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From the Yomiuri comes the story of a Good Samaritan who responded to a plea for help in a gaming chatroom.

A man from Nishinomiya, Hyogo prefecture, who suffered from an unnamed central nervous system disorder, fell ill while alone at home and became almost entirely unable to move. The only option within reach was his computer, to which he turned and typed just a brief message and his phone number before losing consciousness.

A gamer in the chatroom, a 19-year-old high school student from Shiga, took charge and relayed the message to police, who were able to trace the man’s address from his phone number.

“Although the Internet has been misused in many crimes and bad incidents, I’m grateful I was saved by a stranger. I want to say there are also thoughtful people using the Internet,” the Nishinomiya man said after his recovery.

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Tokyo doll house

Check out this Reuters report on a Japanese guy who has totally given up on women and maintains a harem of 100 sex dolls.

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A word to the wise

Mainichi Wai Wai has a report with useful advice for men looking to troll the Lolita crowd for a little play for pay.

  • Avoid the underaged.
  • Watch out for those who use a lot of picture characters and smileys in their e-mail.
  • Insist the girl tells her your age and get her to mail you a message stating that she’s over 18.
  • Arrive at any meeting place well ahead of the scheduled time.
  • Find a hiding spot and check out whether the girl is your type and what she’s doing.
  • Get a feel for the area and work out an escape route, just in case.
  • If the girl is a minor, she’ll often turn up nearby with a group of friends who’ll hang out close by and wait for her to finish.
  • If the girl is on the con, there may be a guy in the vicinity.
  • Con artists often hang out in groups in family restaurants or convenience stores, so check out these places to see if there’s anything suspicious.
  • If you go into a hotel, make sure you enter separately and preferably leave by a different exit.
  • If you get there by car, park some distance away so she can’t learn the license number and use it against you.

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Thin not in at Peach Girls

One refrain we often hear from the guys here on JAPUNDIT and elsewhere that Japanese girls are just too thin. If the lithe bony bodies of young Japanese women turn you off, the Peach Girls pub may be just the thing for you!

Peach Girls

From the relatively petite 85-kilogram Sara. . .

Sara

To the full-package 115-kilogram Kanna. . .

Kanna

The buxom beauties at Peach Girls are carefully sized up and specially selected to ensure that customers always get more for their money.

Via Tokyo Times

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Ryota’s Revolution

Put me in a game centre and I’ll have a go at pretty much anything. But the one thing I’ve never tried my hand (or feet) at is Dance Dance Revolution - it looks like it requires the sort of coordination (let alone stamina) that I’ve never been blessed with.

Those who populate the DDR world seem to take it pretty seriously - there are national and international championships where rather obsessive types contort themselves for major prizes.

But I’ve never seen anything quite like Ryota, a 6(ish)-year-old who’s developed quite a following on YouTube - the first video below has been viewed over a million times. He’s got all the moves, and is living proof that you should start ‘em early.

More videos after the jump…!

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BioKite

Caught a story recently in THE ASAHI about a Japanese kite that needs very little wind to fly.

BioKite

The BioKite, which is controlled using a rod and reel, is even able to fly indoors and uses the same aerodynamic principles as aircraft to fly.

BioKite website (Japanese) is here.

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Keep your pants on

To ensure that your office christmas party goes with a bang and lives up to its quota of weak double entendres, here’s the game for you.

Pants Tug-o-War
Pants Tug-o-War

via Neatorama

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Heli-Q

Japan toymaker Tomy is planning to market the world’s smallest radio-controlled toy helecopter starting next month. The Heli-Q is designed to fly for five minutes on a 20-minute charge.

Heli-Q

Wouldn’t it be cool to have a squadron of these things and mount attacks on co-workers in neighboring cubicles? I wonder if they play Richard Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries. . .

Via Asian Pop with YeinJee

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How fast?!

You have less than 0.3 seconds to reactA baseball batting centre in Kitakyushu has unveiled a pitching machine it calls the Super Monster.

At the Mihagino Batting Center, until November 4, you can try to lay bat on a pitch coming at you at a staggering 200km/h (or 125mph).

[A spokesman for the centre] says the Super Monster Machine is the fastest artificial pitching device in the world, with balls taking just 0.3 seconds to reach the plate after being hurled.

Nearly 80 percent of those who have tried their hand in a 15-pitch session with the machine have failed to get bat to ball.

The report adds that the machine pitches nearly 40km/h faster than record fastest pitch in Japanese pro baseball - Yokohama BayStars’ Mark Klune’s 161 km/h.

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The irresistable rise of Nintendo

From humble beginnings…Behind corporate giants Toyota and Mitsubishi, number 3 in Japan is now Nintendo, which experts currently value at ¥10 trillion.

As the TG Daily notes, that’s the equivalent of US$85 billion (Disney is valued at US$80 billion, for the sake of comparison).

TG also reports that the company has tripled in value since the launch of the Wii console, and “Nintendo’s growth represents a five-fold increase for the company in the past two years”.

