It’s been 10 years since Yasuo Takamatsu lost his wife Yuko when a devastating tsunami hit the town of Onagawa, in Miyagi prefecture, but he continues to search for her every week.

On the day that Yuko disappeared, in 2011, Yasuo Takamatsu received one last text message from her. It read “Are you ok? I want to go home.” He has been looking for her ever since, and doesn’t plant to stop until he finds her or he stops drawing breath. In the beginning, the grieving husband searched for Yuko on land, starting at the bank where she was last seen, then along the beaches of Onagawa, in nearby forests and mountains. Two years after her disappearance, Yasuo contacted the local dive shop asking for diving lessons, so he could start searching for her in the sea. He has been going on weekly dives for the past seven and a half years, racking up almost 500 underwater searches.

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A Chinese man who spent a small fortune as well as a lot of time and effort turning a small wasteland into a pink paradise in order to impress his ex-girlfriend, has received a clot of compassion online, after failing to win back his old fling.

It’s fair to say that Xiao Xu, a young man from Hetou Village, in China’s Guangdong province, went above an beyond to win back the heart of his ex-girlfriend. Over the course of a month, he spent around 100,000 yuan ($15,500) turning a small patch of wasteland rising up from a lake near his village into a fairytale Love Island complete with fake cherry blossom trees, swings, river rock arrangements, and more. He even convinced some locals to give him a hand and turn this place into the ultimate love letter to his former partner. Unfortunately, things didn’t turn out the way he had hoped…

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A young Ukrainian couple decided to really put their relationship to the test by linking their hands together with a thick iron chain for a period of three months.

This year, Alexander and Viktoria, a young couple from the Ukraine, decided to celebrate Valentine’s Day a bit differently. On February 14, they traveled to Kiev to have their hands chained and sealed together by a representative of the country’s national register of records. Their goal is to literally be next to each every moment, for the next three months. That includes sleeping, bathing together and, obviously, even going to the toilet together.

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A married man had a lot of explaining to do when he was caught at his married mistress’ house, by her husband, next to a hole in the ground that turned out to be a tunnel leading back to his house.

Mexico is famous for its network of secret underground tunnels used by drug cartels to transport their precious but illegal cargos, but it seems the technique is sometimes also used for keeping romantic affairs secret. Antonio, a bricklayer from Villas del Prado 1, was having an affair with a married woman from the town’s Tijuana neighborhood. In order to make sure no one saw him visiting his secret lover, Pamela, the man started working on an underground tunnel that stretched all the way from his home to the woman’s.

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A 28-yeear-old married man from India recently made international news headlines for lying to his family about getting infected with the new coronavirus as an excuse to run away with his lover.

On July 24, Manish Mishra called his wife to say that he had tested positive for Covid-19 and that he didn’t want to live anymore. He then proceeded to shut off his phone, which caused his family to panic. His wife called her brother for help after receiving the bizarre call, and he advised her to file a missing persons report with the Navi Mumbai police. The investigation that followed showed that the 28-year-old supervisor had actually used the dreaded illness as a pretext to leave his family and elope with his mistress.

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An Indian man melted the hearts of millions in his home country after unveiling a life-size and almost lifelike sculpture of his late wife during a house-warming party.

Srinivas Gupta, a businessman from Karnataka, India who lost his wife in a tragic car accident three years ago, wanted his life partner to be physically present at a recent house-warming event that he had a life-size silicone statue of her made by a local artist. Madhavi, Gupta’s late wife, had always wanted to own her own bungalow, so after her death the businessman decided to honor her memory by building one in her honor. A year ago, he commissioned a local sculptor to make an ultra-realistic statue of Madhavi, so she could be with him and their two daughters when the new home was ready.

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Men usually show off their affection to their better halves by buying them flowers, complimenting them or showering them with gifts, but one Vietnamese man decided to show off his love for his fiancee in a rather unusual way – by tattoing a large portrait of her on his back.

22-year-old Truong Van Lam allegedly spent nearly 24 hours having his girlfriend’s portrait inked on his back, in three separate sessions. The first one, which lasted eight hours, was in November of last year, and sine then he went under the needle two more times, one for over six hours, and the other nine hours. The result is a permanent portrait of his 20-year-old girlfriend, Luong Kha Tran, a tattooed version of a photograph of her.

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This is a somewhat older story that was originally reported by media primarily in Indonesia and other East-Asian countries back in 2018. It got a lot of attention because it touched on a very taboo topic – the romantic relationship between an adult male teacher and a 13-year-old schoolgirl.

