Japanese Company Creates Creepy Hugging Chair for the Lonely

Nothing compares to the warm hug of a real person, but when there’s no one else around, this nifty little Japanese invention can do the job quite well. It’s called the ‘tranquility chair’ – its back is shaped like a giant human doll with a friendly face and long arms that can wrap around you in an affectionate embrace.

The chair is the brainchild of Japanese company UniCare – they’re selling the product for 46,000 yen ($ 419) at the International Home Care and Rehabilitation Exhibition in Tokyo. “It makes you feel safe,” said a UniCare spokesperson. “Anyone can use it, but it is designed for older people.”

Given that a quarter of Japan’s population is currently over the age of 65, and the number is expected to rise to 40 percent in coming decades, the tranquility chair is really quite apt for the Japanese market. The company has come up with a host of similar products, like ‘Life Rhythm Dolls’ that are programmed to remind owners to take their medicine or go to the toilet.

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Japanese Reality Show Launches Girl Band That Fans Can Actually Date and Even Marry

‘Happening Girls’ is a new reality TV show in Japan, featuring a girl group that fans can date and potentially even marry. The band currently consists of four girls who always wear bikinis or swimsuits in public. Male fans interested in dating the girls can apply to the producers of the show and take part in X-Factor style auditions and interviews for the chance of winning a date.

The four bachelorettes who currently make up the band are: Manaka, 20, Saaya, 22, Kaori, 26, and Eri, 25. If one of them gets married and leaves the show, her place will be taken by a new band member. The show’s producers are recruiting replacements under strict conditions – applicants must be between 17 and 30 years of age, living in Tokyo, and must have no objections to wearing bikinis in public at all times.

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Japanese Artist Creates Amazingly Realistic Miniature Dioramas

Satoshi Araki, an artist from Tokyo, creates highly realistic miniature models of towns, vehicles, and a lot of other objects from everyday life. He is particularly skilled at making small-scale dioramas of chaotic cityscapes that are affected by urban decay, pollution, or warfare.

Satoshi mostly uses styrofoam board to make these incredibly intricate and complex models – he cuts them down to the desired shape and size, paints them, and then glues them together. He explains on his blog that he uses Google Image Search to pull up images that he later uses as a visual reference. These images help him create scenes that are very life-like, down to the smallest detail.

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Japanese Man Promotes Peace in Asia by Giving Strangers Free Hugs

29-year-old Koichi Kuwabara has made it his mission to distribute ‘Free Hugs for Peace’ to as many people as he can – he’s been traveling across Asia for the past three years, hugging random people on the streets. His videos have gone viral on YouTube, garnering over 1.5 million views. He also has over 5,300 followers on Facebook and about 3,000 on Twitter.

Koichi, an aspiring school teacher, said: “I don’t want to just regurgitate theories written on textbooks. I want to tell the kids what I saw and learned first-hand from giving free hugs worldwide.”

He began his extraordinary adventure in August, 2011, just after he graduated from university. Since then, he has taken his Free Hugs initiative to several cities in China, Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan. At each location he visiyed, Koichi held up a sign that displayed the flags of Japan and the country he was visiting, along with the caption ‘Free Hugs for Peace’.

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Meet Chibatman, Japan’s Real-Life Dark Knight

The city of Chiba, in Japan, is home to a real-life superhero who looks almost exactly like the famous Dark Knight of Gotham city. He even wears Batman’s iconic suit and travels on a custom-made Batpod, but his mission is rather different – to bring happiness to the people of Japan.

‘Chibatman’, as our superhero has come to be known, prefers to keep his identity a secret. But we do know that he’s a 41-year-old local welder who likes to fight crime – or in this case, unhappiness – in his spare time. While his costume is store-bought, he built the three-wheeled ‘Chibatpod’ himself, with imported parts worth around $5,700.

Photographs of the caped crusader have been doing the rounds on Twitter for the past three years now. Everytime the citizens of Chiba catch a glimpse of their very own Chibatman, they immediately post a photograph or video of him on various social networks.

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Too Proud to Say You’re Sorry? In Japan You Can Pay a Specialized Agency to Do It for You

It’s not easy to apologise, and most people would like to avoid it entirely if possible. Well, it turns out it is possible, if you happen to live in Japan. They have these ‘apology agencies’ through which you could simply pay someone to say sorry on your behalf.

I can see why these businesses are so successful – it’s really tough to face the person you’ve wronged and tell  them that you’re sorry. It’s a highly uncomfortable situation, especially if you’ve made someone angry or hurt their feelings.

By hiring an expert, not only do you get to avoid the discomfort, you also make sure that the person gets a proper apology. These agencies train their employees to handle things based on the gravity of the situation. These people are professionals, and it looks like they can get you out of all sorts of sticky situations.

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Mangetsu Man – The Anonymous Japanese Superhero Keeping Tokyo Clean

Mangetsu Man is a likable Japanese superhero whose only superpower is the determination to keep the streets of Tokyo clean, especially the Roppongi district, which locals say is always in need of a dust sweep. As you might have guessed, his arsenal of super-weapons consists of a broom and a dust pan.

Donning a purple suit and a big yellow ball for a head, Mangetsu Man – which translates as ‘Full Moon Man’ – spends a considerable amount of time sweeping the streets of Tokyo. He also puts on hilarious skits, recites Buddhist Prayers, and uses his amazing basketball skills to spread his message of joy, happiness and peace to the world

According to his official website, Mangetsu Man sprang into action in October last year, with a mission to ‘beautify Earth’. He also hopes his actions will inspire others into helping the greater good worldwide.

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Try Before You Die – Macabre Festival Lets Japanese Try Out Coffins and Funeral Makeup

Trying out a coffin while you’re still alive can be a rather unnerving experience. But the Japanese seem to love it!  They even have a creepy ‘try-before-you-die’ festival where people can lay down in coffins, try out funeral garments and even get a morbid makeover.

