Twentythree

The super heavyweight sleeping Pokémon is now available overseas!

American mail order site ThinkGeek has just revealed a new addition to their range of fan goods, with the Pokémon Snorlax Bean Bag Chair. Weighing in at a significantly lighter load than its 460-kilogramme (1,014-pound) in-game counterpart, the cushiony chair is also some 90 centimetres (35 inches) shorter than the 2.1-metre (7-foot) tall Snorlax Pokémon in the game. It’s no less adorable, however, with its huge, round torso and beautifully calm, sleeping face providing a comfortable spot for fans to rest their weary bodies.

▼ With a width of about 60 centimetres, Snorlax has a lap large enough for anyone.

While ThinkGeek is promoting the new product as their own exclusive creation, we can’t help but see a remarkable similarity between their product and one we featured earlier in the year from Japanese manufacturer Bandai. Standing in at 150-centimetres (59 inches) tall, the Snorlax Bed from Japan was marketed as an oversized cushion and sold in March for an upcoming August delivery nationwide.

▼ Its colour might also be a bit lighter…

While the ThinkGeek creation has Snorlax in a more seated position, the company notes their creation is subject to change pending licensor approval. Pre-orders are currently being taken on their official website, with deliveries scheduled for December. Due to the size of the product, the item is only available for shipping to addresses in Canada and the U.S.

Source: Net Lab
Images: ThinkGeek, Premium Bandai 

Slimier than a Grimer, greedier than a Meowth.

GO Hattori, one of the writers on the Japanese side here at RocketNews24, likes to create comics about jerks. And his latest creation “The Jerk at the Pokéstop” is no exception. Read it here:

Are there any Pokéstop jerks in your area? Or are you – gasp! – a Pokéjerk yourself? It’s not too late to change your wicked ways, before the Pokémon start jerking you around!

Source: ©RocketNews24

Some Chinese Pokémon Go players have apparently teamed up to conquer the in-game gym located in Tokyo’s infamous Yasukuni Shrine.

It appears that a group of Chinese players have staked out Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine — a venue infamous for enshrining convicted Japanese war criminals from the country’s WWII era of imperialism — and a player using a Dragonite renamed, “Long Live China!,” has become the area’s gym leader.

According to the Shanghaiist, some other Japanese landmarks have been “monopolized” by Chinese players to the apparent annoyance of Japanese Go players.

Currently, it seems that the Chinese government’s blocking of Google’s GPS software has prevented Pokémon Go developer Niantic from releasing the game in the Chinese mainland, so only Chinese gamers living abroad or those using third party tools are able to play.

To say that relations between the Chinese and Japanese governments are a little sour would be an understatement, and some Chinese Pokémon Go players are apparently on a quest to conquer controversial Japanese landmarks in the game to troll Japanese users, though most are just happy to get to play the game. But, given the enormous popularity of the new mobile game and the great lengths players go to in order to conquer local gyms, we worry that the actions of these Chinese players may actually spark a digital World War III, killing untold thousands of adorable monsters.

Source: Shanghaiist
Image: Reddit

I used to be on every online dating app. I would spend hours every day swiping right and left, only to end up matching with people who seemed to fall into one of two categories: either wanting a four-second love interest, or a pen pal. I’ve never been one for texting, so that wasn’t going to work for me.

I spoke to a love coach (yes, they exist) to understand what was going on, and why I should seek in-person connections. Here are the reasons she gave me.

1. You’re pursuing the idea of a person, not the actual person

I get it. It’s fun. You’re bored, and nobody has to know that you’re sitting on a toilet judging people based on their appearances or whatever they’ve written in their profile.

You may think you’re looking for something specific, like a girl who plays video games, the beach and beer pong. Actually, there’s no way to know if you’ll like her in person. Or maybe you think you’re looking for a guy based on what he likes to spend his weekends doing. On paper (or, you know, your phone’s screen), everything might look great. Again, there’s no way to know if there will be any chemistry.

2. Match overload

I am a fashion designer. One of the first things I learned working in the industry was not to show your buyer too many options: they will get confused. The same logic applies to online dating. Having too many options complicates things.

3. Apps make it hard to commit

Red fish. Blue fish. Purple fish. All the fish. Here’s the biggest problem with online dating: it doesn’t make monogamy easy. It actually promotes the opposite by giving you an endless supply of options.

If you’re lucky, you might find someone great. But instead of taking a chance trying to get to know them, you continue to swipe because maybe, just maybe, you’ll find someone better.

What, so you’ve found someone who is beautiful, intelligent, smart and career-focused. What if you could have all that plus blue eyes and an incredible body? Keep swiping.

4. Meeting behind a screen can create unrealistic expectations

It’s easy to understand the appeal of online dating. It can be nerve-wracking to approach and meet people in a public setting. Here’s the catch, though: if you’ve been chatting on an app and then you decide to meet up, chances are you’ve built up an idea in your head of what this person is like.

Why is this a problem? Remember, you’ve never met this person. You’ve set your expectations based on a handful of pictures and a bunch of texts. Call me cynical, but you’re probably going to be disappointed.

So, what should you do? Go out into the world and talk to people! Stop hiding behind a screen. Find a hobby. Be brave and approach that cute guy in a bar. Trust me, I’m right there with you and whenever you’re feeling down, just know that I’m in your corner cheering you on!

4 Ways Online Dating Holds You Back Without Even Realizing It

You probably aren’t going to be surprised by many of the responses…

When describing a person, “chubby” can be interpreted in a few different ways. For example, if you are talking about little kids, then it generally means they have a bit of excess weight in a pleasant or attractive way. When chubby is used to describe adults though, there’s a bit of a grey area in whether or not chubby is a good thing or bad. The Japanese language has a similarly ambiguous word, pocchari which, depending on the context and who you’re talking to, can be positive or negative.

Japan has attempted to take the word “chubby” and make it into a selling point for a number of ventures, including maid cafes and J-pop idols. Yet even with these small steps towards a more positive body images in general, there is still a significant amount of negativity surrounding the word. This become starkly apparent in a video from the YouTube series Find Your Love In Japan, where the host asks men whether or not they’d date chubby women and almost all the men interviewed say, “No.”

If you were angered or frustrated at any point in the video, know that you weren’t the only one. This probably isn’t limited to Japanese men though, as many guys from around the world would likely answer the question in a similar fashion, so it would be unfair to focus on these respondents exclusively. Still, it’s never pleasant to hear someone criticize other people based on how much they weigh, even when they are asked to be candidly honest.

Instead, take heart what one interviewee said, that size is completely objective and loving each other is much more important. We’d say it’s better to pick someone based on their personality rather than their looks, because those are the relationships that are more likely to last. Though we’d also say that maybe we all have better stuff to that worry about then how attractive we think others are…

Source & screenshots: YouTube/Find Your Love In Japan