Ayashii World: Japan's Hidden News Network

During most of yesterday a goddess appeared on the subway. The goddess was a girl on the Shanghai subway claiming to have come from China of 500 years past. She wants to go back to her family, but has no money. If someone lends her money, she promises she will give it back in the future. Saying things like that, she requested donations. Video Source: China Explosion (Japanese)

For instance, if a message that you could not normally see were being written on the walls of your room, what would you do? Every day and night, little by little, so that you don’t notice, the message is being written. Haven’t you sometimes been feeling sick or dizzy all of a sudden? Have you woken up and felt totally paralyzed? Have you forgotten to eat lunch? Have you ever…

Source: VIP tte Nan zo? (Japanese)

Japan’s most mountainous and preindustrial island, Shikoku, last made a splash in Japan in the 18th century, when they turned the entire island into a center for Buddhist pilgrimage. Now, Shikoku has apparently come up with a revolutionary innovation in tourism: turning its prefectures into moé characters! This poster was spotted in Juneat a rest stop in Yoshima, Kagawa, Shikoku. The poster is labelled “Shikoku Moetai” (四国萌え隊) and encourages people…

Students across Japan are reporting that Vocaloid songs have been banned at school. The reports started with this: “At my little sister’s school, Vocaloid songs have been banned from the noon broadcast. The reasoning is that ‘it’s a machine’ and ‘we can’t understand the lyrics’. You can’t just ban music for that reason. What you’re calling a machine is music that touches people’s hearts. This prejudice is offensive to the…

China claims its rail tech superior to Japan’s BEIJING — A spokesman for the Chinese Railways Ministry says the nation’s high-speed rail technologies are far superior to those used by Japan’s bullet trains. The remarks Thursday by Wang Yongping in an interview with the Xinhua news agency came after Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd. threatened to take action if China files for patents on high-speed trains that use Japanese technology in…

I don’t know if this is very funny, but… About half a year ago, my friends and I overdosed on magic mushrooms. There were eight of us eating a whole pile of shrooms, so it was unusually fun and everyone was laughing their butts off. Suddenly, a normally mature one of us said, “I’ve just got the most brilliant idea!” and ran straight out of the house. At first, all…

SHANGHAI – Kuiba, the $7 million Chinese animated debut feature film from veteran Beijing-based television studio Vassoon Animation will be released nationwide in July by the Shanghai Media Group, China’s latest attempt to showcase its homegrown cartooning talent. [...] At the opening last month of a new $690 million state-backed animation facility in Tianjin, the port city nearest the capital, Beijing, Minister of Culture Cai Wu said that animation production was a…