Erwin Pangaila was 27 when he fell in love with a junior high school student at the SMP Negeri 2 Tenga school, in Sulawesi Utara, Indonesia. In fact, it was 13-year-old Vinda Virginia who first noticed and approached him. She happened to walk by his classroom saw him writing on the blackboard and immediately fell for his broad shoulders and athletic physique. She wasn’t the only girl in school to have a crush on Erwin, but she was determined to be the one that won his heart. She started staying behind after classes to ask him questions and eventually, their student-teacher relationship turned into a romantic one.

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A Kansas-based businessman tired of online dating has announced that he will pay $25,000 to whomever manages to find him a suitable girlfriend.

47-year-old Jeff Gebhart doesn’t need someone to complete him, but he would like to meet someone to share his amazing life with, and he is willing to pay a small fortune to make that happen. The eligible bachelor claims that he has grown tired of traditional dating and hates online dating services, so he decided to try something special. Last week, he launched the website “Date Jeff G.” and announced that he would gladly pay $25,000 to the person who can find him a girlfriend that matches his criteria.

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Unable to deal with the loss of his beloved wife, a Vietnamese man dug up her remains, sealed them in a plaster sculpture and has been sleeping in the same bed with her for the last 16 years.

When the shocking story of Mr. Le Van broke out in 2009, most people thought it was a hoax. After all, it’s hard to believe that someone could dig up their spouse’s remains from the cemetery, bring them back home and sleep in the same bed with her. And yet, that’s what this man has been doing for the last 16 years, and despite the opposition of relatives and fellow villagers, he has no plans to let his wife go anytime soon.

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A 30-year-old from Sheffield recently made news headlines in the UK for spending £425 to rent a billboard on the side of a busy road in Manchester in hopes of finding a date.

Mark Rofe has been single for a year now, and using online dating apps hasn’t really made a difference, so after joking with a friend at a pub that he’d be better off advertising himself on a billboard, he realized that wouldn’t actually be a bad idea. So he set up a website featuring a witty biography where he invites female visitors to apply for a date with him. The billboard has been up for a few days now, but he has already been contacted by 100 people. Sadly, 50 of them have been men.

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A 43-year-old man was recently caught wearing an old woman’s disguise during a driving test in an attempt to help his mother get her driving license.

After Heitor Schiave’s 60-year-old mother, Maria, failed her driving test three times, the car mechanic felt that he had to do something to help her. Probably thinking that giving her some pointers wasn’t enough, the loving son decided to put on a believable old woman disguise and take the test in her place. He put on makeup and glasses, got a white haired wig, dressed in a colorful blouse and long skirt, and tried to imitate his mother’s voice as best he could. Unfortunately, his disguise wasn’t quite as believable as he had hoped.

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A mysterious Mormon millionaire has been making news headlines for his unusual approach to finding a new wife – posting large ads on roadside billboards in Utah asking women to audition for an exclusive group date.

If you’ve been driving down Interstate 15 in Salt Lake City over the past month, you’ve probably seen several roadside billboards advertising a date with a mysterious member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They read “LDS Millionaire looking for his wife,” and invited potential candidates to sign up for an “exclusive VIP event” on June 7, via a custom website. The ads were pretty basic, and you would be excused if you thought they were a joke, but according to self-proclaimed “LDS matchmaker” Erin Schurtz, they are legit.

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Going on a hunger strike doesn’t sound like the most effective way to win back lost love, but it worked in the case of one Indian man who camped outside his ex-girlfriend’s home and refused to eat until she agreed to marry him.

Ananta Burman, a young man from India’s West Bengal region had been in a stable relationship for eight years, but recently, his girlfriend, Lipika, simply cut off all communication, refusing to answer his phone calls and WhatsApp messages, as well as blocking him on social media. Ananta figured that something was wrong, so he did some digging and learned that Lipika’s family had agreed to marry her off to another man. Realizing that he had little time before he lost Lipika forever, the young man decided he had to do something extreme to get her back. So on Sunday he camped out the girl’s house in Dhupguri and went on a hunger strike.

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Building up the courage to confess your feelings to your crush and asking them out on a date can be a nerve-wrecking experience, but thanks to the unique services offered by Japanese company Kokunavi, it doesn’t have to be. If you’re too shy to approach your crush, you can just pay them to do it on your behalf.

True to its name – a mashup between the Japanese word “kokuhaku” (confession of love) and “navigation” –  Kokunavi is committed to helping shy people make their feelings known to their crushes without having to go through the emotionally distressing experience of actually confessing their crush. Basically, Kokunavi will have someone else approach the client’s crush and convey a romantic message on their behalf. Think of it like having a friend deliver a love letter to your high school crush, if that friend charged a lot of money to do it.

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