Earlier this year, the first annual  Moehaku 萌え博 2010 show was held at the Makuhari Messe Convention Center in Tokyo. Moehaku is an exhibition of itasha decorated cars. Itasha is a Japanese term for an otaku fad of decorating cars with  anime, manga, or video games characters.

At Moehaku the car decorations usually involved paint schemes and stickers and while decorated cars  are called itasha, decorated motorcycles are called itansha while decorated bicycles are  itachari.

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Did you know that you can study manga at universities in Japan?  The first attempts to set up manga departments were greeted skeptically because universities were considered unsuited to fostering manga artists who needed creative ideas and drawing ability to be successful.

Kobe Design University is one such university that has a special manga course which gives students the opportunity to present their work to editors of manga magazines.  The curriculum for a manga major is not easy with students having to produce the equivalent of about 400 pages of storyboard over a year. In every class, students are trained to create stories and characters.  Read more...

Tokyo based cult Japanese illustrator and manga artist Junko Mizuno is most famous for her graphic novels which put a warped twist on fairy tales like Cinderella, The Little Mermaid and Hansel and Gretel.  She is known for her illustrations of ultra-beautiful and ultra-violent girls.

Junko has used some of her designs of a new line of adult products and lotions called “Mizuno Garden” .  Aimed at Japanese women, the products are being sold in Japan and some other Asian countries.  You can see the website in English, but they only sell in Japan.  Read more...

Japanese gravure idols Akane Suzuki and Kana Tsuighara star in the manga inspired film series Sundome すんドめ (parts 1-4).   The manga was created by Kazuto Okata and published by Akita Shoten.  In the film series, Hideo Aiba (Atsushi Ninomiya) is a reserve…( read more  )d and obedient high school student who spends all his energy on masturbating! When a new student, the super sexy Kurumi Sahana (Akane Suzuki), joins the same after-school club in which he is a member, she teases him sexually. Can Hideo control himself for Kurumi’s sake?  Things don’t get easier when he starts getting involved with the busty Kyoko (Kana Tsugihara).!  Read more...

Sora Aoi (Sola Aoi) 蒼井そら is a popular Japanese av idol who has crossed into mainstream entertainment.  The petite 155cm tall Tokyo native is a busty G-cup with measurements 90-58-83. Sora was scouted on the street to become a gravure idol in 2001 with Sora Aoi being her created stage name.  She soon entered the av world in 2002.

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Sasuke サスケ is a 29 episode 1968-1969 anime series inspired by a novel by Kazuo Den about the life of Sarutobi Saksuki 猿飛佐助, a famous ninja featured in many Japanese children’s stories from 1911 to 1925.  Sasuke (and the 1979 TV Tokyo  anime version Manga Sarutobi Sasuke まんが猿飛佐助) were based on young Sarutobi Sasuki.

Sasuke Op and ed

Honoka 穂花 is a Japanese actress, writer, former race queen and award winning av idol who retired from av world in 2008.  The  27 year old Kagoshima beauty is a licensed  nurse and has worked as a race queen before she started working in av in 2004 and in which she won the “Best Actress” prize at 2006 AV Actress Grand Prix and the 2007 Adult Broadcasting Awards.

On television, Honoka featured on various TV shows including TV Tokyo’s 2006 Shimokita GLORY DAYS (下北GLORY DAYS  along with fellow S1 actresses Sora Aoi and Yuma Asami) , TV Tokyo’s  romantic comedy Cupid no Itazura (クピドの悪戯) and MBS’ The Ancient DoGoo Girl.  Read more...

A sushi chef  in Japan has mastered the amazing oyogu hone (swimming bones) 泳がしtechnique for serving live fish (sushi).  In the clip from Japanese TV, a young man goes into a shop and asks the man behind the counter if they can do oyogu hone. The young man enjoys some sashimi, and the oyogu hone appears at the end of the clip.

The sushi chef attributed the idea to the manga “Hochonin Ajihei” he read in childhood. Hochonin Ajihei is probably the first manga in Japan that tells the stories of professional chefs. The more accurate translation for the technique is ’sushi swimming in bones’.

Japan is a pretty safe country to live in comparable to other countries. The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department (警視庁 Keishichō) founded in 1874 serves as the police force for the entire Tokyo metropolis and is headed by a superintendent general, who is appointed by the National Public Safety Commission and approved by the prime minister.

There are more than 40,000 police officers, 2,500 civilian personnel and  101 stations in the prefecture which works out to 290 inhabitants per police officer.

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The cool Nissan Cube (Nissanキューブ) 2009 TV commercial uses black and white characters from Japanese manga to jazz up the TV commercial.  The title of the commercial is “SHIFT_the way you move”.  Model Shown: Cube 15X V Selection, Cube 15X M Selection

Nissan Cube TV Commercial