A popular Japanese cosplayer known for transforming herself into real-life versions of hot female anime characters, recently came out as a man who uses makeup, wigs and various accessories to achieve a shockingly feminine look.

With over 65,000 followers on Twitter, and several other thousands on Instagram, Rei Dunois can safely be described as a fairly popular female cosplayer. But appearances can be deceiving. Despite having made a name for herself by transforming into various female anime characters over the last couple of years, Rei recently left her fans with their mouths wide open by revealing that she was actually a “he”. After keeping the appearances up for so long, the talented cosplayer apparently decided to reveal the truth and convince people that they shouldn’t believe everything they see on the internet.

Read More »

Every year, landscaping experts from all over Japan get together to compete in the Key Truck Garden Contest, a unique event that has participants turning the beds of mini trucks into the most impressive miniature gardens they can.l The results are nothing short of awe-inspiring.

The Kei Truck, or “kei-tora”, is a small yet practical utility vehicle invented in Japan, but used throughout Asia, primarily in construction and agriculture. It’s been a part of Japanese culture for decades, and people love it because it provides plenty of space and it’s easy to maneuver on narrow streets. But once a year, Key trucks take center stage as canvases for ingenious landscaping masterpieces, during the Key Truck Garden Contest, a special event sponsored by the Japan Federation of Landscape Contractors. As you can see in the photos below, these mobile miniature gardens are something else!

Read More »

In what can only be described as an intriguing childhood experiment, a Japanese boy has been trying to stop weeds from growing in his backyard – without using chemical weedkillers – for the last three years. This year, he’s off to a promising starts.

It all started three years ago, when Twiter user @peco3575’s son finished elementary school and decided to conduct a “study” on weed annihilation solutions that didn’t involve the use of herbicides. He was inspired by his personal desire to clean his home backyard of weeds, because that summer they had grown so tall that he actually couldn’t play there anymore. He then started coming up with strategies to combat the weeds, write them down, apply them to his backyard, and note the conclusion. For the past three years, his ideas all failed, but 2020 is off to a surprisingly good start.

Read More »

A Japanese man is facing serious charges for allegedly causing serious financial losses to his favorite baseball club after reserving and then cancelling nearly 1,900 seats for two of their league games, so he could have more space and stand out on TV.

41-year-old Kiyoshi Shibamura, a fan of the Orix Buffaloes baseball club from the Japanese city of Osaka, came up with an ingenious-yet-costly plan to watch his favorite team compete against the SoftBank Hawks at Osaka’s Kyocera Dome on the 28th and 29th of September, last year. To make sure he stood out on TV and enjoyed some serious privacy, he went through the trouble of creating 1,873 fake names and reserving the same number of stadium seats online. He then cancelled all but his own reservation right before the end of the reservation period, making sure than no one else managed to snatch the seats.

Read More »

An agricultural field is one of the last places you would expect to find a tourist attraction for fans of Hayao Miyazaki’s anime, but this one farm in Japan’s Miyazaki Prefecture is actually home to a popular Totoro Bus Station.

If you’ve ever watched Miyazaki’s “My Neighbour Totoro” anime, you’re probably familiar with the simple yet iconic bust stop scene where Totoro appears next to the main character of the animated film as she waits for the bus in the rain. There are actually several real-life Totoro bus station across Asia, from the one in Saikai City, Nagasaki, to one in Taiwan’s Taichung area, but the most popular one these days seems to be the one created by an elderly couple in the middle of a field in Takaharu, as a present for their grandchildren.

Read More »

I don’t know what it is about Japanese men and bicycle seats, but for some reason some men can never have enough of these seats. Just a few months after writing about a man who stole 159 bike seats in a year, we now have the story of another Japanese man who claims to have stolen over 5,800 seats over the lasts 25 years.

Hiroaki Suda, a 57-year-old truck driver, was arrested on Feb. 13 after surveillance cameras caught him stealing two bicycle seats worth about ¥8,000 ($75) on Nov. 29 and 30, 2019, at a train station and a parking lot for bicycles in Higashiosaka, Japan’s Osaka prefecture. Suda admitted to the charges, and for some reason confessed to police that he had started stealing bicycle seats about a quarter century before, and had since put together quite and impressive collection.

Read More »

Japan has always been a rich source of wacky news and ideas, and it doesn’t look like things are going to change anytime soon. Its latest offering – a YouTube channel focused mainly on cooking various foods on a hot computer CPU.

You probably already know that CPUs tend to get very hot, especially under load, but you’ve probably never thought of using a CPU as a hotplate to cook various foods on. Well, one Japanese YouTuber recently has and his videos have been getting quite a lot of attention recently. To be honest, he has been at it for at least six years, but the quality of his videos has drastically improved over time, which may explain why we’re only now seeing his works shared on social media. From boiled and fried eggs, to tiny wagyu steaks and even tiny donuts, there’s nothing this guy won’t try cooking on a hot computer processor.

Read More »

Japanese housewife and amateur designer Pico grew up collecting faux-fur animals and now spends whatever free time she has creating her own. And, as you can see, she’s really good at it!

