Hatsuyo Sugawara, a 44 year-old Japanese woman, won the 23rd Wanko-soba National Tournament that was held in Morioka City on Sunday (Nov 10) after eating 383 ‘bowls’ of soba noodles in 10 minutes.
Wanko-soba is a famous delicacy in Japan’s Iwate Prefecture; contrary to most soba dishes, wanko-soba is served in small portion… roughly 10-15 bowls of wanko-soba make up a standard bowl of soba.
The contestants had 15 mins to eat as much as they could… Hatsuya’s time was reduced to 10 mins as handicap for being the reigning champ; but she still managed to defend her title rather easily… [via Japantoday and Japanprobe]
The 21st Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) kicked off Saturday (Oct 18) with Japanese prime minister Taro Aso among the ~300 guests that graced the opening event at Roppongi Hills [via Japantoday]
The theme of TIFF 2008 is “Ecology = Preservation of Earth’s Environment”, and the organiser replaced the usual red carpet with a green carpet made from recycled plastic bottles to exemplify the theme, which I doubt could bring any meaningful effect.
A total of 315 films from around the world will be shown during the nine-day event. Chinese movie “Red Cliff”, directed by Hong Kong director John Woo, was selected to kick start the screening; would be cute if the stars wore some green outfit during the green carpet to echo the theme lol.
The main cast of Red Cliff at TIFF 2008… (L-R) Vicki Zhao, Chang Chen, Takeshi Kaneshiro, director John Woo, Tony Leung, Zhang Fengyi and Lin Chi Ling (Image from
Udn)
The 6th annual World Cosplay Summit was held in Nagoya, Japan last weekend.
WSC is getting bigger every year with thousands of cosplayers from around the world joining the party; it’s becoming so popular that the Japanese government is officially endorsing it.
A cosplay contest was held in conjunction with the event since 2004. 14 teams from 13 countries participated in the 2008 contest; two teams from Japan and one each from Brazil, China, Germany, Denmark, Spain, France, Italy, South Korea, Mexico, Singapore, Thailand and USA.
The Brazilians won the contest this year.
Passengers dressed in ninja costumes are given free travel along the Iga Tetsudo line from April 1 to May 6 to mark the Japanese city’s popular ninja festival.
A ‘ninja’ enjoying the free ride (Image from
Reuters)
Iga is a city 450 kilometres from Tokyo and known to many Japanese as one of the traditional home towns of the ninjas.
It should be quite a scene when the festival reached its peak, with all the ninjas wandering around.
The Kanamara Matsuri (かなまら祭り; literally the Festival of the Steel Phallus) is an annual fertility festival held in Kawasaki Daishi, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. The event is held on every spring, and this year’s main festivity was on April 6.
The festival was once popular among sex workers praying for protection against sexually transmitted diseases. It’s also mentioned as divine protections for business prosperity and the clan’s prosperity, easy delivery, marriage, and married couple harmony, etc. Today, the festival is used to raise money for HIV research. [Wiki]
Basically it’s a festival where you can see penis everywhere… on the mikoshi (portable Shinto shrine), pictures, foods, candies and merchandises. It might sound gross for some people, but the festival is on my wish list as one of the must go event in my life… seems fun for me.
