa Sangyo says.

The barley grains aren’t in the oven entirely on their own, though. There’s also sand in there. Just like in the traditional way to roast sweet potatoes in Japan, the sand helps to more evenly transfer the infrared heat all the way to the core of the grains without burning their surface layer.

The roasting is a two-stage process, with the first stint in the oven being one minute at 250 degrees Celsius (482 degrees Fahrenheit). When they came out, the grains had taken on a darker though still light brown color, but they’d become incredibly fragrant.

At our guide’s encouragement, we tried a taste, and were pleasantly surprised to find that barley roasted like this tastes a lot like popcorn, but with a stimulating extra crunchiness to it! Honestly, we think it’d make a pretty good snack food in and of itself.

But these grains are destined to become barley tea, and so next they go back into the oven for a second round of roasting, once again for one minute, but this time at a lower temperature of 180 degrees Celsius.

Once they emerge, they’re even darker, and at each stage of the process the grains become plumper too as they expand during the cooking process.

▼ Counterclockwise from top: uncooked, once-roasted, and twice-roasted barley

It’s these twice-roasted Barley grains that are brewed to make barley tea, not in tandem with tea leaves, but instead of them. So now that the grains are ready, it’s time for them to be packaged, which, like the roasting, is a two-stage process.

It starts with a machine that bundles bunches of barley into tea bags, at a rate of 50 a minute.

Ogawa Sangyo offers its barley tea in both triangular and rectangular tea bags, and while the rectangular ones are easier to store, the triangular ones produce the better flavor, our guide told us. That’s because they provide a little extra space for the grains to move around inside the bag, and that allows for a more efficient flow of hot water around them during the brewing process.

Once the tea bags are ready, they need to be put into the bags or boxes that they’ll be sold in, and that step is done by hand.

By the way, if you’re wondering if that giant roasting oven makes the factory hot, the answer is yes…or, more accurately, the answer is YES! On the day of our visit, the temperature inside the facility was a good 10 degrees Celsius (18 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than it was outside.

But like we said, barley tea is one of Japan’s best-loved ways to cool off in the summer, and after learning what goes into making it, and feeling the heat involved, the next glass we drink is going to be taste extra refreshing, we think.

Related: Ogawa Sangyo
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News of fifth-anniversary project for the Pokémon MOBA mobile game is drawing a mixed reaction.

Adapting a franchise with as whimsical a setting as Pokémon to live-action is no easy feat, but 2019’s Detective Pikachu beat the odds and turned out to be a successful crowd-pleaser. Since then, there have been no fewer than three Sonic the Hedgehog movies that have further shown that audiences can be convinced to show up for mixed human/video game character casts, and yet there still hasn’t been another live-action Pokémon production.

That’s going to be changing soon, with the announcement of a new live-action Pokémon drama series, though it comes with a few catches.

\ お知らせ ///

『ポケモンユナイト』の5周年を記念して、
完全オリジナルの実写ショートドラマの制作が決定いたしました！

気になるキャスト陣や公開時期、そしてストーリーの全貌など、
すべての続報はこちらの『ポケモンユナイト』公式Xにて順次解禁していきます。… pic.twitter.com/E9V4cieVmr

— ポケモンユナイト公式 (@poke_unite_jp) June 26, 2026

First, this isn’t going to be an adaptation of any of any existing Pokémon anime arc, nor will it be tracing the path of any of the mainline Pokémon games. Instead, it’s Pokémon Unite, the free-to-play MOBA/multiplayer online battle arena spinoff game developed by China’s TiMi Studio Group and co-published by Chinese mobile game giant Tencent Games and the Pokémon Company. The live-action drama is part of Pokémon Unite’s fifth anniversary celebration, with the game set to hit the half-decade mark since its release later this year.

According to the announcement, the live-action Pokémon Unite drama will tell a completely new story. This isn’t a shock, considering that, by nature of being heavily focused on competitive multiplayer play, the game itself doesn’t really have much in the way of a narrative or characters. For that matter, it’s not currently clear whether the drama will take place within the game’s world or if it’s going to follow Pokémon Unite players in the real world, a definite possibility given the game’s e-sports presence. If it goes the latter route, there might not even be any Pokémon that appear in a capacity other than gameplay graphics for the matches the human characters compete in. Pokémon Unite is also being billed as a “short drama,” implying episodes less than 30 minutes in length and also likely a low episode count.

Casting and story details will be revealed at a later date, and the numerous question marks left hanging over the live-action Pokémon Unite series at this stage, combined with Pokémon Unite being a somewhat divisive part of the franchise whose fanbase doesn’t always overlap cleanly with the larger anime and mainline game enthusiasts, have resulted in a mixed online response to the announcement.

“Don’t you have other things you should be working on?”
“Work on Unite’s gameplay before you go making a drama series.”
“Who exactly is this being made for?”
“Sounds like an interesting enough idea to me.”
“Totally looking forward to this! Can’t wait to see who’s going to be in it.”
“Don’t forget to show scenes of the game’s microtransactions.”

