For some years now expats and travellers in Tokyo have been piling into metro carriages on October 31 to celebrate Halloween. This year however, the masked partygoers were stopped in their tracks by groups of exasperated locals. Read more...

Japan's pets are the most spoilt in the world. They wear clothes, eat in restaurants, bathe in spas. But what happens to the two percent that find themselves homeless? Re-homing is unheard of in Japan, where only the latest creation (often inbred) will do. The answer, revealed in this video, is to gas them, en masse. Read more and watch the clip...

As expected, the parade organised to celebrate the People’s Republic of China’s 60th anniversary went extremely smoothly — thanks in part to the massive security lock-down weeks ahead of the show. There was one small hitch, however, as Chinese Web users were quick to see. Read more...

On August 22, Chinese broadcaster CCTV released “Soul’s Window”, a much-trumpeted “original production” aimed at a child audience. But Web users haven’t fallen for it. Read more…

A Japanese publishing firm has re-edited a translation of Adolf Hitler's ideological pamphlet, first published in 1924. But this edition has a new twist: it's a manga-style comic. It's made quite a splash in Japanese bookshops. Read more...  

One of our Observers in Japan, Lee Chapman, photographed this motorbike, complete with Swastika-shaped spokes, outside a Harley Davidson shop in Tokyo. Depending on how you look at it, it could represent the ancient Buddhist symbol for universal harmony, the infamous emblem of Nazi Germany, or, as Lee tells us, simply being "cool". Read more...

An ad campaign for a tea-based drink that pokes fun of former US President George Bush, has been on the Japanese airwaves for over a month. Read more and see the clips...

Despite its popularity in Chinese cinemas, the director of a film which attempts to deal with "The Rape of Nanking" - the 1937 Japanese massacre in China's former capital - has come under fire on the Chinese web, for his apparent compassion with the Japanese soldiers. Read more and see the trailer...

This CCTV footage shows the moment when a FedEx cargo plane burst into flames attempting to land at Tokyo's Narita airport.

Daito Manabe came up with the "face visualizer" idea in his Tokyo kitchen. Webcam on, he wired his face up to a series of electrodes, put on some music, and let his facial muscles move to the rhythm. He then posted the face dance on YouTube. A few months and over a million hits later, and Daito is an international star. Read more and see the video...