Anime’s rudest little boy, Crayon Shin-chan, helps pledge support for hardworking moms

Kasukabe station’s anime ad campaign is hitting close to home for many Japanese mothers.

Spend enough time in Japan (or indeed, many Asian countries) and you’ll learn to recognize a crude little boy plastered on grade-school stationery and posters: Shinnosuke Nohara, or Shin-chan, is one of the biggest cultural institutions in Japan and continues to delight children and adults with his filthy mouth, wild imagination, and tendency to moon strangers.

Shin-chan and his family live in the city of Kasukabe in Saitama prefecture — close to Tokyo, but without the extremely expensive price tag. As such, the town often hosts Shin-chan promotional events, such as their promotional stunt last year where they transformed an Ito-Yokado department store into the Sato-Kokonokado store from the manga and anime.

▼ The store was decorated in Shin-chan posters…

▼ …hosted limited-edition Crayon Shin-chan merchandise…

▼ …and offered colorful photo opportunities.

But this year, Kasukabe is going for a more subtle promotion.

Japanese Twitter is buzzing about the recent posters that were implemented in Kasukabe Station, providing a little narrative spoken by Shin-chan himself. Perhaps due to how crass and brash Shin-chan usually comes across in his canon, the somber tone in the ads hits an especially strong emotional chord.

▼ “Mom, thanks for making summer vacation so wonderful.”

▼ “But when does mom get a summer vacation?”

▼ “Summer vacation would be even more fun if mom were enjoying it too.”

▼ The large text of these ads is accompanied with a longer screed, shown here.
(Translation below)

Kids look forward to having an exciting summer vacation, but that same summer vacation… can prove a little challenging for their mothers.

Moms have to not only keep their kids entertained, but also clean, do laundry, and prepare three meals a day. After breakfast, they must make lunch. Once lunch is prepared, it’s time to think about preparing dinner….

Moms need to think up what meals to eat, then go grocery shopping, and then work hard to cook it in a stiflingly hot summer kitchen.

It’s a lot of fun to travel with your family during the summer period. But although those fun times have increased, we still must deal with the same intense chores in our current Reiwa period — chores that remain as difficult as ever.

So we at Oisix have been considering…

“What can we do to help those moms?”

How can we make it less stressful to worry over each day’s menu, and make it less of a chore to do the grocery shopping?

How can we make the time they spend cooking more enjoyable?

How can we make summer vacation more fun, not only for Misae [Shin-chan’s mom], but for all mothers?

We think about what steps we can take to fix these problems, and then challenge ourselves to take those steps.

To all moms, thanks for your hard work this summer vacation.

The station itself is also papered with Crayon Shin-chan characters, and each train is heralded with a short clip of the Shin-chan ending theme.

▼ See the station in action here, and listen to the theme toward the end.

One thing is for certain — mothers and fathers alike can’t get enough of these cute, touching posters. Many commiserated over their own lack of a real summer vacation, while some jokingly commented: “Great, now I’m crying” or “I wish my own kids could see this”. Kids, however, seemed to focus more on how these touching words felt a little bizarre coming out of the mouth of one of the rudest children in anime.

Maybe that’s part of the point, though. If even the most juvenile character can take a second to recognize how hard his mom is working, perhaps we can take some time to appreciate what our own mothers are doing for us. Or, for those of us who are mothers, take a moment for ourselves to relax.

Unfortunately the posters will come down on September 2, but the warm fuzzy feeling from reading them will tide us over a lot longer than that!

Source: YouTube/SoraNews24, Chokotabi Saitama Tourism
Images: SoraNews24
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We turn into paranormal investigators, check out the “world’s scariest” haunted spot in the U.K.

Using a Japanese ghost-hunting device, we find out if Chillingham Castle is as haunted as they say.

Do you believe in ghosts? There are lots of urban legends and ghost stories throughout the world, but what do you think of them? Are they just stories, or is there some grain of truth behind them?

Having conducted amateur paranormal investigations numerous times, we are interested in finding some proof of the paranormal. That’s why we were excited to have the opportunity to check out what’s called the “world’s scariest” haunted location, Chillingham Castle in the U.K. But we didn’t go alone; we brought a trusty ghost hunting device to help us find the ghosts haunting this old castle!

Chillingham Castle is in northern England, near the border of Scotland. It saw plenty of battles throughout the history of Scottish and English animosity, and is known to have been a place of imprisonment, torture and execution for many Scotsmen over its almost 900 years of history. It has a pretty bloody reputation; a quick Google search for the castle will come up with gruesome titles like “ghost castle”, “blood-soaked castle”, and “cursed castle”.

