Oliver Frost, aka “Oli London” has allegedly spent a small fortune on plastic surgery over the last seven years in an attempt to make himself look more like his K-pop idol.

Oli London became infatuated with K-pop icon Jimin, a member of Korean boy band BTS, the first saw he laid eyes on him in 2013, and the UK man has spent the last seven years trying to model his appearance after his idol. He was living in South Korea when he discovered BTS and like many other K-pop fans, he was “amazed by all of them”. But it was Jimin who made him want to go under the knife and drastically alter his look to match that of the K-pop icon. He’s been at it for over 7 years now, and he doesn’t plan on stopping anytime soon.

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Police in the Japanese province of Okinawa have been struggling with a phenomenon called rojo-ne, which translates literally as “sleeping on the road”.

Imagine driving home late at night and seeing someone laying in the middle of the road. Or worse yet, not seeing that someone in time to actually slam the brakes. Such nightmare scenarios occur quite frequently in Okinawa, with provincial police reporting over 7,000 cases recorded in 2019 alone. Some of those unfortunately resulted in the loss of human lives, and authorities are desperate to put an end to rojo-ne, a phenomenon that has been on the rise in Okinawa for years. Sadly, despite taking several measures against offenders, police have seen no improvements. In fact, things have been getting worse.

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Marimo is a rare growth form of the Aegagropila linnaei algae in which the aquatic plant grows into large green balls with a velvet-like texture and appearance. It’s also a natural treasure of Japan, as well as a popular pet.

Aegagropila linnaei algae has long been a mystery in biology, particularly due to its fascinating spherical growth form. The algae can be found in just a handful of aquatic environments located in four countries – Iceland, Scotland, Estonia, and Japan – and exists either as free-floating filaments, flat growths on rocks or green balls that can reach up to 40 cm in diameter. It’s the latter that has fascinated both scientists and algae enthusiasts for centuries.

Marimo (literally “ball water plant”) are particularly popular in Japan. The largest and most impressive-looking ones can be found in  Lake Akan, in east Hokkaido. For some reason, given enough time marimo her grow up to 40 cm in diameter, much larger that the moss balls found anywhere else. The lake is shallow, providing the conditions needed for Aegagropila linnaei to thrive, so the bottom is full of these giant, fluffy balls just waiting to be squeezed. Only you’re not allowed to take those!

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An 83-year-old man was ordered to pay a 166 euro fine after he failed to prevent his pet rooster from crowing at 4:30 in the morning, which some of his neighbors had complained about.

Angelo Boletti, a pensioner from the Italian town of Castiraga Vidardo, in Lombardy, was found to have violated local rules, which state that pets must be kept at a minimum distance of 10 metres from neighboring homes. But the real problem was that the pet in question, a rooster named Carlino, crowed loudly as early as 4:30 in the morning and waking up the neighbors. After receiving several complaints about the bird’s morning routine, police started monitoring Carlino, and after confirming his early crowing decided to fine the retired bricklayer.

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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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In a country that eschews confrontation and frowns upon public display of passion, bold entrepreneurs eager to take up the burden of ending a romantic relationship on a client’s behalf can make a fortune.

The Wakaresaseya, literally “breaker-uppers”, are professional agents that specialize in destroying relationships, be they marriages or affairs, for a fee. After taking on a contract these unlicensed operatives stop at nothing to achieve their goal, which includes extreme measures like entrapment, financial burdening and lying. Wakaresaseya are viewed by some in Japanese society as immoral, but they have been around for decades and their services are more popular than ever.

Wakaresaseya services, many of which are tied to private detective agencies, are often advertised online and cater to both married people seeking a reason to leave their spouse, and married individuals who know about their partner’s infidelity and want to end it without getting involved. Prices reportedly vary from a couple of hundred dollars for simple cases, to upwards of $150,000 for high-profile cases where discretion if of the upmost importance.

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With tourism at an all-time low, a struggling Japanese railway operator is trying to avoid going under by selling canned stones from its railway tracks.

Founded in 1923, the Choshi Electric Railway company, in Japan’s Chiba Prefecture, had to overcome adversity several times during its 97-year history, but the situation has never been more dire than it is now. The railway operator relies on tourism to support its operations, but with the novel Coronavirus wreaking havoc all over the world, business has never been worse, so management had to come up with alternative ways of generating income. Among these, starting a YouTube channel and selling canned stones have been proving unusually successful.

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A family from Phoenix, Arizona came up with an original way of punishing their 14-year-old son after he was caught by police speeding in the family car: they made him give away all his possessions.

14-year-old Angel Martinez’s parents were celebrating their anniversary in Las Vegas earlier this month when they received a call from police about their teenage son. He had taken the family’s Range Rover out for a spin and had disrupted the neighbors. The couple were forced to cut their anniversary celebration short and go home, but they made sure to let Angel know just how “happy” they were about it. They pretty much emptied the boy’s room, put all his stuff in the driveway and made him give it all away personally as punishment.

