Paired with a catchy tune, Japanese dance moves and a $10,000 prize, Lotte’s new campaign to promote Fit’s Gum is sure to generate a lot of attention. Teaming up with YouTube, Lotte is seeking contestants to submit their own Fit’s dance. The best entries are posted on Lotte’s YouTube channel where you can also view their current marketing campaign videos. Listen to the dance track below as well as very detailed instructions on how to chew gum (because its really hard).

Fit’s Gum Jingle

Sadly, unless you live in Japan, you can’t win the grand prize. However, this shouldn’t stop you from downloading the music and practicing your moves if this comes stateside. Hit the jump for a nice little widget that teaches you the dance moves.

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What’s more extreme than football (both games), hockey, and demolition derby combined? Is it Barehanded Bear Wrestling? Hell no! It’s Bean Bag Tossing. That’s right. What? It’s not? Meet me outside. We’ll bring the bean bags. BOO-YAH!

Developed by Incredible Technologies, the company behind the classic sports bar trackball game Golden Tee Golf, is porting one of their iconic trackball games to the Wii. Likely a WiiWare title as opposed to something you’d see on shelves, Target Toss Pro: BAGS looks like one of those titles that you can truly enjoy with your friends after having a few (or a few too many) drinks. Sign me up!

No word on when the game will be BA-BOUNCE-ing onto the Wii Shop Channel, but you can count on us to throw down some KA-CHING and picking this title up for some alcohol-fueled fun.

[Siliconera]

Minigames and music conglomerate in one blissful union of addictiveness. Seriously.
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What the… I shouldn’t even be surprised anymore. I guess it can be considered as a law now: if its a fetish, there’s someone in Japan dedicating way to much time to it. This is a video that shows a guy riding on the train suddenly transmogrifying into a bride. Transgender, even if magical, isn’t really my thing (save for the X-change games) but I cant deny there’s something mesmerizing in this.

The creator of the original art has a website where you can find a whole vault of stories and drawings on the subject, if you are so inclined to read.

[Mashiro's Castle]

So what has Hayao Miyazaki, Ghibli’s star animator, been doing besides making anime? Well he’s been building a freaking huge clock, do you even have to ask? He’s been working on a 10 meter tall mechanical clock for the NTV tower at Shiodome, Tokyo.

According to Miyazaki he wanted to do this because “As time passes, the characters of the animation will be forgotten. Therefore I want to make something that will be loved by future generations as well”. So he’s doing it to become immortal, like all of mankind’s biggest creations.

The clock looks fantastic and its a living image of Miyazaki’s works, there’s a video of it here should you want to check out that beach of a machine, all it needs is a flux capacitor and we’re set.

[Ghibli World]

According to JapanCast this is Ultra Relax the opening theme from Kodomo no Omocha, Ive never seen the show but the opening… Its so freaking creepy! If you ask me what would I think TV would be like in an alien planet I’d just show you this. It takes Japanese craziness to a whole new level.

And in that alien planet that girl would be the president, and this is how she’d address her people. She’d have also banned blinking. I bet when Zaphod Beeblebrox was president he had some sort of video analog to this. Just, wow!

[Japancast]

Japanese nerdiness goes to a whole new level with this USB keyboard… that fits as a top for a cat-maid costume. A japanese company called Angel Kitty is selling this bizarre cosplay items with computer functions. Its like Chobits gone wrong wronger.

The company not only sells maid keyboards, there’s cat tail USB cameras, USB purses and the cherry on the top: a USB loincloth! Oh god, its just too much,pictures after the jump.

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Japan’s at it again, this time selling the public the entire stock of scientific research left-overs. Whale meat used for scientific research is flooding the market as Japan might soon recover its permission for commercial whaling. Uses for the stuff currently include:

• Serving it to school children as lunch
• Making Whale burgers (surely for a SUPER HAPPY TIME MEAL!)
• Dog food

And the best part is the near-unbeatable offer of ‘buy one get as many as you want free’. I wonder if my cats would eat the stuff…

[Tokyo Times]

Thank goodness creepy people isn’t one of Japan’s main exports, its not that the rest of the world lacks them but Japan produces a class of creepy thats on a whole other level. This time a 31-year-old fella by the name of Seitaro Kasai fixed his shoes with some real snazzy nails, each of said nails sticking our a millimeter or two at the front. And why settle for a millimeter when Japan produces some of the best goth footwear? Well good ol’ Seitaro was a man on a mission! to “injure the legs of a woman with a good figure“. So he set out looking for a victim, which he found in a 28-year-old woman in a train station. He started to kick her calf muscles repeatedly and not surprisingly the woman was not too pleased with this. She grabbed and dragged him to a police box where he was arrested.

Police later found a couple more of fixed shoes in the man’s house. Oh poor Seitaro, arrested for following your convictions!

[Tokyo Times / Via BoingBoing]

Patrick Curry, a game designer for Midway, had an interesting new year’s resolution. He challenged himself to write 52 game concept ideas, one for every week of the year. Posting them on his blog, as a device for getting it done by making it public, he has already written 24 ideas and some of them are really interesting.

Our favorite one is Loup-Garou, a concept so unique I would only have expected it from a collaboration between Will Wright and Suda 51. From the website:

Loup-Garou is the game where you play as a werewolf. Actually, you play as a human, who’s been cursed with turning into a werewolf. During the daylight hours you are human, going about your “normal,” everyday life. But once darkness falls, you’re transformed into the legendary werewolf – now everything looks, feels, sounds, and smells different. Try to keep yourself from being found out… and try to keep yourself from destroying everything you hold dear…

And theres more!

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