So during his travels in the U.K., our Japanese language reporter Seiji Nakazawa took a break from trying to be a rock god and visited Chillingham Castle to see if any spooky entities would appear before him. Even at the brightly lit entrance, he thought the castle had a strange air about it, though for ow there were no ghosts, just plenty of tourists.

To help him make contact with any spirits, Seiji brought a special ghost-detecting device: the “Baketan Reiseki”.

The first part of the name fuses the word “obake (お化け)”, which is generally translated as “ghost”, with the character for “to search”, “tan (探)”, while the second part combines the characters for “spirits”, “rei (霊)”,  and “stone”, “seki (石)”. So as you might guess, the Baketan Reiseki is a small, stone-shaped device that senses the presence of spirits. Apparently it’s made of cracked quartz. Seiji didn’t know how it worked, but it sounded pretty cool, so he decided to order it when he saw it on Amazon.

Supposedly, it lights up blue when it comes in contact with spirits, and if it encounters a full-on ghost, it flashes red and makes an accompanying beeping sound. The difference between the two entities, it seems, would be whether the spirit can manifest itself in some way, which has something to do with the amount energy it can control. If the device doesn’t sense anything, it stays green. To test it, Seiji took it around the SoraNews24 office before he went on his trip; it showed everything as normal there. He also checked his apartment, which was all green, too. Based on that, he determined that it doesn’t seem to just go off for no reason.

So anyway, on to the actual results of his exploration of Chillingham Castle. Before even entering through the doors, he checked out the garden in front; there, the light turned blue. Though this was intriguing, what Seiji really wanted to see were some actual haunting ghosts, so he moved on through the doors.

First, he went to the dungeon. It was pretty dark in there–despite it being early afternoon–and the thick humidity of the space gives it a pretty spooky feel.

Seiji really expected some ghosts to come out there, so he got out his handy Baketan Reiseki…

And it stayed green. Apparently there are no ghosts here, or if there are, they don’t want to be found. Seiji had the impression that English people are shy, having talked to a few during his trip, so he thought maybe these English ghosts would be shy, too.

He then moved on to the dining hall. Here, Seiji supposed, there was a good chance to encounter some ghosts. After all, this room must have been the place where the most soldiers gathered, a place to eat and relax before going off to war. Those who died nearby might be floating around here, where they spent their last days before dying.

But alas, it was green. It looks like the soldiers didn’t really feel like sticking around after death.

There are several reported cases of apparitions appearing in this castle, so there had to be ghosts somewhere. The last place Seiji checked was the torture room. Here Scottish prisoners were tortured and executed, so there must have been much suffering and many untimely deaths in this room. The cold wave of air that hit Seiji when he entered might have been proof alone that there were ghosts about there. Thinking he couldn’t miss the chance to get some evidence that ghosts exist, he turned on the Baketan Reiseki…

And it’ had turned blue! Another arrival of a spirit. Might this be the same spirit he encountered before? Or could this just be a power spot, brimming with the power of earth’s energy?

Either way, Seiji didn’t get to encounter any certified ghosts, so he judged Chillingham Castle to be not haunted. There do appear to be spirits, but unfortunately, Seiji’s trip ended without any exciting experiences of the unknown. He’d hoped that Chillingham would live up to its spooky reputation and the Baketan Reiseki would go off like a bell, but it is what it is, so it can’t be helped.

On the other hand, if it didn’t flash a red light at the “world’s most haunted place”, then where would it? Is the Baketan Reiseki really just a toy in the end?

One last time, Seiji turned on the little device just outside of the main gate and…

“Beep beep beep!”

They were outside the whole time?!

▼ A video of Seiji’s investigation

Well, that was Seiji’s amateur paranormal investigation. Perhaps he’ll take the Baketan Reiseki with him to other haunted spots, and see if he can come face to face with a real ghost. As the Halloween season approaches, we’ll just have to wait and see!

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46-year-old hikikomori arrested for leaving mother’s dead body inside house for over a year

“Yikes. This is like right out of a horror movie.”

Hikikomori, people who spend nearly their entire lives in their rooms, is a phenomenon especially prevalent in japan. While it’s difficult to get exact numbers, estimates say that there are at least over one million hikikomori in Japan, bringing with them a wealth of difficulties.

Being taken care of by their parents all day every day brings with it plenty of problems by itself, but there’s also several other complications… such as what they do when their parents pass away. This is a big issue, so much so that a few years ago the Nagoya government released a guide for hikikomori on what to do when their parents die.

Unfortunately, that information doesn’t always reach the intended audience.

Recently, the dead body of Satoe Tanaka, an 83-year-old woman, was found in the house where she and her son Hisataka lived just the two of them in Togane City, Chiba Prefecture. According to police, Hisataka was living as a hikikomori in the house, and his mother’s corpse had been left inside after she originally passed away over a year ago last July.