Also not yet announced is a release window, but with the Pokémon Unite game’s fifth birthday coming up on September 22, odds are the live-action adaptation will be arriving sometime around then.

Source: Twitter/@poke_unite_jp via Hachima Kiko
Top image: Twitter/@poke_unite_jp
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Traditional craft brings hand-drawn anime characters to life with unique warmth.

Studio Ghibli is known for championing old-school traditions through its animated storylines and love of hand-drawn animation, and its appreciation for craftsmanship also extends to its official merchandise collections.

A good example is the studio’s latest release, which shines a light on Gobelin tapestry weaving, a centuries-old European textile technique renowned for its rich texture and intricate woven designs. It’s a craft that fits in well with Ghibli’s hand-drawn anime aesthetic, and for this release, Jiji from Kii’s Delivery Service and Totoro from My Neighbour Totoro are being brought to life in beautifully woven form, on a pouch and mini bag made with the magic of Gobelin tapestry.

▼ The Kiki’s Delivery Service “Under the Eaves” Jiji Pouch (2,530 yen [US$17.40]) features subdued colors and an elegant, sophisticated design.

This pouch is cleverly crafted to create a charming shopfront scene, with Jiji sitting beneath the eaves, surrounded by a rose-filled floral display. Though titular character Kiki isn’t officially present, the “Kiki” logo in the centre recalls the bread wreath in the shopfront of the film’s bakery, making her presence felt in the design.

Measuring 17 × 21.5 × 6 centimetres (6.7 × 8.5 × 2.4 inches), the pouch is a convenient size for storing small items such as cosmetics, earphones, and keys.

It can be used on its own as an everyday pouch or inside a larger bag to help keep your things neat and organised.

If you’re looking for a larger bag to pair it with, then the My Neighbour Totoro ‘Clover Season’ Mini Bag (3,850 yen) acts as a very sweet partner.

This design features Totoro surrounded by an elegant woven clover pattern, with a trio of Soot Sprites for company.

Measuring 26 × 32 × 15 centimetres, this bag is ideal for quick outings. The navy tapestry design gives the bag a sophisticated look and luxurious feel, making it a beautiful, well-made piece.

These bags are like woven artworks that will bring a smile to anyone who lays eyes upon them, and they can be purchased at Donguri Kyowakoku stores around Japan and online (links below). If you prefer your bags soft and cuddly, then the retail chain also has you covered, with a line of “friendly” bags featuring the likes of all three Totoros, plus an appearance from Jiji, the Catbus, and Boh Mouse from Spirited Away.

Source: Donguri Kyowakoku
Featured image: Donguri Kyowakoku
Insert images: Donguri Kyowakoku (1, 2)
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70,647,379 votes tallied, and one European nation apparently loves Sanrio’s often-forgotten grannie character.

Hello Kitty may be the face of Sanrio, but she’s far from the only adorable icon at Japan’s leading cute character company. As a matter of fact, Sanrio has so many loveable stars that every year fans make their favorites known in the Sanrio Character Ranking election.

This year the poll set a new record with 70,647,379 votes being cast, a 12-percent increase over last year. When those were all counted up, there was a very familiar face at the top of the ranking, Pompompurin.

This was the custard pudding-colored Golden Receiver’s second year in a row to finish in first place, and his fifth time to be there since Sanrio began conducting the poll. Pompompurin might have gotten an extra boost from fans fired up about 2026 being the 30th anniversary of the character’s debut, showering him with 7,135,114 votes, more than 800,000 more than second-place finisher…

…Cinnamaroll, who had 6,313,623 votes, and rounding out the top three was…

… Pochacco, with 3,967,689 votes.

This one-two-three order mirrors the results from the 2025 poll, and also finishing in the same spots as a year ago are Kuromi and Hello Kitty in fourth and fifth place. Making the biggest jump within the top 10 was Ahirunopekkle, who moved up from 10th to 6th, while My Melody slips one slot from 6th to 7th.

Rounding out the top 10 are Tuxedo Sam (up one rank compared to last year), Hangyodon (up one rank), and Little Twin Stars Kiki and Lala (down two ranks).

Also finding their way into the top 20 were Badtz-Maru (11th, same as 2025), Kerokerokeroppi (14th, same as 2025) and Gudetama (20th, down four ranks). Out of the top-20 finishers, the biggest improvement came for My Sweet Piano, who moved up five ranks to finish in 13th place, perhaps thanks in part to her appearance in the My Melody & Kuromi series that streamed on Netflix since the last Sanrio Character Ranking.

Surprisingly, while canine characters took the top three spots for the second year in a row for total votes, when Sanrio broke down the data by country, with the exception of Taiwan each demographic outside Japan had one non-dog among its three most popular characters.

