Limited edition lucky cat lunch boxes are back, promise to make your food too cute to eat

The cat-shaped boxes come in three adorable varieties.

Nothing beats eating your lunch out of a box that suits your tastes. Whether your passion is Star Wars, unicorns, or race cars, odds are having a lunch box decorated with your favorite things is going to bring you joy every day.

Even better is having a limited-edition lunchbox, one that no one else has! That’s why we love these adorable lucky cat-shaped boxes that were previously available for a limited time two years ago, and which are now coming out with three new designs!

This time around there is a white cat, a striped cat, and a black and white cat, named Koharu, Futa, and Subaru, respectively. Each box has an elastic collar that also doubles as a way to keep your box together, and when you first buy it, you’ll also get a different special bento meal with each one.

Koharu, the fluffy white cat with mismatched eyes, comes with a seafood bento, complete with rice with scallops, pollack sauteed in basil, shrimp cakes, and sauteed vegetables.

Futa, the tabby cat, takes a more western approach to his meal, including jambalaya rice, a hamburger steak with tomato sauce, and a fried fish filet.

The very handsome black-and-white Subaru takes a little more of a Japanese course, with chirashizushi, chicken cooked with malted rice, and a shrimp filet patty with tartar sauce. The omelette even has little pawprints on it!

The three original bentos that were released two years ago are also available again, so you have plenty to choose from. And of course, you can reuse the boxes for lunch, storing small items, or any manner of adorable uses!

The bentos are now for sale at certain Japanese department store food sections in the Tokyo area. You can buy them every day from 10 a.m. at Tokyo Station’s Daimaru Department Store in front of the Yaesu North exit, and they’re also available at other locations and events, but those have specific sale dates and times, so your best bet is to hit up the Tokyo Station Daimaru if you want to get one.

When they inevitably run out of stock, they will also be selling consolation products, like macaroons, an original clock, and a miscellaneous goods set, so if they’re all sold out by the time you get there, don’t worry! You can get some of those cute limited edition goods instead. Plus, there are lots of other unique bentos you can buy and keep, especially when riding the bullet train.

Source, images: @Press



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Lazy Ghost Has SO Much Unfinished Business

I'd rattle some chains at you, but my usual chains broke, and my ghost blacksmith got sent to purgatory, so I need to find a new one, and I haven't gotten around to it, y'know...

Lazy Ghost Has SO Much Unfinished Business


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“Do you have a lot of money?” Japanese kid crushes day care worker with innocent cruelty

Care provider admits he doesn’t, and the kids aren’t at all surprised.

Working at a day care center involves spending a lot of time around cherubic smiles and innocent laughter, so you might expect the atmosphere to be incessantly sweet. Sometimes, though, something happens that ends up leaving car providers feeling salty or bitter instead, which is perhaps how Japanese Twitter user @FuckingHoiku (meaning “F**king Day Care Worker) got his online moniker.

But it’s a little easier to sympathize with the frustration his screenname is steeped in after reading his recount of a recent day at work, when some of the children at his preschool asked him the following question.

Four-year-old kid: “Hey, teacher, do you have a lot of money?”
FH: “What? Umm…no, I guess I don’t have very much.”
Four-year-old kid: “I knew it.”
Other four-year-old kid: “Even though you’re a grown-up, you don’t go to work like our moms and dads. You just come here and play all day.”

“So, the kids think I’m a NEET,” FH laments, referring to Japan’s not-in-education-employment-or-training adult demographic that generally survives off the generosity of their parents. “I’m actually a wage slave though…” he continues, once again highlighting that while he doesn’t make a ton of money, he actually does have a paying job.

Mixed in with sympathetic laughter about how kids’ purity sometimes makes them incapable of tact were a few commenters who also work in the day care industry, and have had similar conversations with their kids.

“The kids at my school ask me ‘What kind of job do you have?’”

“One time, one of the ids told me ‘You spend all your time playing instead of working, but if you don’t start earning some money, no one is going to want to marry you.’”

Others offered encouragement to FH, telling him that he should take the children’s inadvertently cutting remarks as compliments.

“I think the kids said what hey did because they see you as someone who’s always cheerful, friendly, and happy to play with them. Looking at it that way, you’re really amazing.”

“I’m studying for a career in child care, and I really respect people like you who have so much enthusiasm for the job that, to the kids, it looks like you’re just playing and having fun.”

