Japanese Youtube dancer xxxayu3 takes the Internet by storm!
July 22nd, 2010 | 
Author: Youtube user xxxayu3, a very cute Japanese girl that dances in front of a camera all by herself in her videos, is taking the Internet by storm. Her popularity exploded after a fan of hers superimposed a dancing anime character next to her in one of her videos (the one in which she wears a white surgical mask aka doctor’s mask). Now all of her videos are spreading like wildfire, because not only is she super pretty but she can dance very well too.
For you maid cafe freaks out there, I included the video above that I know you’ll enjoy. She – you guessed right – dances in a maid outfit. But the video on the bottom is what shot her into international Internet fame.
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The AZNaddict Online community
Our host AZNADDICT.COM has opened up an online Japanese and international discussion forum known as the AZNaddict online community in hopes of expanding the AZNaddict network.
We are working in collaboration with AZNaddict and there were a couple of reasons why we decided to open a Japanese-related forum. The first one being is that we wanted to provide an alternative to the large and mainstream Japanese forums that are already out there. These boards have been around for a long time and have grown a base community of members who are static in their thinking and reluctant to new ideas and change. Instead of pretending these boards don’t exist like other forums do, we want a place where we can take a break from them and praise their good aspects while also recognizing their bad.
Today’s Japanese interest forums lead their users to develop a love-hate relationship with them that is very unsatisfying. We wanted our forum to be in the “third person” to all of this. A place where we can say, “Yeah, I know what goes on there and they do some things right and some things wrong. These are their good points, let’s follow that. These are their bad points, let’s avoid this.”
The problem of the Japanese forum Big Brothers
Only a handful of Japanese boards make up the entire Japanese-interest community. These forums have been around for so long that they have developed their own identities and stereotypes:
- People who love Jpop go to jpopsuki.eu
- People who want to work in Japan go to gaijinpot.com
- People who like anime go to animeforum.com
- A haven for adult entertainment fans is akiba-online.com
- Current and former English teachers go to bigdaikon.com
The problem is that the average person has MANY interests associated with Japan, not just anime or jpop, but the major Japanese boards can only focus on one subject instead of a variety.
The existence of these boards is important for the AZNaddict online community. They give us a mirror that we can use to examine our faults and correct them. They remind us what is right about online interest communities and what is wrong. They remind us what we are not.
To put it more simply, we are looking for a balance.
Where people who like a little bit of anime, a little bit of video games, and a little bit of music can come together and not be branded as anime otakus, pokemon hunters, and karaoke stars.
AZNaddict online will allow that balance.
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Japanese hot dog star Kobayashi arrested and thrown in jail
Takeru Kobayashi, known famously as Japan’s #1 eating hot dog champ, was arrested and spent one night in jail after he crashed the Coney Island hot dog eating contest on Sunday.
He was barred from entering the contest because he refused to sign a contract with the Major League Eating board, which is the eating contest equivalent of the National Football League.
He jumped up on stage after fans started chanting his name and saying “Let him eat!”. He was then arrested for a whole bunch of violations, such as obstruction of governmental administration, resisting arrest, trespassing, and disorderly conduct.
The American Joey Chestnut won this year’s contest but he was unhappy with his performance, unable to hit the 70 hot dog mark he was shooting for.
What if this same situation happened in Japan? How do you think the media would react to a white foreign man jumping up on stage at a contest in Japan and making a scene?
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Play Capcom’s ‘Ghost Trick’ for Nintendo DS online for free
I received an ad in my mailbox about Capcom’s newest game, Ghost Trick (ゴーストリック).
I thought the premise looked interesting… from what I could read, it said that you begin from death, and the story goes on from there.
Upon further inspection the story turns out to be wicked cool. You wake up to find your dead, and you have no idea how you were killed or who the murderer was. It’s your mission to solve the mystery of who killed you, and along the way others are being murdered and it’s your job to rescue them by going into the past four minutes before they are killed and preventing their death.
The tagline is:
それは死から始まる一夜の追跡劇
It begins from your death… a chase in the night!
Play it online:
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Get ready for a whole new fetish from Japan: Mountain Girls
It’s not a surprise that we haven’t seen a lot of women take interest in climbing and hiking mountains. It’s a dirty activity that involves a lot of sweat and mud, something girls go out of their way to avoid. But that’s all beginning to change.
