There's already been a real-life Boa Hancock doppelganger (check here). Online in Japan, netizens are calling Chongqing-born model Ai Shang Zhen China's version of Boa Hancock.

Boa Hancock is the Snake Princess from One Piece.

Zhen is a popular model in China, promoting electronics and Italian sports cars. She is also one of the image models for online shooter Cross Fire (穿越火线). So, Boa Hancock with an array of guns and driving sports cars?

【中国版リアルハンコック？】艾尚真（あいしょうしん）【完璧すぎる美女】 [Naver]

This week is Golden Week in Japan—a series of holidays. Because it's Golden Week, Japanese game news has pretty much come to a halt. The entire country is on vacation.

Earlier this week, I had a day off. And I spent the morning digging up bamboo shoots, or as they're called in Japanese, takenoko.

(I'm not sure what they're called in other Asian languages—sorry! I *believe* the bamboo that grows in Japan is the same variety that grows in China, but I'm not sure.)

In this clearing, my kids and I dug out the sprouts shooting a few inches above the ground. I used a shovel and a hatchet type tool to dig them out. That ended up being the entire morning. It was good fun.

This land is owned by a friend of a friend, who basically wanted us to help him clear it so it wasn't overgrown with bamboo.

Then when we got home, we cleaned them off and boiled them. Then, we made rice with bamboo shoots. Delicious.

---

China's first home grown console hit China late last month. But the console was incredibly hard to find. This wasn't because it was flying off shelves. It was because nobody had heard of it.

Originally known as the Ebox and the iSec, the now named CT510 from Eedoo felt very much like vaporware. In China, home consoles are banned, and the Kinect-like CT510 isn't classified as a home console, but an exercise machine.

It was coming out, but no stores seemed to carry it. Worse yet, no stores even had heard of it. It wasn't just me. Website Tech in Asia tried looking for it and couldn't find one.

Released during the May Labor Day holiday, there didn't seem to be a big launch for the CT510. There didn't seem to be much of anything.

Apparently, only one store in all of China carries the CT510—the Eedoo flagship store in the New Yansha Shopping Mall way in the outskirts of the west fourth ring road (that's like all the way out in Riverdale in NYC terms).

Before setting off for the flagship store, I figured I would try some domestic electronic stores such as Suning, GOME and Dazhong. There were a few near my offices, so I ventured out to each of them. When I arrived at Suning, I asked the greeter where their games section was.

I was led to the back of the store where they were showcasing TV's. I asked the bored young man in a blue vest if they sold the CT510 and I was given a blank stare.

"The what?" he said. (啥?)
"The CT150, you know the Ebox," I replied. ("就是那个国产的游戏机那个Ebox, CT150").
"Don't know, we don't have it," he replied. ("不知道，我们这里没有" )

His answers pretty much summed up my visit to the other two stores.

Moving on I decided to try my luck at the gray market. I came across a shop keeper selling PS Vitas, he was playing Kinect on the Xbox in the back of his shop when I approached. I ask him if he knew anyone selling the system, and he replied:

"Who would sell that? I didn't even know it came out," he said with an air of confusion.

Disheartened, tired, and out 120RMB (19 USD) for cab fare I returned to the office where a colleague of mine informed me that there as an "Experience" center for the Ebox.

Jotting down the details, I went out to the New Yansha Shopping Center this morning, and I finally found a CT150. Days after the console launched, this was apparently the only place in the country you could get China's first console. And when I arrived, it was just me and three bored employees.

Be sure to read Kotaku's impressions of the CT150.

Video arcades are a dwindling business in Japan. Since the peak of the market in 2006, the number of arcades and scale of individual arcades has been dropping steadily. Kiyoshi Kameyama, the owner of the Amnet Gotannda arcade described the current video arcade climate in an interview with website Online Player EX.

