Ice cream cakes splattered in ink marks Splatoons return to Baskin Robins in Japan

Three is the magic number this time around.

Last September the world was given a splash of color with the release of Splatoon 3, the game which pits squid and octopus people against each other to douse as much of the terrain and opponents as possible with brightly colored ink. And with the game’s release came a collab with leading ice cream parlor Baskin Robbins (widely known as “31” in Japan).

Considering both brands’ preference for vibrant colors, it was a match made in heaven, and now it’s back from not until 20 July!

Splatoon 3 has seen a number of additions since its launch, with new modes that add to the gameplay. These changes have been reflected in this latest tie-in as well. For example, last year’s Ikasu Soda and Grape flavor that featured blue and yellow ice cream to represent the two teams in the game has been upgraded to the Ikasu Tricolor Fruit Punch for 390 yen (US$2.70).

The soda-flavored (referring to an apple/citrus flavor in Japan) yellow and grape-flavored blue sorbet have returned but are now joined by a red sour-peach-flavored sorbet. This is a reference to the Tricolor Turf War that has been added to Splatfests and pits three teams against each other.

Likewise, Baskin Robbins’ Triple Pop, which is a cup with three scoops of any flavor, has leveled up to the Tricolor Pop for 650 yen ($4.50), in which one of the scoops is Ikasu Tricolor Fruit Punch with a cone sticking out of it for good measure. It’s also topped with a Super Sea Snail cookie.

They come in a special Splatoon 3 cup that has stickers of various characters that you can remove and use elsewhere after eating.

Double Cups with two scoops of any flavor will also come in one of two special Splatoon 3 cups, each with a Tricolor Turf War theme.

And the first 310,000 people to order either the Tricolor Pop or Double Cup will get one of two cookies featuring one of the two cat judges from the game. Much like in the game, the judges are assigned randomly and you can’t choose which one you get.

Last year’s Nice! Gelatin Soda has be replaced with the Tricolor Battle Clash Soda for 680 yen ($4.70), which has the same packet of blue and yellow syrup and scoop of ice cream, but replaces the bits of gelatin with more crushed ice for an all around crisper and cooler beverage.

That all is just the beginning though, because two big new items have also been added to the line up. First is the Ikashita Ice Cream Set, which are six scoops of any ice cream in Splatoon 3 cups.

And all this is wrapped in a big Splatoon 3 box.

But best of all, to keep your ice cream cool during transport, there’s also a Splatoon 3 squid-shaped cooling pack!

Finally, the pièce de résistance is the Splatoon 3 31 Deco Cake for 4,300 yen ($29.72). This starts with your choice of a Chocolate Chip / strawberry or Caramel Ribbon / Chopped Chocolate ice cream cake which is then topped with six scoops of whatever ice cream you want. Decorations include cat judge cookies, paper cut-out of Splatoon fighters, a chocolate pen with chocolate message board, candles, and best of all, two packets of blue and yellow milk sauce that you can goop all over the cake, just like in the game!

Put it all together and you’ll get something like this:

This alliance doesn’t end in the ice cream shop either. In Japan from 15 to 17 July, Splatoon 3 will be holding a special Splatfest asking players to vote for their favorite ice cream flavors and then defend the honor of said flavors in a Tricolor Turf War. Vanilla, Strawberry, or Mint Chocolate: Which one will prevail?

Of course, Popping Shower couldn’t have been included because everyone would just vote for that and end up on the same team.

Source, images: PR Times
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Japanese swimsuit model/former adult actress releases AI-generated photo album of herself

Says AI presents a new opportunity.

About a month ago, Japanese magazine publisher Shueisha released a photo collection for a newly debuting swimsuit and lingerie model named Ai Satsuki, whose name had a double meaning to it: “Ai” is a common women’s name in Japan that means “love,” but it’s spelled just like “AI,” and Ai Satsuki herself was a series of digital images created by an artificial intelligence program.

Now there’s another gravure model named Ai, Ai Uehara, who’s also released a new photo album. As with Ai Satsuki’s album, all of the images in Ai Uehara’s new album, titled Saisei (or alternatively Rebirth) are AI-generated images, but what’s different is that Ai Uehara is a real person.

▼ Ai Uehara (real person)

身体の肌もちもちスベスベって
よく腕触られるんだけど
毎日してることは
お風呂上がり全身パーフェクトワンジェル塗って
お米ちゃんと食べて、魚とかオリーブオイル系の油ちゃんと取るようにして
日焼け止め塗って
パサパサにならないよう心がけてる… pic.twitter.com/Cc40wUDnCq

— 上原亜衣 (@ai_uehara_ex) June 24, 2023

The 30-year-old Uehara entered the entertainment world as an adult film actress in 2011, eventually transitioning to sexy but non-pornographic modeling. While still active as a model, for Saisei a team of collaborators, collectively dubbed AI VERSE, used existing photos of Uehara as the basis for producing AI-generated images of her, with the best 50 or so bundled together for the digital video album.