Top three characters (first, second, and third) by country
● Australia: Pompompurin, Cinnamaroll, Kuromi (rabbit)
● Brazil: Cinnamaroll, Pompompurin, Kuromi (rabbit)
● China: Cinnamaroll, Pompompurin, My Melody (rabbit)
● France: Cinnamaroll, Pompompurin, Kuromi (rabbit)
● Germany: Pompompurin, Cinnamaroll, Kuromi (rabbit)
● Hong Kong: Pompompurin, Cinnamaroll, Kuromi (rabbit)
● Italy: Cinnamaroll, Pompompurin, My Melody (rabbit)
● Korea: Pompompurin, Cinnamaroll, Hangyodon (fishman)
● Singapore: Pompompurin, Cinnamaroll, Hangyodon (fishman)
● Spain: Pompompurin, Cinnamaroll, Umeya Zakkaten
● Taiwan: Pompompurin, Cinnamaroll, Pochacco
● Thailand: Yoshikitty (cat), Cinnamaroll, Pompompurin
● U.S.A.: Pompompurin, Cinnamaroll, Chococat (cat)
● U.K.: Pompompurin, Cinnamaroll, Usahana (rabbit)

An outlier in the foreign-country results is Yoshikitty, the fusion of Hello Kitty and J-rock star Yoshiki, who, like last year, is Thailand’s favorite of all Sanrio characters. The biggest surprise, though, is Spain’s love for Umeya Zakkaten, a grandmotherly general store shopkeeper who even some younger Japanese Sanrio fans might not recognize or know by name.

▼ Despite finishing 3rd in Spain, Umeya Zakkaten was 70th in overall votes

As for Hello Kitty, her highest individual foreign-country finish was 4th place in China, and she didn’t even crack the top ten for the Germany, Spain, the U.S., and the U.K. (despite being canonically born in England). Though Sanrio doesn’t publish Japan-specific rankings, odds are her overall fifth-place finish resulted from strong support from Japanese voters, but she hasn’t won the poll since 2019.

Source: Sanrio (1, 2), PR Times
Top image: PR Times
Insert images: PR Times, Sanrio (1, 2)
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Did the aftermath of Japan’s final match in the World Cup group stage result in order or chaos at one of Tokyo’s biggest gathering spots?

The FIFA World Cup currently taking place in Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. has sparked all kinds of excitement in the air in Japan. The Japanese national team’s performance had been solid in the group stage, drawing in its first match and winning its second, prior to its last matchup against Sweden on June 25 local time.

We had tried to grab tickets to watch this one at the official public viewing being offered at Tokyo’s Toho Cinemas Shibuya on the morning of June 26 Japan Standard Time (JST) but it was sadly already sold out. Instead, we decided to hang around the same area anyway, since the famous Shibuya scramble intersection has become a sort of infamous gathering space for all kinds of revelries and can get quite chaotic. Maybe we’d see something interesting if Japan played well.

Here’s what the intersection area looked like just prior to 8 a.m. JST. We spotted more people walking around than typical at this time on a weekday as well as some police on standby. If anything, everyone seemed to be a bit restless in anticipation of what was to come.

The game isn’t broadcast on the big screen at the intersection anymore like it used to be, but even so, there were some groups of people hanging around the Hachiko plaza who were wearing Samurai Blue uniforms. They were probably watching the match on their phones in solidarity.

Not much changed in the overall atmosphere of the vicinity as the match went on. Some media outlets had gathered with cameras but they were still just biding their time. Even the people gathered by the Hachiko statue were more subdued while watching than at an official public viewing event. Was this the calm before the storm?

We wanted to see the view from a higher vantage point so we crossed the street and found a window seat at the Starbucks overlooking the intersection and Shibuya Station.

We saw the number of people in the area start to increase around 9 a.m. Suddenly, a loud cheer erupted inside the cafe when Daizen Maeda scored the first goal of the match for Japan. It was a fun feeling of comradery to share this moment with others.

Traffic control finally went into effect around 9:30 a.m. The area was starting to become more lively with pedestrians and more people were gathering in front of the station to watch the second half.

Not long after, Sweden’s Anthony Elanga tied the score and the match intensified. We saw that some people in the cafe who had been silently watching it on their laptops were now chatting and watching it together with some foreigners right up until it ended with no further goals.

In the past, Japan’s national team was more likely to be the ones to equalize the match rather than to score the first goal. Back then even a draw used to be worthy of great celebration, but now it feels more like an “Ugh, we were so close!” kind of moment. Consequently, we were curious how people in the streets would react to this end result.

We didn’t have to wait long to find out as the movie theater public viewing let out and swarms descended on the intersection around 10 a.m.

Every time the walk signal turned on the crowds flocked to the center of the street, giving high-fives to random passerby and chanting Nippon! Nippon! (Japan! Japan!) in unison. Welp, that answered our question!

Another thing we noticed was that there were quite a number of foreigners mixed in with the crowd and they were all filming the spectacle on their phones. It seemed like this experience in and of itself was a form of entertainment.

▼ Here’s a short video clip of the scene.

To sum it up, the end result of the Japan vs. Sweden match translated into orderly celebrations at the Shibuya Scramble intersection. Who knows whether that orderliness will translate into chaos if Japan manages to defeat Brazil in its first match of the knockout stage–which begins on June 30 at 2 a.m. JST–but we’ll be waiting to find out.

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