On May 21st, a 55 year-old unemployed Japanese male who lives in Oshibedani-tyou, was brought to Hyogo prefectural Kobe Nishi police station. He was alleged with stealing a book from a book store, since he was arrested.
The stolen book is entitled, “A Reader on Restarting your life” (人生やり直し読本)” which is written by the nonfiction writer, “Kunio Yanagida”
The report said that, a security guard saw the man leaving the bookstore while putting the book in his backpack, upon seeing this, he then decided to turn the old man to the police.
Popular virtual singer from Japan debuts in Toyota's CM for the United States. The Japanese car company, Toyota, has decided to use a virtual idol, "Hatsune Miku(初音ミク)", who is adored by some net users, especially those who watch NicoNico Douga - a popular video sharing website in Japan - in their new CM for the United States. She is a Vocaloid that sings songs which are created by users of the voice synthesizer software where her name had been copied. There are some other vocaloids like "Miku" but Toyota chose her because she is the most popular one, with her cuteness among them.
Miku's voice is still somehow mechanical but her cute, animated appearance and voice which is sampled from a Japanese voice actress, Saki Fujita, continue to attract wide range of people. As of now, Miku has released at least more than 15,000 songs which are created by its users including some professional composers. Her popularity is mainly in the internet but few of her music albums debuted at number one on Japanese weekly album chart. Her activity is not only singing songs but also performing live. You may wonder how on earth can a virtual idol play a live show? Here, you can check the movie out and a part of it is used in the CM.
In the commercial, a portion of her live performance was used. In there she is singing, World is Mine(ワールドイズマイン), which is one of her most poplular songs.
Toyota has launched a special site for their new car, COROLLA, which is tied up with Miku. Her picture can be found on the top of the page. However, there was an outcry from her fans when they saw that she seemed different, compared to the Miku that they knew.
Original Miku
This different Miku made her fans cry
Toyota says, “Corolla and Hatsune Miku have two very important things in common – big dreams in a compact package.” Miku's appeal is now being widened through singing, live performances, and a commercial. What will she do next? We can’t take our eyes off this new type of Japanese diva.
Udon is a type of thick wheat-flour noodle and one of the national food of Japan. This cuisine, which reasonably costs from 300 to 600 Yen on average, is served in several ways. The most common style is to eat with noodle soup and several ingredients as toppings. The other one is called “Zaru Udon”, which dips Udon, served on a zaru (a sieve-like bamboo tray), into chilled noodle soup. The taste varies from region to region. For example, West area uses bland soup but East uses stronger and darker soup. On top of that, each prefecture has their own flavor and quality. So, you can't decide whose Udon is the best.
The red area show the location of
Kagawa prefecure
However, Kagawa Prefecture of Japan which is located on Shikoku Island has an unrivaled passion for Udon. They have one of the most popular Udon brands in Japan, called "Sanuki Udon", which uses relatively tough-textured noodle and the soup based on dried sardines. Here, I will introduce some of their frantic enthusiasm for their soul food.
They eat Udons 3 times a day, even 8 times. It's natural.
They often face a water shortage because of boiling too much Udon.
They were imposed a cut on water intake because of boiling Udons too much.
They think Soba (a type of thin Japanese noodle made from buckwheat flour) is a miscreation of Udon.
There are no Soba shops in Kagawa prefecture.
They eat Udon as toshikoshi noodles (Japanese traditionally eat soba on New Year’s Eve. It’s called toshikoshi noodles) on New Year’s Eve.
They can do an Udon taste test blindly
The elementary school kids, in Kagawa prefecture, go home if there is no Udon in the school lunch.
They treated Udon to a kid, who was in front of a burger store and looked like wanted to eat burgers.
McDonald’s were disappeared from Kagawa prefecture.
This is "Sanuki Udon",
which kagawa prefecture is
proud of
Some people address Kagawa prefecture as Udon Ken(prefecture); Are they just merely trying to throw an insult? No, they also love there and so do I. Unfortunately, I've never been there but if you will understand the passion of the Kagawa citizens for Udon, then you would also like to visit and have a taste of what they love.