▼ The cover of Saisei

私のファーストAI写真集「上原亜衣「再生」AI Uehara ‘Rebirth’」をKindleの電子書籍として出版しました

本作は @AI__VERSE と @ai_punchjp と一緒に制作しました！

とても素敵な作品なので、私のファンの方はもちろん、AIに興味がある方全員にぜひ見てもらいたいですhttps://t.co/nPIVdo1RIU

— 上原亜衣 (@ai_uehara_ex) June 27, 2023

Three days after its release, Saisei reached the number-one-best-seller position in Amazon Japan’s Kindle rankings for the photo collection/design/art collection category.

▼ ベストセラー１位 = Number-one bestseller

上原亜衣ファーストAI写真集「再生」が、Amazon Kindleの写真集、デザイン、絵画の3部門で1位になりました

AmazonのKindle Unlimited → https://t.co/dyFp3vVKXN に登録すると、私の写真集だけでなく対象電子書籍が無料で読み放題です♪ pic.twitter.com/uvY5b3OtDb

— 上原亜衣 (@ai_uehara_ex) June 30, 2023

By using photos of Uehara to create AI images of her, the Saisei production team appears to be trying to sidestep a potential legal pitfall of commercializing AI-generated images. With AI programs that cast a wide net in looking for existing visual reference to create new images from, the legal question arises of whether or not the owners of the referenced images have ownership claims to the AI images that stem from them. In the case of Saisei, though, images of Uehara being both the input and output of the process could, ostensibly eliminate such complications and allow the image collection to avoid the fate that befell Ai Satsuki’s album/existence.

In talking about Saisei’s release, Uehara acknowledges that she’s heard people saying that AI presents a threat to the jobs of people like her, but that she disagrees, saying “I think this technology is going to give us a boost.”

Saisei is available through Amazon Japan here, priced at 699 yen (US$5.15).

Source: Nikkan Spa via Hachima Kiko
Top image: Amazon Japan
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What happens when you cook beer with potato chips in a rice cooker?

The lazy drinker’s guide to a good night in.

For our reporter Seiji Nakazawa, summer is synonymous with beer. And when he drinks beer, he likes to eat potato chips, saying nothing beats this duo on a hot and humid night.

In addition to liking beer and potato chips, Seiji likes cooking up weird concoctions in his rice cooker, so with the weather warming up, it seemed like the perfect opportunity for a new experiment.

▼ So he went out and grabbed himself some limited-edition Summer Happiness Thick Cut Butter chips, priced at 193 yen (US$1.34)…

▼ …and a can of Nodogoshi Nama, a happoshu-style beer, for 172 yen.

With no recipe to work with, Seiji emptied the bag of chips into the rice cooker, but when he looked at it he feared it wouldn’t be enough so he added another packet, which amounted to around 132 grams (4.6 ounces) of chips in total.

Figuring he couldn’t go wrong with a 1:1 ratio between chips and liquid, he poured in around 130 millilitres of the beer. However, that didn’t look like enough either, so he added in an extra 70 millilitres for 200 millilitres in total.

Pressing the start button, Seiji left the cooking time up to the machine, which worked out to be 45 minutes, the same as white rice.

He watched it for a while, just to make sure bubbles didn’t come foaming out the top or anything, before leaving it do its thing.

At the 20-minute mark, the delicious aroma of potatoes filled the room, reminding him of a Japanese festival, where the smell of baked potatoes and butter is known to waft through the air.

When the melody on the rice cooker rang out to let Seiji know the cooking had finished, he lifted the lid to find that the potato chips had softened.

The beer appeared to have soaked into the potato chips, so he grabbed a cooking utensil to stir the mix around a bit.

As he stirred, the mixture began to clump together, forming something that resembled…

▼ …mashed potato!

Piling the mixture onto a plate, Seiji’s potato chips now resembled mashed potato, although the beer had given it a curious brown hue.

▼ Taking out a spoon, Seiji lifted a morsel to his mouth and hoped for the best.

Chewing through his first mouthful, Seiji found that it wasn’t bad at all! Every chip had been coated in the butter seasoning so that seasoning really came through when the mixture was all mashed up together. The chips also contained honey, which worked well to add some sweetness to the richness of the buttery potato.

While the sweet and buttery potato flavour was at the front of the flavours, the slight bitterness of beer followed right behind it. However, it didn’t really taste like beer, as it simply worked to add a much-needed depth to the potatoes.

It was like mashed potatoes, but from a different realm, and though Seiji thought it was delicious, he decided to check with his colleagues to get their verdict on his new concoction.

