![Podcast [English World] Episode 111: Japan McDonald's Pokemon card frenzy](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fenglish-kyodo.ismcdn.jp%2Fmwimgs%2F4%2Fb%2F1200x%2Fimg_4b99060e4a011d2035c42ebd631ba292351569.jpg&w=3840&q=100)
Podcast [English World] Episode 111: Japan McDonald's Pokemon card frenzy
Three Kyodo News reporters -- Peter Masheter, Ellessa Yamada and Donican Lam -- talk about the recent frenzy over collectible Pokemon trading cards given away with Happy Meals at McDonald's outlets in Japan. Listen as they discuss the issue of resellers, wasted food, and links to negative sentiment about foreigners.
Articles mentioned in the podcast:
Japan McDonald's Happy Sets wasted in Pokemon card frenzy
Kyodo News presents a bilingual podcast for English learners about the ins and outs of news writing and how to translate tricky Japanese phrases into English. Have fun listening to journalists discuss recent articles as they occasionally go off on unrelated tangents.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Mainichi
2 hours ago
- The Mainichi
Celebrated Korean poet Yun, who died in Japan, still resonates 80 years on
FUKUOKA (Kyodo) -- This year marks the 80th anniversary of Korean poet Yun Dong Ju's death in a Japanese prison for his involvement in the Korean independence movement during World War II. Celebrated as a national poet in South Korea and by fans worldwide, Yun is renowned for his childlike introspection and critical poetic resistance against Japanese colonial rule. A poetry society in Fukuoka, southwestern Japan -- where Yun died in prison at age 27 while serving a two-year sentence for violating a wartime security law -- has held monthly gatherings in his honor for over three decades. "There is much to be learned from his hope for peace and his hard work during the difficult period of colonial rule, transcending times and countries. His work is a source of support for us today," said Mikiko Managi, the 61-year-old leader of the Yun Dong Ju Poetry Society. Managi addressed around a dozen members who gathered to read Yun's poetry in April. Yun's poems were not published during his lifetime, but they became powerful symbols of national identity and resistance after his death. "He has the gaze of a children's poet, and you feel no hatred in him," Managi said. The society, established in 1994, selects one of Yun's poems each month and discusses their impressions. Its members, ranging in age from their 30s to 70s, include Korean residents of Japan and Japanese learners of the Korean language. The poem selected for discussion in April was "Until Dawn Comes." A verse translated into Japanese by Go Ibuki and published by Shoshikankanbou in Fukuoka reads: "...If they all shed tears, let them suckle milk. And when the dawn comes, they will hear the sound of the trumpet." There are many translations of Yun's poems, including "Sky, Wind and Stars by Yun Dong-ju," the first English translation of Yun's complete works, published in the United States in 2003. In 2020, Korean-American poet Byun Man Sik translated Yun's most notable poems into English for a book titled "Yoon Dong-ju: Selected Poems." Each member of the Fukuoka poetry group has their own interpretation. "I think 'Dawn' may mean the liberation of the Korean people," said first-time participant Takashi Tanabe. "Yun compares crying people to babies. It is so sweet," said Managi. Managi came across Yun's work while studying abroad at Yonsei University in South Korea, the successor to Yun's alma mater, Yonhi College. After returning to Japan, a colleague invited her to join the club in 1997. She says Yun's work appeals to her because of its nuance, which she experiences differently each time she reads his poetry. Yun was born in Manchuria (now northeastern China) in 1917. In 1942, he moved to Japan and enrolled in the English Literature Department at Rikkyo University in Tokyo. Later that year, he transferred to the same department at Doshisha University in Kyoto. While studying at Doshisha in 1943, Yun was arrested by the secret police and, the following year, sentenced to two years' imprisonment for violating the Public Order and Safety Act. He is believed to have been punished for writing poems in his native Korean language despite facing immense pressure to use Japanese during the Japanese colonial period. Yun died in prison on Feb. 16, 1945, but the circumstances surrounding his death remain unclear. His poetry mainly focused on the internal struggles and moral conflicts faced by a young Korean intellectual under Japanese imperialism. Japan's colonial rule of Korea lasted from 1910 to 1945, ending with Japan's defeat in the war. Initially involving direct military rule, it was followed by efforts to assimilate Korea into Japan through cultural suppression and economic controls. Yun's poems often used nature as a backdrop to explore themes of national identity, personal guilt, and the search for purity during a time of oppression. His poems are also characterized by glimpses of the folk spirit and Christianity -- Yun himself was Christian. After his death, his family and friends published a collection of his poems in South Korea in 1948. These poems were later translated into more than eight languages and compiled in the book "Sky, Wind and Stars and Poem," published in Japanese in 1984. This year, a Japanese-Korean bilingual book of poems with the same title was published in Japan. Doshisha University also awarded Yun a posthumous honorary doctorate in culture. Yun's work has had a significant impact in South Korea, where his poems appear in middle and high school textbooks. He was the subject of the South Korean film "Dongju: The Portrait of a Poet," released in February 2016. In February, Yun In Seok, Yun's 68-year-old nephew who supervised the bilingual Japanese-Korean edition, toured the site of the former Fukuoka Prison with Managi as his guide. Yun said, "He makes you think deeply about how he tried to live out his youth amid Japanese militarism. After peace came, his poetry came to be loved like crystal." Yuki Tsujino, an associate professor of Korean language at Kyushu University, said, "It would be good if more people read his poetry and interpreted it as they wish," noting the importance of freely sharing thoughts on Yun's work. "As long as people continue to read Yun, he will live on," Tsujino said. "There is no other Korean-language poet in the Japanese-speaking world like him."