▼ Just… there are no words.

 

Police were alerted to the potential problem after city officials had been trying to contact Satoe for almost two years with no response. Details of why they were contacting her have not been released, nor why she didn’t reply for presumably a year before her death, but it could’ve been over simple managerial things such as taxes, insurance, or bills that eventually piled up.

As for the reason why Hisataka left her dead body inside the house for over a year, he had this to say: “I found her dead, and I didn’t know what to do to take care of it, so I left her there.”

Here’s how Japanese netizens reacted online to the disturbing story:

“Yikes. This is like right out of a horror movie.”
“Did he just ignore her body? Did he stare at it? I’m not sure which is worse….”
“And what about the smell? What did he do about that?”
“I feel like we might be hearing more stories like this from now on.”
“All he had to do was call an ambulance. Even a first grader can do that.”
“I mean, he obviously didn’t do anything because he wanted to keep collecting her pension money.”

Unfortunately that last netizen may be correct. Like most hikikomori, Hisataka was unemployed, living off his parent’s pension money. If that were to go away, he would’ve had no other way to continue his lifestyle, so in his twisted mind it wasn’t even a decision.

We saw a similar case to this a little less than a year ago, but here’s to hoping that some way is found to deal with these types of situations besides just releasing guides.

Source: Nippon Televeision network Corporation via My Game News Flash
Top image: Pakutaso
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Low-carb, noodle-free ramen is still awesome, this Yokohama-style chain proves

All the ramen flavor you could want, without any of the noodles.

So imagine you want to eat some ramen, which shouldn’t be hard to do. The stuff is delicious. But imagine you’re also trying to limit your carb intake, and then imagine yourself sobbing for days on end as you try in vain to enjoy a life without ramen, which may as well be a life without sunshine.

Believe it or not, though, there’s a way to load up on ramen flavor without loading up on carbs, thanks to the Ikkakuya restaurant chain.

Ikkakuya, which has branches in Tokyo and other parts of east Japan, specializes in ie-kei ramen. Originating in the city of Yokohama, ie-kei broth is a hybrid, combining tonkotsu (pork stock) and soy broths, mixing the traditional tastes associated with Fukuoka and Tokyo into something even better than the sum of its parts.

So how are you supposed to cut down on carbs while eating at a ramen restaurant? Simple: by ordering Ikkakuya’s Vegetable Ie-kei, which is a bowl of ramen…

…but without the ramen noodles!

Now if your experience with ramen consists solely of bare-bones instant packs, you might be wondering how this is possible. Restaurant ramen, though, comes with a wealth of toppings, and Ikkakuya’s Vegetable Ie-kei gives you all the fixings, just without any of the noodles.

You can choose between the standard tonkotsu shoyu ie-kei broth, or an extra-salty broth. We went with the standard version, and before long we had our noodle-free ramen in front of us. For toppings, you get sliced chashu pork, uzura (quail eggs), three strips of nori (seaweed), spinach, cabbage, and bean sprouts.

Following proper ramen-tasting protocol, we started with a sip of the broth, which was like a spoonful of liquid heaven. Moving on to the veggies, the cabbage and sprouts were freshly cooked and crisp, with a faint summer sweetness to them.

With no noodles, eating the Vegetable Ie-kei means more chewing and less slurping than you’ll usually do in a ramen restaurant, and that slower pace can help promote a feeling of fullness. However, since the flavor of ramen comes more from the broth and toppings than the noodles themselves, the Vegetable Ie-kei tastes just as delicious as with-noodle ramen does.

At 630 yen (US$5.80), it’s also a pretty good value. However, since we had a few spare coins in our wallet, we decided to add on to the standard Vegetable Ie-kei topping set by ordering an additional four slices of chashu (250 yen) and five more uzura (100 yen).

▼ Truly, it was a thing of beauty.

All in all, the Vegetable Ie-kei is intensely satisfying, and even without noodles it ends up feeling like a hearty stew.

Low-carb diets often try to cap per-day intake at somewhere between 100 and 150 grams. By that metric, the Vegetable Ie-kei is a strong ally in your fight against carbohydrates, as the whole thing (before our additional toppings) contains just 17 grams of carbs.

However, we should point out that low-carb doesn’t mean low-fat, as consuming the whole thing, including drinking all the broth, works out to 68 grams of fat. Of course, you’re not required to drink all the broth, and a lot of people don’t. It’s only the real gluttons who…

…you know what? The Vegetable Ie-kei was still awesome. We regret nothing.

Related: Ikkakuya location list
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