Ramen shop closes; too popular

Source: Daily Yomiuri

A ramen shop where customers line up for hours to eat a bowl of noodles has decided to close its doors. The reason: customers line up for hours to eat their noodles.

Rokurinsha in Shinagawa Ward will close on Aug. 29 in response to repeated complaints from neighbors about customers blocking traffic, smoking on the street and talking loudly. "We don't want to cause any more problems for our neighbors," the shop said.

Rokurinsha, a six-minute walk from JR Osaki Station and located on a shopping street next to a residential area, opened in April 2005. Its tsuke-men, thick noodles dipped in a rich sauce, has attracted ramen-lovers and the media, and has been featured several times in magazines and on TV. As soon as the shop opens, a line starts to form.

According to Matsufuji Shokuhin, a company based in Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo, that runs Rokurinsha, the line stretches to about 100 people on weekends, and waiting times of two hours are common. The thick noodles take longer to boil, exacerbating the long waits.

The shop has tried to solve the problem by opening early, or changing the way customers line up, but failed to come up with a good solution.

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Failed to come up with a good situation? They failed to do the most basic thing when things are going well, sometimes too well.

JACK up the price! Find out who your real loyal customers are! If the noodles are really good people will still come and if people leave because it's too expensive then no more lineups!

Come on Japanese people, be business saavy!

Japanese Spending Money In Korea

Good value for the yen being used in Korea. Plus Korean stuff seems to be trendier these days from clothing, to music to entertainment and tv series. There tv stars are probably more popular in Japan now than Japanese stars. (Even though Korean soaps suck!)

THE BIG Lingerie Store

Here are some videos of a 1400 square feet Lingerie Store in Singapore

Mood Simulator


Guys Are Allowed in Here!


The Right Bra



Couples fitting room! Men can see women try on stuff for them? Are you thinking what I'm thinking? :) Just don't make any weird noises :)

Samples! It's all free!

Holy crap she talks fast! Their website is FR3B.
Looking at the website it seems to be some kind of points system or membership fee to get the good stuff. Looks interesting, I'd like to get pick a few free items, like makeup!

N.Korea's 1st Fast-Food Restaurant Opens

Source: Chosun Ilbo

North Korea's first fast-food restaurant selling hamburgers and waffles has opened in the center of Pyongyang. Although there are hamburger joints in North Korea, this is the first full-fledged franchise-style fast-food restaurant there.

The Choson Sinbo, a Pyongyang mouthpiece in Japan, last Saturday reported the fast-food restaurant opened at the Kumsong Intersection in Pyongyang early last month and plans to open a branch in downtown Pyongyang in the near future.

According to the newspaper, the restaurant has an "affiliation with a Singaporean company specializing in waffle joints." The Singaporean company supplies only the facilities, while the local operation hires staff and supplies raw materials.

"Before the restaurant opened, staff were trained on cooking and service techniques by a staffer dispatched from the Singaporean company, but it developed food with new flavors after repeated tasting and sampling," the newspaper wrote.

The menu lists chiefly hamburger and waffles plus various carbonated drinks and Kumgang draft beer.

Food prices were fixed "at an affordable level," it said. A hamburger and bun is 190 North Korean won and a mug of Kumgang draft beer 76 won. The average monthly pay of ordinary North Korean workers is reportedly about 3,000 won. The price of each hamburger is similar to that of 100 g of rice (about 200 won) in North Korea and much cheaper than a piece of illegally imported South Korean choco pie (500 won).

Sounds good. I'd like to try it. If they ever let me into North Korea! The more business in North Korea the better :)

New wave of 'history girls' wooed by warlords' masculinity

We are the real manly Japanese men!

Source: Mainichi

Young women are flocking to significant landmarks from the Warring States period, and college girls are buying up samurai-themed products. Sales of historical books are up, and there have been efforts to revive the publication of paperbacks on warlords. Behind this craze is the surge in "reki-jo" or "history girls." But why now?

On weekends, Jidai Shobo, a bookstore specializing in historical books in Tokyo's Chiyoda Ward, is packed with groups of young women. Most of the shop's customers were men when it first opened in February 2006, but by last year, half were women, of which around 90 percent are in their 20s and 30s.

Stationery and mobile phone accessories with family crests of feudal lords line the shelves, with figurines of Sanada Yukimura, the most popular of the warlords, and others also for sale. "I like Kato Kiyomasa," says customer Izumi Sekine, 34, of a warlord who served the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu. "There's an almost picture-perfect masculinity about him."

In August 2008, the Kojuro Plaza opened in the city of Shiroishi in Miyagi Prefecture, home of Katakura Kojuro, a senior retainer of the 17th century warlord Date Masamune. Sales of Kojuro-related goods subsequently exceeded 100,000 yen on some days. Visitors to Shiroishi Castle during the week-long holiday in May jumped to 135 percent compared to the previous year, and most recent visitors have been young women, according to city officials. The tourist center in Ueda, Sanada Yukimura's hometown in Nagano Prefecture, has also enjoyed a jump in sales.

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Girls want the macho man! They want the Samuari Underwear!

Girls are tired of men like these!

Bra maker has an eye for breasts

Testing, Testing!

Source: UPI.com

A 90-year-old tailor coming out of retirement in China says he can make a hand-made brathat fits perfectly just by looking at a woman's breasts.

Ran Yusheng, 90, who retired from bra making last year, said in the run-up to the opening of his new online store that he learned the art of bra making when he was 20 years old and soon discovered that he had a knack for it, China Daily reported Friday.

"I just looked at her breasts and then I could make a bra suitable for her," Ran said.

He told China Daily his skills at bra making helped him to win the affections of customer Wang Huiying, who later became his wife and seamstress. Ran retired after Wang's death last year.

Suuuure a 20-year old who found a good excuse to look at breasts. Bras were probably pretty simple in 1940!

China: still buying the world

Souce: BBC

The view from the window of Chinalco's 30th floor explains why this Chinese state-owned enterprise is the world's third largest aluminium producer, an employer of 200,000 and one of China's 10 biggest businesses.

Beijing is stretched out in the haze to the horizon and beyond: mile after mile of car-packed highways circumnavigating a forest of new residential and commercial buildings.

Or to put it another way, China is the world's number one consumer of aluminium because of the way it has been splurging on aluminium-hungry construction and automobiles.

Don't believe for a moment that China is down economically and recession exists. The rich in China are still very rich and will continue to buy anything to improve business. The Chinese can take real advantage of the situation when the US is really weak.