I present to you, fresh and straight out from Japan, the yama-gaaru (山ガール) A.K.A the Mountain Girl:
Interest in climbing is starting to catch on among many girls, and even some new fashion magazines like the one showed above cater exclusively to mountain girl fashion.
This magazine in particular, “Randonnee”, informs its readers how to cook with a gas camping stove and chop wood without breaking a nail. It also pushes three “power spots” all mountain girls must experience to gain spiritual healing, one of those being Mt. Fuji.
I wonder if this trend in hiking interests among women actually came about on its own or if its a genius scheme cooked up by the commercial climbing and hiking industry.
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What is an aka chochin?
An akachochin is a red paper lantern that is hung on the front of many Japanese pubs that states the specialty of the shop, which is usually ramen, yakitori, or sake.
A cute little anime has been released by the Legon company that explains more about these akachochin restaurants and how to eat there.
They explain the basics that anyone would need to know when going to a Japanese restaurant; for example knowing the words for chopsticks, salt, and soy sauce, and even how to handle your belongings when stopping by such a small Japanese pub.
The pace of the video may go a little slow but it has a good way of holding your interest. The narration is a little over pronounced, it seems as though it was made for a non-native English speaking audience as well.
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How big is Japan?
Japan is 377835 km^2, or 145900 square miles.
That is roughly equal to:
- 1.1 the land area of Germany
- 0.7 the land area of France and
- 5.5 Lake Victorias
by the way, this is Lake Victoria:
So it is about 5 and a half of these. Seems small, doesn’t it? Who knew all those ninjas and otakus could be scrunched so close together…
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Yoroshiku onegai shimasu
Yoroshiku onegaishimasu is one of the most useful Japanese phrases one could learn. The meetings vary from I’m happy to meet you, please do this task for me or please treat me nicely. It is incredibly flexible and convenient in thousands of situations; this is particularly true when talking to strangers and co-workers.
Let’s say for example that you need some help reading the bus schedule. All you have to do is say, “Could you please help me with this, yoroshiku onegaishimasu?”, and it will be done. The Japanese person will perform the task you ask immediately without thinking.
With great power comes great responsibility. One that possess the ability to yoroshiku onegaishimasu other people must do so with utmost care and responsibility. It is good that the majority of Japanese people are nice and pure in thought. If they were not, who knows what sick and twisted deeds people could cook up in their minds to make other people do…
We as foreigners must fear yoroshiku onegaishimasu and respect it at the same time.
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An interview with a modern day Samurai
These days samurais are rare, but in feudal Japan times they were large in numbers and could be seen about the grounds guarding government buildings and training for war exercises.
We briefly spoke to Kenichi Yokonawa, a modern-day samurai who is trying to bring the tradition back into mainstream Japan. He runs his own gym and prepares young men for a life fashioned as a Japanese samurai warrior.
For Mr. Yokonawa, samurais have a new meaning and a new purpose for modern-day Japan that can benefit all of society. “In the past, the main duty of a samurai was to protect and fight for the people in war, but these days that is no longer required. To be a samurai today means to serve the people, act in honor and always respect the ancestors that have come before us”, says Yokonawa.
The Japanese people hear his words. Every year dozens of new recruits volunteer to join his samurai training program. They come from all over: Tokyo, Hokkaido, Okinawa, to uphold the traditions of the samurai and learn what it is to be one.
I asked him what he thought about foreigners becoming samurai. He said, “I have not yet seen one that has the ability to understand the responsibilities, but I am waiting”.
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Order your favorite Japanese games online
I found a really great website where I can order all of my favorite Japanese video games, and ones that I have never seen before.
For the past couple months I’ve been playing a lot of games that I had sent from Japan, and it has greatly improved my kanji memorization and reading comprehension.
I’m really excited that I can learn Japanese while playing video games. I’ve also re-discovered a lot of my old favorites, like Kirby and Zelda, in Japanese. I always wanted to spend some time re-visiting these games and now that I can do it and practice my Japanese at the same time it’s the perfect excuse.
The packaging and translations are totally different, it makes the game feel new again. It’s for those reasons I have decided that whenever I buy an video game I will always buy the Japanese equivalent.
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