A self-described cat enthusiast, Pico first attracted media attention five years ago, when photos of one of her incredibly realistic creations went viral on Japanese social media. It didn’t take long for her creations to transcend national borders, and soon photos of her most impressive cat bags started circulating on Instagram, Facebook and the like. But despite the massive interest in her works, Pico was quick to announce that she only sold her works in Japan, and only rarely accepted commission projects. As a mother of two, she preferred to dedicate most of her tim to her children.

Read More »

Japanese company Tone Mobile has been getting a lot of attention ever since it launched its Tone e20 model, the world’s first smartphone that prevents users from taking “inappropriate” (nude) photos.

The Tone e20 is not a particularly attractive phone, and its spec sheet isn’t exactly impressive either, but it does one thing that no other phone in the word does – it uses artificial intelligence to prevent users from taking nude photos of themselves or anyone else. Aimed primarily at parents who want to ‘protect children from predators’, the phone can also ‘connect’ with other devices and notify their owner if the connected phone has clicked an inappropriate photo.

Read More »

Turtles may be cute, but they are also slow and clumsy, which doesn’t really help them when they are trying to cross train tracks. Luckily, for the turtles in Japan’s Hyōgo Prefecture, railway operators and a local aquarium teamed up to find a solution.

Between 2002 and 2014, disruptions of train operation caused by turtles were reported 13 times, with many more probably going unreported. That is why, in 2015, West Japan Railway Co. and Suma Aqualife Park in Kobe joint forces to prevent tragic turtle deaths on the tracks and unnecessary train delay. After running a series of tests and experiments, they came up with a U-shaped ditch that collects the turtles, preventing them from getting stuck between the metal tracks and getting squashed to death.

Read More »

A 70-year-old Japanese man who describes himself as a professional “fundoshi”, or “poop soil master” has been moving bowels outdoors for almost half a centuries, and encouraging others to follow his example.

Masana Izawa, a published mushroom and moss photographer, is famous for avoiding indoor toilets as much as he can. In fact, he prides himself with the fact that he has only pooped indoor 14 times in the last 20 years, and then only because he had no other choice. Whether he is at his home in Japan’s Ibaraki Prefecture, in an urban environment or in the middle of nature, Izawa always does his number two outdoors. He believes that relieving ourselves in the soil rather than in dead plumbing is our responsibility as humans, and he has taken it upon himself to convince people that their poop isn’t worthless at all.

Read More »

Looking at the stylish garments made by graduating art student Rie Sakamoto, you’d be tempted to think they are made of brown yarn, but in fact, every piece in her collection is made of knitted rubber bands.

Rie Sakamoto is graduating from Tama Art University, in Tokyo this year and for her thesis she decided to focus on the humble but versatile rubber band. From a staple of office stationery to improvised wrist strap, the rubber band has literally hundreds of uses, but fabric for fashionable clothes most likely wasn’t one of them. But that was before Sakamoto got her hands on a few thousands of brown rubber bands and knitted them into dresses, bolero jackets, and more.

Read More »

Japanese model Kato Sari recently finalized her divorce from her husband, after getting separated from him just a week into their marriage, due to her uncontrolled money spending habits.

29-year-old Kato Sari has always been known for her luxurious lifestyle and love of expensive fashion brands, but her husband never imagined that her spending habits would end up putting his businesses at risk. The unnamed real-estate businessman reportedly started dating the model in May of 2019, and in the three and a half months before the pair tied the knot, she had managed to spend about 1 billion yen ($9.1 million) of his money. Still, the man went through with the wedding, but during the first week of their marriage, he allegedly told Sari to slow down her spending, as his businesses weren’t fairing very well. That didn’t sit too well with her, so she asked for a divorce.

Read More »

A 61-year-old postal worker from the Japanese city of Yokohama was recently arrested for hoarding around 24,000 pieces of mail that he had failed to deliver since back in 2003.

Officials at Japan Post, the government-owned mail service, noticed there was something peculiar about the unnamed postal worker’s activity last year, and he was let go. However, the cache of hidden mail was discovered later, because it was located in his home, “which is beyond the confines of an internal inspection”. The 61-year-old admitted to failing to deliver the tens of thousands of letters and parcels, claiming that doing his job “was too much bother”. But he didn’t want his younger colleagues to think he was less capable than them, so he just hid the mail at home.

Read More »

A convenience store owner in Osaka, japan, sparked a lot of controversy recently when he decided to close his business for a day on New Year’s. Appaerntly that was a pretty big deal in a country where convenience stores a traditionally open 24/7, all year long.

While convenience stores are still pretty popular in the United States, they are nothing compared to the so-called “konbini” stores found on every corner of every street in urban Japan. They are beacons of hope that make life easier for the average person, offering a wide range of services (ATMs, Wi-Fi, printing, delivery services, etc.), as well as groceries, all in one place, day and night. In fact, the thing that makes Japanese convenience stores so convenient is that they are open all 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, making it possible for anyone to pick up some groceries, pay the bills or get a quick bite to eat,whenever they need to. So when one convenience store owner decided to close his business for a day on New Year’s, it made national news.

Read More »