Not bad, considering that many “originally thought [the Wii] would lead to the demise of the company’s game hardware business”. But with the Wii, along with the handheld DS, flying off Japanese shelves, all is looking well for Nintendo.

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Pachinko

The Japan Times this morning has a really informative article about pachinko.

Filled with noise, bright lights and cigarette smoke, the attraction of the pachinko parlor is hard for many to fathom.

Seemingly oblivious to their surroundings, the players — mostly males — sit transfixed as the metal balls cascade down the front of the machines, hoping to hit the “jackpot.”

Yet this national pastime is rife with reports of shady dealings, links to North Korea, gambling addiction and crime.

Here are answers to some questions about pachinko.

A must-read if you want to know more about pachinko, its current state, and its ties to North Korea.

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Statetris Japan

Check out this site for the Japanese version of Statetris, where you can enjoy playing a little Tetris while testing your knowledge of Japanese geography

Statetris Japan

Thanks to Raymond Penners

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Killing beetles with a video game

Mushiking is an awesome arcade game where you command your virtual beetle using rock-paper-scissors buttons to slam your opponent’s beetle in to submission. It’s like wrestling. For 100 Yen (about USD$1) you get to play a few rounds, and the machine spits out a card that you can use to perform special moves by swiping it during the match. You can collect the cards and trade them with your friends.

Mushiking

Beetles are common summertime pets for children in Japan. The common breeds can be found in the forest or purchased at a department store for a few dollars. There are more exotic breeds that are found at dealers and on Internet auction sites for hundreds of dollars.

Apparently the game has become so popular that it’s driving actually live beetle sales to the point where some species are in danger. According to the Kyodo news service, the heavy demand for a certain breed is now causing a shortage in Turkey where they are captured and exported to Japan.

Kyodo news article: Japanese appetite for Turkish stag beetle poses extinction threat

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Pest or Pet?

bandai hex bug cockroach robot toy

Got bugs? If not, no problem, since Bandai’s newest high-tech toy is a robotic cockroach. “This little thing has six legs, a touch sensor that tells it to change directions when it hits a wall, a micro monitor that makes it vibrate like a cell phone, and a mic sensor that lets it scuttle away when you make loud noises” according to Tokyomango.

The Hex Bug will be infesting a store near you soon for only 1,995 yen each. Apparently the creators experimented with several types of bugs but finally decided that “the cockroach’s movements and speed were the most compatible with battery efficiency and design.” So even though alternate models that look like ladybugs are also available–they still move around like cockroaches.

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Rose & Camellia

JAPUNDIT reader Timothy Dombrovskis kindly writes in to point us to a pretty cool Japanese Flash game named Rose & Camellia.

The purpose of the game is to use your mouse to slap the face of woman opposite you, while ducking in enough time to avoid being slapped.

All the text is in Japanese, but there are enough English terms and graphics on the screen to make everything intuitively simple to understand.

Have fun!

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Tales of an Osaka Love Thief: Inside a Japanese host club

Ever wonder what it is like working in a Japanese host club?

If so, check out this English-subtitled Japanese video, which takes a look at the owner, the hosts, and women who frequent a host club in Osaka.

The thing runs a heft one hour and 15 minutes, but I hear it is well worth watching.

Big thanks to BW.

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Just fore you

For all you golfers out there, word is that these Japanese tees help to keep your eye on the ball.

Via Japansugoi

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Beautiful dolls

Meet Hideo Tsuchia, president of Orient Industry, a company that manufactures sex dolls that run any where from 140,000 to 650,000 yen.

Orient Industries

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Betel juice

Smile!South African documentary maker Tobie Openshaw has spent seven years talking to, taping, and photographing betel nut girls across Taiwan. According to Openshaw, modern betel-nut girls are neither under-aged nor abused as is often claimed. Rather they are mature adults who have made a rational decision to cash in on the relatively high returns they can earn by selling betel nuts.

[One] thesis is betel-nut beauties are low class because they expose their bodies. As a result the occasional legislator will charge betel-nut girls with destroying the moral fabric of the nation. This is why the beauties are banned from Taipei City and told to cover up elsewhere. The truth, according to Openshaw, is singers and actresses like Jolin Tsai also show off their bodies but they are looked up to for it.

“The reasons quoted for fighting this phenomenon are always wrong, always about the morals of Taiwan rather than the health of its people. I don’t understand what the fuss over scantily clad women is about. The real problem is the bad effects of betel nuts, which should carry health warnings,” Openshaw said, adding he had never tried one because they are cancerous, habit forming and look disgusting.

According to Openshaw, the sexy costumes worn by the girls are simply eye candy to attract customers, and claims that talk of girls engaging in prostitution is just that. “This is about selling nuts,” he says.

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Rage against the dying of the Wii

nintendo-wii.jpg

Some more information reported here that the sales of the Nintendo Wii have shown signs of slacking. The reason might be related to the dearth of software that truly utilizes the Wii’s capabilities in a compelling way.

For more coverage, go here, here, and here.

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