Japanese Business Specializes in Plucking Customers’ White Hairs

Shiraganuki Main Store, a white-hair-removal specialty shop in Tokyo, Japan, charges people for the service of removing white hairs by hand, leaving them looking years younger.

Pulling out your own gray hairs is tedious work, and constantly asking someone else to do it for you can become embarrassing after a while, but luckily, the staff at Shiraganuki Main Store is more than happy to do it for you, if you’re willing to pay them for it. The store charges 3,980 yen ($36) for 30 minutes of white hair plucking, 7,480 yen ($67) for 60 minutes, and an extra 1,000 yen ($9) for every 10 additional minutes spent ridding your head of those pesky signs of aging. That’s not cheap, but let’s face it, pulling hairs one by one using tweezers is not the easiest thing in the world.

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Woman Who Always Set Phone’s Screen Brightness to Max Ends Up with 500 Tiny Holes on Her Cornea

A young woman from Taiwan who had been using her smartphone at maximum screen brightness for two years ended up with serious damage to her left eye, including around 500 small holes on her cornea.

The 25-year-old woman, surnamed Chen, works as a secretary, a job that requires her to frequently check her phone and respond to work-related messages as soon as possible. A few years ago, Chen discovered that by setting the screen brightness on her smartphone to maximum, she was able to easily read her messages even in bright sunlight. Her mistake was keeping that brightness level at all times, even when watching her favorite drama series on her phone for several hours at a time, with the light off. She got used to her ultra-bright screen, but her eyes did not, and in March of last year she started experiencing discomfort.

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Woman Wants Leather Handbag Made Out of the Skin on Her Amputated Leg

A 55-year-old woman from Manchester who suffers from peripheral arterial disease and will soon have her left leg surgically removed is looking for a manufacturer willing to make her a leather handbag from the skin on her amputated limb.

Sewport, an online marketplace that connects brands and manufacturers, received a bizarre request from a woman looking to get in touch with a leather processing expert about having a leather handbag made from the skin on the leg she’s about to have surgically removed for medical reasons. Instead of dismissing her inquiry right of the bat, Sewport experts read the woman’s message and determined that her reasons were valid, so they decided to help her with her search. Apparently, the 55-year old, referred to simply as Joan, cannot come to terms with the idea that her leg will become medical waste after the surgery, so she came up with this unusual plan to at least keep part of it.

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Japanese Speed-Dating Event Has Potential Matches Sitting in Silence While Robots Do the Talking for Them

Based on the premise that people who are having trouble finding a romantic partner probably lack the confidence and experience to properly interact with a potential match, a Tokyo-based robotics association recently hosted a speed-dating party where human participants sat in silence across a table from each-other while tiny robots spoke on their behalf.

The bizarre event took place in Tokyo, Japan, and was organized by the Contents innovation Program (CiP) Association, which specializes in developing AI, robotics and other technology, according to The Japan News. In a series of videos posted on YouTube, potential matches can be seen sitting across from each other, but instead of talking, they just sit there quietly with their gazes focused on two little robots placed on the table between them. They just sit in silence while these robotic assistants ask each other questions and provide answers, based on information pre-loaded into their system from a 45-question survey participants completed prior to the event.

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Girl Uses “Handwriting Robot” to Complete Homework Faster

The story of a young student who used a so-called “handwriting robot” to complete her Lunar New Year holiday homework in record time made news headlines in China last week, sparking a heated debate.

The Qianjiang Evening News reported the case of a junior high-school student from Harbin who spent 800 yuan ($118) on a copying robot that allowed her to complete her transcribing assignments and essays in no time at all. The girl’s mother, surnamed Zhang, became suspicious when her daughter turned in her holiday homework, neatly written and with absolutely no errors, despite having very little time to do it, due to Lunar New Year festivities and traveling. Then, while cleaning the girl’s room, Zhang found a bizarre metal contraption as well as its packaging, which claimed that it could imitate any handwriting.

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Star Wars-Inspired Lightsaber Dueling Recognized as Competitive Sport in France

In an effort to get the younger generation off the couch and exercising, the French fencing federation recently recognized lightsaber dueling as a competitive sport.

Just like medieval tales like The Three Musketeers once inspired youths to take up classic fencing sports, so too can Star Wars save young people from the clutches of the evil currently plaguing public health – sedentary lifestyle. Or at least that’s how officials from the French fencing federation explain their decision to acknowledge lightsaber dueling as an official sport. They even included some specific rules designed to make battles between Jedi Knights and Sith Lords more visually appealing and get young people interested in taking up the sport.

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This Dog Has an Extra Mouth Where Her Right Ear Should Be

Toad, a five-year-old grey pitbull mix, suffers from a very rare deformity – she has a second mouth, complete with teeth and salivating glands, growing on the side of her head where her right year should be.

Toad arrived at the Oklahoma City Animal Welfare shelter two years ago, as a stray. The staff there realized almost immediately that there was something different about her, but it wasn’t until they sedated her and performed a thorough checkup of her right ear that they realized that wasn’t actually a normal ear, but a second mouth, with fully developed teeth and saliva coming out of it. It doesn’t function as a normal ear, because it doesn’t have a jaw to allow it to open and close, but Toad can’t hear with it either.

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Japanese Artist Gets Barbecue Fans All Fired Up With Skull-Shaped Charcoal

If you’re looking to give your backyard barbecue a macabre touch, these charcoal skulls created by Japanese artist Sekisadamu are sure to do the trick.