But the highest praise came from someone from the group that FH’s kids recognized as having an actual job, as a working mother chimed in with:

“When I get off work, I’m exhausted, but when I go to pick my kid up at day care, the staff is still so friendly and energetic, even after spending all day taking care of the children. They’re always so kind when they great me, and every day, in my heart, I feel ready to burst into tears and get down on my hands and knees to say thank you. I absolutely love you all. You’re amazing, like gods. You’re life-savers.”

So it looks like even if the kids don’t realize how hard FH works to take care of him, at least there are parents that know, and appreciate, what an incredible job people in his position are doing.

Source: Twitter/@FuckingHoiku via Hachima Kiko
Top image: Pakutaso



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Hong Kong real estate developer builds new super micro condos smaller than a parking space

Ends up selling only two of its 73 units.

Hong Kong some of the most expensive housing prices in the world. With highly-priced apartments that are incredibly cramped, it is no small wonder that they’re sometimes referred to as nano flats, capsule homes or micro apartments.

Such abodes may only be the spatial equivalent of a 134-square foot (12.4-square meter) parking space and can easily cost upwards of three million Hong Kong dollars (US$382,00). Yet despite the rooms resembling little more than cages, demand for them is at an all-time high.

▼ Here is an example of how they might look like.

But one real estate developer designed even smaller for-sale condominium units, called the T-Plus. Measuring 128 square feet and priced at 2.85 million Hong Kong dollars, the student hostel-inspired units each would have a kitchen, space for storage, and toilet, and come furnished with a refrigerator, bed and dining table.

▼ Occupants would have barely enough room to stretch out.

▼ It may look gorgeous, but it is still really small.

The developer hoped to sell all of its 73 micro flats located in Hong Kong’s Tuen Mun district in December last year, but their tiny dimensions failed to attract buyers. Only two of the nano condos were sold, which caused the sales launch to close early.

Granted, there are cheaper rental alternatives in Hong Kong, but no one wants to live in a bathroom for all of eternity. Still, even though pricing for the T-Plus was close to what was offered on the market — the cheapest available option for for-sale new homes on the market, in fact — perhaps the disappointing sales marked what the public thinks is the limit of comfortable housing.

Sources: Oddity Central, South China Morning Post
Featured image: Twitter/@jackycwong



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Tokyo anime toymaker has the world’s coolest office entrance【Video】

The spirit of anime runs strong through Bandai Spirits’ office culture, where just going to the conference room is a dramatic experience.

In-series, anime’s giant robots are created in environments as cool and futuristic as the mecha themselves. Maybe it’s a secret fortress on the dark side of an alien moon, or a forgotten laboratory deep beneath the earth.

The figures and models of those robots, however, tend to be born in much more mundane settings, primarily the urban offices of Japanese toymakers. But while the job of anime merchandisers is to create a tangible piece of real-world life from anime art, sometimes that art ends up influencing their reality as well.

This pair of silver doors seen below is located in the Tokyo headquarters of Bandai Spirits, one of the many divisions of anime retailer Bandai. Sure, the zigzagging divider is kind of cool, but aside from that, they’re as dull as any other set of office doors…until an employee scans his keycard in order to unlock them.

In this video, posted to Twitter by anime mechanical designer and illustrator Hidetaka Tenjin (@TENJIN_hidetaka), an authorized tap of the panel next to the doors causing the surface of the portal to erupt in a display of technological light as the word “ACCEPT” appears, recognizing the employee’s right to enter. Then, as the doors slide open, animated lines on the floor usher Tenjin and his guide into the conference area beyond.

Though Tenjin refers to the doors as being the building entrance, it looks more likely that they’re the gateway to that particular floors’ workspace, and not directly connected to the street (and really, if it was, passersby would probably be clogging the sidewalk to watch the show). Bandai Spirits says the doors were installed back in August, but it wasn’t until October that the lights and animation were added, under the logic that the company thinks of the conference room as its base of operations, and so it felt like it should have a cool secret-base effect as you step inside.

Other Twitter users are, predictably, incredibly jealous, leaving comments like:

“SO AWESOME!”
“Too cool.”
“I should be used to seeing this sort of thing from watching anime, but with a real-life version, I just keep watching the video over and over.”
“So if you don’t have access, does the light turn red and a warning siren sounds?”
“The colors and design look just like something out of [anime series] Psycho-Pass.”
“Every guy watching this wishes his office had an entrance like that.”