Arcades used to be the place to go to for cutting edge high quality games. Now many have now been reduced to "sneak preview"-esque places where people can play popular video games that will eventually be released on home consoles. Every time a game is ported to the console, arcades feel the impact in their sales as players stop playing in droves when the option of playing at home is made possible. Arcades are forced to scramble and come up with ways to retain players by adjusting prices and getting newer games and beginning the same cycle anew. This climate has made video arcades more of a convenience than a necessity for gamers. "There was a video arcade in the same area as our Gotannda store that closed." Kameyama said. "You might think that the customers that used to go there, started coming to our store and our sales numbers went up, but that wasn't the case. It seems that by losing their local arcade, those customers just stopped going to arcades altogether."

While the introduction of network games has also led to further headaches for owners of arcades. Where once they would buy expensive game machines and, whether they made money or not, the transaction was done with, now with network games, they must constantly pay connection fees to the developers. Sometimes up to 50% of their income for certain machines go to the makers, further cutting into their sales. "Our store has to pay individual game makers in the millions of yen every month for our connection fee alone." Kameyama explained. Though on the plus side, this percentage payment method can motivate developers to make better games, as the profits of the arcade will more directly influence the profits of the developers.

The 2011 earthquake, tsunami and subsequent nuclear disaster have also taken their toll on arcades. The power problem has forced arcades to find ways to conserve energy, like switching to LED lights or shutting off certain machines at different times of the day. And with an increase in the cost of electricity and tax rates, many arcades may no longer be able to make the profits to stay open. "It's probably going to get harder for stores to stay in business." Kameyama said. "If the cost of electricity gets even higher, I wouldn't be surprised if arcades that already are on the edge are forced to close."

For a business owner, usually one must prepare for things 5 or even 10 years down the line. But for many Japanese video arcades like Kameyama, it's become almost a daily struggle to survive. With the technological advances of the home console drawing players away and increasing costs to maintain, not to mention the slowly decreasing population, it may not be long before the arcades of Japan follow the arcades of the US into obsolescence.

現役ゲームセンター店長が語るアーケードゲームビジネスの実態 [Online Player EX]

Mario, the Italian plumber with a kidnap prone girlfriend is the poster child of Nintendo. But is there hidden sexual innuendo in the world of Super Mario? Some Japanese players seem to think so. Consider the following:

Mario: The size of his nose as a metaphor for a large member.
Luigi: His name in Japanese (ru-i-ji) is an anagram for the word, "to touch" or "twiddle" (i-ji-ru).
Princess Peach: A peach can be seen as a woman's rear.
Bowser: The king of the turtles. Turtles in Japan can be viewed as symbols for the male genitalia.
Mushroom Kingdom: Mushrooms are shaped like... Need I say more?

Other pieces of evidence include how when Mario eats a mushroom, he gets bigger, or flowers as symbols for the female genitalia, and when Mario gets one of those, he turns red and spurts out hot little balls... Maybe there's something to this. Maybe it's just perverted minds reading too much into it. Maybe.

マリオの世界観エロすぎて困っちゃうんだけど [2ch]

Scrolling and swiping. Flat on her back, a young girl in Taiwan was playing with an iPad on her bed. When she got tired, the iPad slipped out of her hand and hit the girl in the mouth.

The corner of the iPad hit her front teeth, causing them to chip.

Cracked smile aside, the little girl is okay, and the girl's mother purchased a rubberized iPad cover. Because getting hit in the mouth with that isn't as bad?

Sit up straight when you use the iPad, kids!

躺床上玩iPad 機身掉下砸裂小女孩門牙 [YouTube via MIC]

On Twitter, just because you follow someone, that doesn't mean that person will follow you back. That's just how it works.

Aoi Sola is one of Japan's most popular adult video actresses. She also has a huge following in China. No wonder she has over 300,000 Twitter followers. People love Aoi Sola.

A 40-something man continually tweeted to her, "I am a fan of yours; please follow me," "Please consider following," "How's work? Your English is getting better. Please follow me," and, in English, "Please follow me."