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A newly opened highway in China’s Guangdong province has been making news headlines for a very peculiar reason: it’s built around the tiny home who refused to move.

China is well-known for its “nail houses”, properties of homeowners who reject compensation from a developer for their demolition, but while most such examples are encountered within new residential complexes, the one we’re featuring today stands in the middle of a highway bridge. Footage released by Chinese media shows the property tightly squeezed between the lanes of the newly opened Haizhuyong Bridge, in the city of Guangzhou. It is located in a pit in the middle of the four-lane road bridge and has become somewhat of a local attraction.

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Scientists recently discovered that a species of tiny water beetles can live through being eaten by a frog by somehow surviving a journey through its gut and simply exiting through the butt hole.

Until this week, Regimbartia attenuata was just another species of water beetle, but ever since a study on its astonishing survival skills came out on Monday, it’s been making headlines in mainstream media outlets around the world. And for good reason, as there aren’t many creatures on this Earth that can survive being swallowed alive, journey through their predator’s digestive system, simply crawl out the “back door” and go on with their lives as if they didn’t just pull off a Houdini-like magic trick.

Regimbartia attenuata were the subject of an unusual study carried out by Shinji Sugiura, an associate professor in the department of agrobioscience at Kobe University in Japan. He put the tiny beetles in the same laboratory bin with specimens from five different frog species, and the little bugs managed to crawl out the frogs’ “vents” in the vast majority of experiments.

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A 42-year-old Florida man managed to dupe dealership staff into letting him drive off in a $140,000 Porsche 911 in exchange for a fake check he had printed on his home computer.

Casey William Kelley walked into a Porsche dealership in Destin, Okaloosa County on July 27 and managed to drive off with a brand new, white Porsche 911 sports car. The really impressive thing about that is he only traded a useless piece of paper for it. Kelley had reportedly printed the check for $139,203.05 on his home printer, but staff let him take the car without waiting to see if the check cleared. They must have fallen for the conman’s confident attitude, as he was so proud of himself that he even asked staff to take a picture of him with the car before driving away.

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A 51-year-old Ukrainian woman was recently arrested after it was discovered that she had been digging an underground tunnel near the walls of a prison, with the intention of helping her convicted son to escape.

The unnamed woman reportedly hails from the Ukrainian city of Nikolaev and had rented a house near the prison where her son was serving a life sentence for murder. Every night, she drove a silent electric scooter to an empty field near the Zaporizhia maximum security prison and used rudimentary tools to dig a 10-foot-deep tunnel toward the penal colony. She worked only during the night, using an improvised trolley to take the dirt out of the narrow tunnel. She had been working for at least three weeks and had almost reached the prison walls when she was discovered and arrested.

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A Vietnamese man obsessed with traditional porcelain dishes and antiques has spent the last 25 years of his life decorating his house with almost 10,000 porcelain bowls, plates and urns.

Nguien Van Truong first fell in love with porcelain antiques in 1986, a year after being discharged from the army and returning to his home village of Kieu Son, in Vietnam’s Vinh Phuc province. He was making a living as a carpenter at a time and got the chance to paint the table and chairs of a local antique collector who first introduced him to the beauty of traditional porcelain dishes. Truong was so impressed that he decided to become a collector himself, and scoured all of Vietnam’s northern provinces in search of traditional porcelain objects, and spent all of his money trying to acquire as much of it as possible.

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A Thai family got the shock of their lives when they took home a box of sushi to eat only to see it glow bright blue in the dark after allegedly becoming infected with fluorescent bacteria.

Last Tuesday, Arun Yolpaiboon, 58, and her son, 21-year-old Natthanai Kanchanawasa, had just returned home with some boxes of sushi, which they consume regularly, when they noticed that some of the pieces of shrimp glowed an unnatural blue in low-light areas of their home. Even after boiling the pieces of sushi, the unnatural glow remained, so the pair shot a video showcasing the bizarre blue color of the shrimp. Then then woman’s son ate one of the radioactive-looking pieces just for fun.

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Daisugi is a centuries-old forestry technique developed in Japan as a way of cultivating the highly-prized Kitayama Cedar without actually using any land. Today, the visually-striking technique can be witnessed in ornamental gardens.

Dating back to the 14th century, daisugi allowed for the cultivation of Kitayama cedar, a species of tree known for growing exceptionally straight and lacking knots, in a time when high demand and lack of straight land for planting enough trees made growing Kitayama cedars impossible. Similar to the famous art of bonsai, daisugi basically involved heavily pruning a so-called “mother cedar tree” so that only the straightest shoots are allowed to grow. Careful hand-pruning is conducted every couple years, leaving only the top boughs and ensuring that the shoots remain knot free. After about 20 years, the now massive shoots can either be harvested as exceptional Kitayama lumber, or replanted to repopulate forests.

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