When Sekisadamu came up with the idea for his creepy charcoal skulls, he never really though about commercial potential. He merely wanted something cool to show off at the recently concluded Wonder Festival, in Chiba, Japan. But after posting photos of his creations on Twitter and inviting people to the festival to check them out in person, he got an overwhelming response – over 13,000 likes and almost 9,300 retweets at the time of this writing – and started contemplating the idea of making charcoal skulls for the masses. The Japanese artist has already announced that he has set up a domain name for them and begun procedures to register a trademark on them. So fire up your grill, cause charcoal skulls are coming.

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55-Year-Old Body Builder Hailed as “Real-Life Master Roshi” for His Impressive Physique

Nhon Ly, a 55-year-old Vietnamese-born professional bodybuilder from California has been dubbed the “real-life Master Roshi” for his uncanny resemblance to the popular Dragon Ball Z anime character.

Ly certainly doesn’t look like your typical 55-year-old man. In fact, he looks a lot better than most guys in their 20s, with his lean, toned muscles and youthful attitude. But he’s definitely not the only ripped 50-something man in the world. What really sets Nhon Ly apart from all the rest is his uncanny resemblance to Dragon Ball Z character Master Roshi, aka the Turtle Hermit, in his “final form”. And he apparently liked the comparison so much that he even set his Instagram handle as @master_roshi_real_life.

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Japanese Man Turns Himself into a Caucasian Living Doll

Artist and model Matt Kuwata is mostly known as the son of Japanese legendary baseball player Masumi Kuwata, but in recent years he has attracted a lot of attention for his dramatic physical transformation. Somehow, the 24-year-old went from looking like a Japanese teenage boy, to a Caucasian, doll-like man.

Matt’s appearance has been a hot topic on Japanese social media for the last couple of years, with some people simply admiring his “foreign prince” or “anime character” looks, and others speculating that he had undergone extensive plastic surgery to achieve the shocking transformation. Even though the young man’s face has been constantly changing over the last two years, the photos he started posting on his Instagram at the beginning of last year left a lot of people in shock. He looked nothing like his former self, and frankly he didn’t even look Japanese anymore. Instead, his face resembled that of a Caucasian human doll.

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Woman Goes Viral for Reviewing Brands of Soap on How Good They Taste

This Indonesian woman who loves to lick various brands of hand soap and rate them by how good they taste is giving the phrase “clean eating” a whole new meaning.

Khosik Assyifa, a young woman from Indonesia’s East Java province, has become an unlikely Instagram sensation thanks to her bizarre eating habits. Assyifa has been posting videos that show her licking bars of hand soap and reviewing them based on taste. Just so we’re clear, she doesn’t just touch the soap bars with the tip of her tongue to get a taste, but licks and slurps them like you would an ice-lolly. She appears to be enjoying the taste almost as much as people love watching her do it. Her soap-eating videos receive thousands of likes and comments, including suggestions on what soap brands she should try next.

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Heavy Pollution Turns Snow Black in Russia

Imagine going to sleep after a day of heavy snowfall and waking up the next morning to find that all that white snow has turned black overnight. That’s exactly what the people of Kiselevsk and Prokopyevsk, two cities in Russia’s Kuzbass region experienced earlier this week.

Photos and videos recently shared on social media by worried citizens of the two Russian cities show the grim reality of living in a coal mining area – snow covered fields and streets blanketed by a thick layer of coal dust and soot that literally turns the snow from white to pitch black.

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Dozens of Polar Bears Invade Remote Russian Town, Entering Homes and Chasing Locals

The small town of Belushya Guba, in northern Russia, is in a state of emergency, with locals afraid to leave their houses because of dozens of polar bears roaming the streets in search of food.

Located on one of the two islands that make up the Novaya Zemlya archipelago in the Arctic Ocean, Belushya Guba is home to roughly 3,000 people, many of whom are terrified to leave their homes and send their kids to school, because of the dozens of bears running around in the streets and even entering buildings in search of food. While polar bear sighting aren’t exactly uncommon in the remote town, the scale of this invasion is reportedly unprecedented. Over 52 sightings have been reported in only three days, with up to 10 bears seen in the settlement at any given time.

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Excited Dog Jumps from Second Floor to Greet Owner, Lands on Him and Breaks His Neck

A dog owner in China ended up in the hospital after his excited husky jumped all the way from the 2nd floor of his house to greet him, landing on his head and breaking his neck.

The 67-year-old man, surnamed Liu, was returning to his house in Yongzhou City, China’s Hunan province, on Monday, after visiting some relatives, when something heavy fell from above and landed on the back of his head. Liu was knocked down and rendered unconscious by the impact, and his family immediately called an ambulance. Speaking with Sina News about the incident, Liu recalled that his first thought after waking up in the hospital was that the wall of his house had collapsed on top of him, but he later learned that he had been hit by his pet husky.  Apparently, the 60-pound pooch was so excited to see Liu come home that he jumped from the second floor of he house, landing on top of him.

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Canadian Town Plagued by Unbearable Smell of 17-Year-Old Seafood Sauce

For the past 17 years, the people of St. Mary’s, a small town in Canada’s Newfoundland, have had to put up with the pungent smell of fermented seafood sauce at an abandoned nearby factory. In the summer, the stench gets so bad that some residents bar their homes and leave to stay with their relative, because it’s so hard to breathe.

In 1990, a Vietnamese immigrant opened the Atlantic Seafood Sauce factory near St. Mary’s, with the goal of producing a kind of fermented seafood sauce that is very popular in Vietnamese cuisine. Things were off to a good start, but just 4 years down the line, the owner, a man named Sanh Go, started complaining that Canadian regulations were killing his business. In the year 2000, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency inspected the factory and concluded that the sauce was produced in unsanitary conditions. Two years later, the Atlantic Seafood Sauce factory closed for good, but its giant vats of fermenting fish parts and seafood sauce have remained there ever since, causing a big stink.

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