Random Japan

Photos of costumed cyclists at start of race leave Twitter users laughing, scratching their heads

Preston Phro

A Le Mans-style start in cosplay seems like the perfect way to begin a bicycle race!

Costumes at races are always fun for spectators, but you do have to wonder how the athletes handle all the extra…stuff. You’d think it would get in the way, but we suppose it’s worth it to put some smiles on people’s faces. And if that was the goal at this bike race, we’d say they succeeded!

No, this isn’t another excellent entry in the “invisible bicycles” Photoshop contest—these cyclists are actually running to their bicycles! While you may be imagining this as some sort of Comiket-sponsored Ironman Triathlon, it’s really just a regular bicycle race with a Le Mans-style start.

STATS

• 41.2: Percent of Japanese men who say they’re accepting of the “romantic feelings” of same-sex couples
• 63.2: Percent of Japanese women who say they are
• 7.1 kilograms: Amount of food the average primary and middle school student wasted last year

FAMOUS FIRSTS

• Japanese researchers unveiled the KAGRA, a massive telescope in Mie that they hope will become the first instrument to directly detect gravitational waves.
• A study team at Osaka City University found that the Neolamprologus pulcher, a species of fish native to Africa, can “distinguish unfamiliar faces from familiar ones.”
• To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Sanyo Shinkansen line, which runs between Hakata and Osaka, JR West is running a bullet train festooned with aNeon Genesis Evangelion paintjob.
• Hyogo native Shoichi Yabuta, 32, took home the top prize for composers at the Geneva International Music Competition.

The Comic King Is The Arrested King
Along With His Schoolgirl Uniforms


The 952 Teachers Who Should Be Fired
But Were Not


KFC Is The Chicken
That Is King In Japan

Exhibition of erotic Japanese art draws 200,000 visitors

Japan’s first major exhibition of erotic art known as “shunga,” which ended earlier this week in Tokyo, drew more than 200,000 visitors during its three-month run, organizers said.

Former Prime Minister Morihiro Hokokawa, who heads the Eisei-Bunko Museum where the exhibition was held, said he was “surprised and happy with the huge response,” during a ceremony on Monday marking the 200,000th visitor—a couple from Kawagoe, Saitama Prefecture.

The exhibition of works mainly from Japan’s Edo period (1603-1868) features about 120 shunga (literally “spring pictures”) woodprints and paintings that depict men and women having sex in various settings.

The success follows a well-received show of Japanese sexually explicit images at the British Museum, titled “Shunga: sex and pleasure in Japanese art” and held between October 2013 and January 2014.