According to website Tokyo Reporter, the man supposedly took legal action against Sola.

Initially, it was thought that this man was only obsessive about Sola. However, he made the same "follow me" pleas to a variety of Japanese celebrities and politicians.

Oddly, the reason why the man apparently so desperately wanted Sola to follow him was to learn what actually happened when the Chinese government recently banned Sola from the country's satellite TV shows. Her sexy personality (and history) is controversial in China.

Hopefully he'll find out all he needs to know in a much needed restraining order.

Porn star Sola Aoi targeted on Twitter after tiff in China [The Tokyo Reporter]

The anime scene in Japan, while not exactly booming in recent years, has certainly kept up appearances, starting over 50 new anime series in the month of April alone. Most are sequels or are based off of existing properties, like manga or light novels. Among some of the recent popular shows based on light novels, a noticeable growing trend can be observed with long wordy titles like, "俺の妹がこんなに可愛いわけがない" (There's No Way My Little Sister Is This Cute) or "僕は友達が少ない" (I Have Few Friends) or "もし高校野球の女子マネージャーがドラッカーの『マネジメント』を読んだら" (What If A High School Baseball Team Manager Read Drucker's 'Management'"). Pan Tachibana is the author of one such Japanese light novel series, and recently talked with Kotaku about his thoughts on the trend.

Tachibana, a history buff and a geek in his own right who enjoys play-by-mail RPGs (and has spent more money on the Idolm@ster Cinderella Girls game than he is willing to admit...), got his start as a scenario writer for adult games and through friendships cultivated over the years, was offered a chance to write for the Fujimi Shobo publishing company where he created the series "だから僕はHができない" (That's Why I Can't Have Ecchi). The story takes place in a world where spirits of death form binding contracts with the souls of mortals for their excess soul energy. Through a series of events, the main character, Ryousuke Kaga, enters a contract with a spirit which results with his soul energy is drained in the form of his libido. The series is currently being made into an anime that is scheduled to air in Japan this July.

As to the title decision of his novel, Tachibana remarked that choosing the title was the hardest part of writing for him, and in fact, he was unable to decide on a title until the very last moment. "I hadn't received any awards, so I didn't have that sort of selling point to draw in readers. " Tachibana explains. "At the very least, I wanted a title that was both attention-grabbing and catchy, and at the same time would let the reader know what sort of story they were getting." Indeed, the emergence of the long, wordy title is something of a natural evolution in light novels. Thanks to the light novel boom, there is no shortage of numerous competing popular titles already on the shelves, and in order to capture new readers, it has become commonplace to try to find quick and easy ways to grab their interest. "There's no guarantee that someone will take the time to read the plot description of a book, so if the title is long and has its own descriptive meaning, it serves that purpose." Tachibana explains.

Despite the increase of lengthy descriptive titles of book, anime, and games, the growing trend of wordy descriptive titles may be reaching a saturation point, and Tachibana himself believes that the trend will soon be over. "If you look at the bookshelves now, there is really a plethora of books with long titles." says Tachibana. "And while it's a selling trend for now, newer works are going to have to go a different route if they will want to stand out in their own way." So what does Tachibana predict will be the next trend in titles? "If I knew that, then my life would be a whole lot easier." laughs Tachibana.

It's like best of both worlds made better—way better. Japanese model builder mashed Gundam Wing with Pokémon to create this Pikachu Wing. Brilliant!

Have a look at more pics in the above gallery.

Pikachu Wing Version [Modelers Gallery]

Hatsune Miku is a Japanese virtual idol. She is not the first Japanese virtual idol, but she's the most successful.

And China, well, China now has its own virtual idol, which recently apparently on television.

Online, people are calling this Chinese virtual idol a Hatsune Miku rip-off, complete with a Vocaloid sounding voice. I'll just stick with annoying.

【Vocaloid？】This Hatsune Miku? Is fake [YouTube]