Unfortunately, the doors’ lighting and effects look to be a custom project, so there’s no off-the-shelf version you can buy for your home or workplace…but then again, since Bandai Spirits is all about making cool anime stuff for grown-ups, maybe they should get working on a for-sale version for the rest of us.

Sources: Twitter/@TENJIN_hidetaka, IT Media
Images: Twitter/@TENJIN_hidetaka



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New Sweet Sake Pocky showcases the flavour of a centuries-old Japanese sake brewery in Tokyo

Special regional-exclusive release uses ingredients from the only sake brewery in the 23 wards of Tokyo.

Ever since its debut on the market back in 1966, Pocky has been a hit with consumers. Now loved by people around the world, the Japanese brand has grown to include different flavours, and different sizes, with extra-large versions now sold as regional souvenirs, showcasing renowned local specialties and produce from around the country.

So far, Glico has produced seven regional exclusives, featuring flavours like Yubari melon from Hokkaido, Uji Matcha from Kyoto, Satonishiki Cherry from Tohoku, Amaou Strawberry from Kyushu, and Gorojima Kintoki (a type of sweet potato) from Hokuriku.

It’s been a long time coming, but now the Tokyo region will finally be getting its very own Pocky. And like the other regional varieties, this one has a local backstory steeped in history and tradition.

▼ The new Pocky is called Tokyo Amazake.

Amazake, which literally translates to “sweet sake”, is a traditional drink made from fermented rice. Containing little to no alcohol, amazake is believed to have existed in Japan for over 1,000 years, and while it’s usually served hot in the winter, especially around New Year’s, it’s recently become popular as a health drink.

The nutritional benefits of amazake come from its fermented ingredients, and for the new regional Pocky release, Glico is using amazake from Tokyo Port Brewery, which makes its products with Tokyo rice and water.

▼ Tokyo Amazake

Tokyo Port Brewery flourished in the late Edo period (1603-1868), but they ceased operations during the Meiji Restoration in 1868. More than a century later, in 2011, the brewery recommenced operations, making it the only brewery located in the 23 wards of Tokyo.

Glico is helping to draw attention to the brewery, and its long history of traditional sake-making methods, with the new Tokyo Pocky. For this release, the chocolate-covered biscuit sticks are said to have a mellow aroma and flavour, due to the combination of sake lees and malted rice used in its creation.

▼ The Tokyo Amazake Pocky will be sold in boxes containing 15 individually wrapped sticks.

The new Pocky will be available to purchase at souvenir shops, stations, airports, large retail outlets and highway rest stops in Tokyo, and in neighbouring Kanagawa, Saitama and Chiba prefectures, from 5 February.

Source, images: PR Times



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Nintendo announces first-ever dedicated Nintendo shop in Japan, set to open in Tokyo

And, surprise, it’s not coming to video game mecca Akihabara.

Few companies enjoy the sort of loyalty and respect that Nintendo does in Japan. A technological pioneer that achieved worldwide success while capturing the imagination of kids around the globe, the video game giant’s image here is sort of a cross between the lofty reputations of Apple and Disney.

So it’s actually quite fitting that just like those two companies, Nintendo is going to have its own dedicated store.

Nintendo’s head offices remain in its ancestral home of Kyoto, but the shop will be located in Tokyo and bear the logically straightforward name of Nintendo Tokyo. And while Akihabara is the generally the go-to choice for retail spaces for hard-core gamers, Nintendo’s significant mainstream popularity is reflected in the fact that Nintendo Tokyo will be found on the other side of downtown from the otaku mecca, in the trendy Shibuya neighborhood.

Nintendo Tokyo will be the company’s first directly managed shop in Japan, and in addition to selling Nintendo hardware, software, and character merchandise, the store will also have space for events and game demonstrations.

There’s no word as to exactly how big the store will be, but given that it’s going to be part of the currently under-construction new Shibuya Parco building (shown in the artist’s rendition above), which will be 19 stories tall, we can probably expect a pretty spacious venue. Best of all, Nintendo says it plans to make Nintendo Tokyo a place that a wide variety of visitors can enjoy, so hopefully whether you’re a wide-eyed kid playing through your very first Mario game, or a veteran who’s been playing Nintendo’s games since before the famous sometimes-plumber got his “Super” qualification, Nintendo Tokyo should be worth a visit when it opens in fall 2019.

Source: Nintendo via 4Gamer.net
Top image: Nintendo
Insert images: Parco



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