Yoshio (top left, below) was kind with his comments, saying: “It’s fine. It looks like a candy. I feel like it’s something I shouldn’t eat, but it’s not like I wouldn’t eat it.”
Mariko Ohanabatake (top, middle) said: “What is this? I’d like it without the bitterness.”
Masanuki Sunakoma (top right) said: “I don’t think it looks that bad. Maybe it’s delicious?”
Yuuichiro Wazai (bottom left): “Wow… it tastes like the mashed potatoes that accompany a steak when they’re soaked in gravy.”
Ansuzu (bottom middle): “It’s disgusting. There’s no smoothness.”
P.K. Sanjun (bottom right): “It tastes like potato chips. But they’re soggy so it feels strange. Maybe people would eat this during wartime?”

“Harumph”, thought Seiji, “These guys are useless.” What would they know about fine food, anyway? Half of them can’t even tell an expensive watermelon from a cheap one.

That’s when he realised there was one person in the office who might actually appreciate this fine delicacy…

▼ …Mr Sato!

▼ Mr Sato gave a solemn nod, looked at Seiji and said, “It tastes like Germany!”

Well, it wasn’t exactly a statement he was expecting, but hey, Seiji had to agree he had a point. Beer and potatoes are two of the most delicious things you can eat at the annual Oktoberfest in Tokyo, which is the closest thing to Germany Seiji and Mr Sato have had in recent years, so Seiji took it as a compliment.

Either way, tastes are subjective, so if you’d like to try your luck with this concoction, feel free to give it a try. It can’t be any worse than Mr Sato’s attempt at making rice in a rice cooker with only eggs.

Photos ©SoraNews24
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New Ghibli art exhibit lets you step into the studios anime posters. Sea of CorruptionPhotos

Friday Road Show and Ghibli Exhibition is different from studio’s past art events, Ghibli co-founder says.

In Japan, summer is the time for Ghibli movies. Not only is summer the time of year when the famed anime studio customarily release its new films in theaters, every year broadcaster Nippon TV shows a number of Ghibli works as part of its Friday Roadshow (Kinyo Roadshow in Japanese) weekly movie program during the summer months.

This year Studio Ghibli and Friday Roadshow are deepening their summertime partnership with a new event, the Friday Road Show and Ghibli Exhibition, which opened in Tokyo on June 29.

This isn’t Ghibli’s first exhibition, but at a pre-opening ceremony the studio’s veteran producer Toshio Suzuki (pictured above, posing in front of the event’s mascot characters, caricatures of himself and Ghibli director Hayao Miyazaki) said the Friday Road Show and Ghibli Exhibition is unique in its focus. “The exhibitions we’ve done up until now have been closer in feel to art exhibitions,” Suzuki explained, “but this time…we’ve made [participatory] entertainment a major focus, and it’s been a lot of fun.”

Part of that “participatory” aspect comes in the form of giant photo spots that recreate Ghibli’s iconic movie posters, but minus the movie’s main character, so that you can step in and take a photo of yourself as the protagonist. Guests can insert themselves into the posters for Princess Mononoke (pictured above), Kiki’s Delivery Service (seen below), Spirited Away, The Cat Returns, and Ponyo (although the Ponyo photo spot will only be available until July 2).

Also amazing in scale is a walk-through section of the Sea of Corruption, the spreading poisoned environment seen in Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind.

Renowned modeling artist Takayuki Takeya has crafted not only a massive Ohm, as the giant, multi-eyed bug-like creatures are called, but also a surrounding grove of the Sea’s sinisterly sporous vegetation.

If you want to see even more Ohms, a special free-to-download AR smartphone app will fill the area with more of the creatures, and elsewhere in the exhibit is a separate AR area where you can see the world from the perspective of the miniscule heroine of Arrietty.

While Suzuki describes the Friday Road Show and Ghibli Exhibition as being less art museum-like than the studio’s other exhibitions, the event is still showcasing an amazing treasure trove of Ghibli artwork. Guests will be able to see selected annotated storyboard (e konte, if you want to use the in-Japan industry jargon) pages for almost every feature-length anime Ghibli has made, from 1984’s Nausicaa to 2020’s Earwig and the Witch.

▼ An e konte page from Whisper of the Heart

The Friday Road Show and Ghibli Exhibition is being held at Warehouse Terada B&C Hall venue, located in the Tennozu canal neighborhood by Tokyo Bay, between now and September 24, after which it moves to the Toyama Prefectural Art Museum in Toyama City from October 7 to January 28.

Event information
Friday Road Show and Ghibli Exhibition / 金曜ロードショーとジブリ展
Venue: Warehouse Terada B&C Hall/E Hall /寺田倉庫 B&C HALL ／E HALL
Address: Tokyo-to, Shinagawa-ku, Higashi Shinagaw, 2-1-3
東京都品川区東品川２丁目１−３
Runs until September 24
Admission 1,800 yen (adults), 1,500 yen (high/middle school students), 1,100 yen (elementary school students)
Website

Source, images: PR Times
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