March 2016 was a month of much happenings, as like any other month, buzzed with the widely-loved elderly Misao’s beloved cat, Fukumaru’s unfortunate passing, (reference:“Misao the Big Mama and Fukumaru the Cat”), the cherry blossoms finally coming to bloom (and a slew of sakura-themed sweets and events surfacing all throughout the month) and ninja, finally becoming a job title you can have in this modern day. Here are five pop culture (and currently relevant) news that we’ve collected over the month!

Photo credits: http://www.jorudan.co.jp/

#1. All aboard a direct bullet train from Tokyo to Hokkaido!

Train geeks and travel enthusiasts broke out with thrill and joy on the 26th of last month with the news of the direct bullet train from Tokyo to Hokkaido to finally run after 11 years of construction! The bullet train takes you to the southern tip of Hokkaido, to a station called “Shin-Hakodate Hokuto” which is a 30-40 min. car ride to Hokkaido’s popular tourist destination, Hakodate. Unfortunately the bullet train stops there, and you’ll have to shift to the regular JR line to reach other famous tourist capitals such as Sapporo and Asahikawa, but it can’t get any faster than this for now — here we cover the ins & outs:

THE INS & OUTS

Price? For those of you who were wondering, yes, the bullet train is in fact cheaper than taking the plane (unless you’re traveling LCC, then no), since prices stand at around a constant ¥35,000 for JAL and ANA, and that’s only one-way. Note, you can also get a discount if you apply from their website 14 days in advance, and an even larger discount if you’re a registered member on Mobile Suica (annual fee of ¥1,030).

They’ve also readied a renewed the JR East-South Hokkaido Rail Pass for foreign travelers — the bullet train runs through Sapporo-Hakodate-Tohoku-Tokyo and allows you to go on and off however many times for a set price of ¥26,000 for adults.

Details: http://www.jreasthokkaido.com/e/

Time? 4 hours 2 min. (Hokkaido Shinkansen) vs. 1 hr 20 minutes (plane). However, it certainly deserves an applause considering it has sped up over an hour compared to its previous 5hr 30min long ride!

What time are trains running from/’til? Their first train starts running at 6 in the morning and their last takes off from Tokyo at 7:20pm, reaching Shinhakodate-Hokuto at 11:33pm.

Info source: http://www.hakobura.jp/shinkansen/

Photo credits: http://hotel-chinzanso-tokyo.jp/wedding

#2. You can now get a DIGITAL marriage.

Because everything is turning digital in this day and age, why not tie the knot in a modern manner as well, i.e. digitally? The so-called digital marriage is produced by popular creative team teamLab, who have been slaying the digital art field — their most recent project being Living Digital Space and Future Parks, a 20,000 square feet showcase of digital installation at Pace Gallery in California. On top of that, they’ve also been spreading their digital wings to Singapore as well as France. Meanwhile in Japan, you can have them bloom beautiful digital flowers at your wedding, exclusive to Chinzanso Hotel in Ueno, Tokyo. Aside from their mesmerizing efforts laid onto this project, we should probably mention that getting your flowers digitally is way cheaper than getting real ones ($575 vs. $1,000-$2,000) and if you’re a teamLab fan, their artistic expressions (on your very special day!) are to die for.

#3. Kyary Pamyu Pamyu unleashed details to her best album

We’ve been following this cutie closer than ever before, considering it’s the fifth year since we’ve hailed her as queen of J-pop culture. She’s brilliantly concocted everything crazy that we love about Tokyo with her long-time artistic partner Sebastian Masuda for half a decade and it’s worth celebrating. Out of her 5 plans set for the exceptional year, one of them was to release a best album — and it’s set to be one treasure trove of goodies. We’ve written out all you need to know about the release and shared dates for her monster 5-year-anni-tour right here: http://www.moshimoshi-nippon.jp/11614

#4. Emergence of this video

With “kawaii” being such a highly-trending topic and ever-popular adjective, an ad that defines the term dear and near to pop culture under two minutes is bound to go viral — so there’s no surprise that was what happened, with the video currently clocking in at 24k views. And keep in mind this is an ad for…um, soup. (Sorry to give that away to those of you who fell off the face of the internet this past month) Calling kawaii “an evolving cultural asset” that has been embedded in our “DNA,” this video that runs a little over two minutes gives viewers a mighty overview of what “kawaii” has become today — it does a magnificent job covering the multifaceted term, considering “kawaii” has become such a loose and all-encompassing expression that could apply to nearly anything and everything today. (I mean, all you got to do is attach a modifier, and it suddenly becomes endearing. Busu-kawaii, kimo-kawaii…etc.)

出典：http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/

#5.  Ninja becoming a readily available job

Known to be a covert agency agent in feudal Japan, who knew we could bring a major throwback to this very job in modern Japan? Aichi announced last month that they were looking for six ninjas who would work for them full time (or should we say six people who wanted to become ninjas) — news that would certainly make ninja fans jump with glee. The job offered 18k/month to anybody who was willing, which pretty much equates to the salary of a regular 9-5 desk job, which is obviously a boring choice when you’ve got ninja as your alternative. These so-called ninjas will be actively promoting tourism in Aichi as well as performing a couple of backflips here and there. They’ll also be throwing shurikens and posing when asked to get photographed. So obviously the “covert” bit does not align anymore with the modern ninja, but you get the gear, the weapons (the shuriken, at least) so it’s the best of a ninja you can get in this day and age whilst getting paid! How about that? They’ve called it a wrap for this round of applications, but who knows when the next one will come up? Keep your eyes out so you can “shinobu” (roughly translates to covertly slipping into) a ninja life, once and for all!

Details：http://www.aichi-ninja.rdy.jp/bosyu/