Cute military anime girl cookies
A feature on some of the cool things for sale at the gift shop of the Japan Ground Self Defense Force PR Center in Asaka:
The most popular product appears to be cute anime SDF girl cookies. They come in three flavors: cheese for the GSDF, milk for the MSDF, and honey for the ASDF. There are also cute moe girl figures representing each branch of service.
Those looking for a more manly souvenir can buy a box of dangerous snacks. Mixed among the normal snacks in each box is one single extremely spicy snack.
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Categories: Odd / Strange, Otaku & Anime
Otaku Rooms
An NTV “Zoom In” news report about the popularity of anime in the United States visits the home of an American otaku to see his treasures:
It’s John Patterson, a 42-year-old employee of Media Blasters. Patterson has a collection of some 8,000 items, totaling close to 50 million yen in value.
Similarly impressive otaku rooms can be found in the Otacool database on Figure.fm (which has been released as a bilingual book).
The rest of the news report, showing some fans at the NY Anime Festival:
The clip shows Americans learning manga drawing techniques, and representative from Del Rey Manga mentions how many new American comic books are heavily influenced by Japanese anime and manga. They also interview a few fans and find out about how they find the themes of friendship and loyalty present in anime stories to be very appealing. A few cosplayers also say they want to live in Japan.
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Categories: Otaku & Anime
Crayon Shin-chan no more??
One of Japan’s funniest and most recognizable Manga characters, Crayon Shin-chan （クレヨンしんちゃん）, might not be smiling right now.
His creator Usui Yoshito (臼井儀人) was reported to be missing after telling his family he was going on a hiking trip to Arafune Mountain (荒船山).
TBS news reported that on the 19th of September 2009, Gunma Police department found a body of a man that appears to have fallen from a steep cliff, facing downwards and has been dead for a few days.
No official announcement has been made but the clothing and resemblance of the body to the missing Usui Yoshito has made the police to speculate that they might have found him.
Gunma Police announced that on the 20th of September 2009, 8:00 PM Japanese time, they are going to deploy 20 policemen to investigate the situation pending any conclusion.
I am sure all Crayon Shin-chan fans are hoping that Usui Yoshito is still out there surviving, but we must be prepared to face the worst.
Source TBS NEWS: Click Here. The Japan Times also has an article in English.
Update: Kyodo news confirms that it was Usui’s body.
Contributor Bio: Anton is a third generation Chinese-Indonesian. He’s a big fan of Crayon Shin-chan and named his first online business, CrayonHost, after his favourite Manga Character.
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Categories: Otaku & Anime
Kobe’s Gigantor statue nears completion
A video from the Asahi Shimbun shows that Kobe’s Gigantor (Tetsujin 28-go) statue is almost finished:
It was originally supposed to be finished by October, but it looks like work is progressing ahead of schedule. The official homepage of the project states that will probably be finished some time near the end of this month.
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Categories: Otaku & Anime