SoraNews24
9 hours ago
- SoraNews24
One Piece Happy Meals indefinitely postponed as McDonald's Japan battles scalpers
One Piece Card Game Happy Meals hadn't even been formally announced yet, were supposed to debut in less than 10 days. McDonald's Japan runs a lot of cool Happy Meal promotions, but none of them stick around for all that long. For example, the Pokémon Happy Meals that went on sale August 8 are only going to be around for a few more days. However, one Happy Meal bowing out means that another should be on the way, right? Indeed that was the plan, as McDonald's had another massively popular anime franchise partnership lined up, one that it had managed to keep an impressively tight lid on. However, barely a week before the new Happy Meals were supposed to debut, McDonald's has said that they're being postponed indefinitely, even though they still hadn't been officially announced. In a press release issued on August 20, McDonald's Japan says: A notice regarding the Happy Meal campaign which was scheduled to start on August 29 As part of a company reassessment of Happy Meal-related operations, we are postponing the Happy Meal campaign that was scheduled to begin on Friday, August 29. During the period in which the campaign was scheduled to take place, we will instead be distributing toys from previous campaigns to Happy Meal customers. It's not until the very last line of the press release that McDonald's unceremoniously mentions what the intended promotion was: One Piece Card Game Happy Meals. Though it may not have as massive a player base as the Pokémon Trading Card Game , the collectible card game branch of the One Piece franchise is a very big deal too. Not only does it feature the characters of one of the most popular and long-running anime/manga series of all time, the One Piece Card Game is published by Bandai, a company with a wealth of promotional event planning expertise. ▼ A display of One Piece cards ★カード展示★ 本日8/16(土)開催『#ONEPIECEカードゲーム エリア決勝大会』にて、ブースターパック 受け継がれる意志【OP-13】の実物カードを最速展示中！当日参加可能なマッチングバトルもございますので是非ご来場ください！ イベント開催時間9:30~18:00 詳細はこちら — 【公式】ONE PIECEカードゲーム (@ONEPIECE_tcg) August 15, 2025 With One Piece being hugely popular with kids and young adults alike, there's no doubt the Happy Meals would have had fans lining up to get one. Unfortunately, it's also a certainty that scalpers would have been equally eager to snatch up as many as they could. Sandwiched in the middle of McDonald's Japan's Pokémon toy giveaway this month was a period of three days when the Happy Meals also included exclusive Pokémon cards. The resulting rush of resellers led to litter and food waste from people picking out the card from their order and then abandoning or dumping the food and packaging, as well as uncomfortably tense atmospheres as regular customers were forced into competition with for-profit card hoarders. This led to McDonald's Japan issuing an official apology and adopting new countermeasures to make it more difficult for scalpers to bulk-buy Happy Meals, but apparently the chain feels these are still insufficient for items with as high a projected demand as One Piece cards. 【お知らせ】 ハッピーセットⓇ「ワンピースカードゲーム」に関しては、下記マクドナルド公式サイトをご確認ください。 今後につきましては、決まり次第、改めて公式サイト及び公式Xにてご案内いたします。#ワンピカード — 【公式】ONE PIECEカードゲーム (@ONEPIECE_tcg) August 20, 2025 In the above tweet, the official One Piece Card Game account also let fans know about the postponement of the Happy Meals, which, to repeat, had not even been publicly announced yet. As an indefinite postponement, it's unclear how confident McDonald's is that the promotion can be salvaged, and there's a possibility that this will turn out to be a de-facto cancellation of the One Piece card Happy Meals entirely, proving that, no matter what the real treasure turns out to be, it was most definitely not the resellers who ruined things along the way. Source: McDonald's Japan via Hachima Kiko Top image ©SoraNews24 ● Want to hear about SoraNews24's latest articles as soon as they're published? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!
![Podcast [English World] Episode 111: Japan McDonald's Pokemon card frenzy](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fall-logos-bucket.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fkyodonews.net.png&w=48&q=75){kind=small}
Kyodo News
a day ago
- Kyodo News
Podcast [English World] Episode 111: Japan McDonald's Pokemon card frenzy
Have you ever lined up at McDonald's for a Happy Meal toy? Three Kyodo News reporters -- Peter Masheter, Ellessa Yamada and Donican Lam -- talk about the recent frenzy over collectible Pokemon trading cards given away with Happy Meals at McDonald's outlets in Japan. Listen as they discuss the issue of resellers, wasted food, and links to negative sentiment about foreigners. Articles mentioned in the podcast: Japan McDonald's Happy Sets wasted in Pokemon card frenzy Kyodo News presents a bilingual podcast for English learners about the ins and outs of news writing and how to translate tricky Japanese phrases into English. Have fun listening to journalists discuss recent articles as they occasionally go off on unrelated tangents.