Called ‘Shukatsu Festa’, the unique event has become very popular in recent years. In fact the whole ‘shukatsu’ trend, which translates as preparing for one’s end, has become really big in Japan. Apparently, people no longer think it’s bad luck to prepare for their death. Participants can choose their funeral outfit, put it on, slip into the flower-filled casket they like and have a picture taken. That way, they get to know exactly what they’ll look like on the day of their funeral. They can even have funeral make-up applied on their faces for a deathly pallor. They can also choose to be covered with white blankets have have the attendants softly close the lid. Read More »

Hitofude Ryuu – The Japanese Art of Painting Dragons with a Single Brush Stroke

The talented Sumie painters of Kousyuuya Studio in Nikko, Japan can paint the body of a dragon with a single stroke of the brush. The delicate technique is known as ‘hitofude ryuu’, which literally means ‘dragon with one stroke’, and it’s been around for four generations.

Watching these painters create a perfect dragon – with all the shades and scales – in just a couple of seconds is a true delight. It all looks so effortless, but there’s a lot of hard work and practice involved in getting the stroke right.

To create a single dragon painting, the Sumie artists first make the ornate head with various flourishes, using a smaller brush. Then, they dip a much larger sumie brush into the desired paint color and simply swipe it across the canvas in one swift movement. You really have to watch a video to realize the brilliance of the technique.

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Guy Claims He Has Tamed a Japanese Giant Wasp, Keeps It on a Leash

The Japanese giant hornet is known as one of the world’s largest and most aggressive insects. It is two inches long with a quarter-inch stinger, can fly at speeds up to 25 mph, and is feared for its powerful, poisonous stings that claim at least 40 lives in Japan every summer. So when a Japanese man made an outlandish claim that he had actually tamed a hornet, no one really believed him.

But Twitter user Mikuru625’s has been trying to convince everyone that he actually has a pet giant hornet by posting photos of it. He said that he had captured the hornet with a butterfly net and held it with tweezers while he removed its sting and poison sacs. He then put a string around its thorax, so that the insect follows him wherever he goes. “He does bite occasionally but it doesn’t hurt,” the owner says.

Dead Stinger For A Pet Causes Debate in Japan

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Japanese Chi Master Can Put Any Animal to Sleep by Channeling His Energy

Kanzawa Sensei, a renowned Japanese Chi Master, claims that he has the power to make animals fall asleep. He says that his mind is so powerful that it can take control of multiple animals at a time. His superhuman mind control has been featured on various TV shows, and while it appears he can truly put animals to sleep, there are those who think he’s nothing but a fraud.

Chi, or Qi, is an ancient Chinese concept that translates as ‘life energy’ – an energy that permeates the whole universe. By using their bodies to tap into this energy, Chi Masters are able to perform marvellous feats that are otherwise impossible for normal human beings. That’s why it’s entirely plausible that Kanzawa Sensei might just be telling the truth about his powers.

Kanzawa claims that he uses another kind of Chi to control animals. “I exchange energy with the animals and then they go to sleep,” he said. “I can use my Chi to make them fall asleep. I put my fingers together and then there’s an exchange of Chi between the palm of my hand and the animal. The strength of the energy grows and eventually the animal relaxes and goes to sleep. Every animal is different, but yes, I can make any animal go to sleep.”

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Yet Another Crazy Facial Exercise Gadget from Japan

When we wrote about the creepy Facewaver Exercise Mask last year, we thought we’d seen the worst of bizarre Japanese inventions. But now they’ve come up with an even weirder gadget – a silly-looking new product called the ‘Facial Fitness PAO’.

The PAO was designed by Japanese beauty company SHLAB – it consists of a round plastic mouthpiece with plastic paddle wings on either side. In order to use it, you simply hold the device firmly in your mouth and bob your head up and down to swing the paddles.

The company claims that performing this exercise for 30 seconds, twice a day, can significantly tone up facial muscles, making a person look much younger. They demonstrate its correct use in their two-minute advertisement, which is so absurd, I dare you to watch it with a straight face.

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Japanese Botanical Artist Launches His Bonsai into Space

Japanese botanical artist Makoto Azuma’s flower arrangements are, quite literally, out of this world. His beautiful plants were recently launched into outer space as a part of his latest project, ‘Exobiotonica’. The launch took place on July 15 at the Nevada Black Rock Desert, with the help of Sacramento-based independent space program, JP Aerospace.

“I wanted to see the movement and beauty of plants and flowers suspended in space,” said Azuma, who is well known in Japan for his extravagant performances involving flowers. There was this one time when he stomped on hundreds of flowers during a musical performance. Once, he stuffed flowers into glass jars and filled them with water-like sardines. He has also created office chairs and Hello Kitty dolls entirely covered in green grass.

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Small Japanese Village Turns Rice Paddies into Awe-Inspiring Works of Art

Inakadate village, located near Hirosaki city in Japan’s Aomori prefecture, is one of the few places in the world where farming and art go hand-in-hand. The village is renowned for its unique form of landscape art created in paddy fields. These artistic paddies are so popular that they attract over 200,000 tourists a year.

For centuries, farming has been the main source of income for the people of Inakadate. The amount of farmland available to the relatively small population of 8,000 villagers is massive. Paddy fields make up over fifty percent of the entire village land. The soil in these lands is so fertile that the yield from the rice crop has consistently been higher than any other village or town in Japan.

In the early 1990s, archeologists discovered that the rice strains of Inakadate were over 2,000 years old. To celebrate this fact, and to make the village more attractive to visitors, the local tourism office hatched a plan – to make use of their abundant production of rice to attract more tourists. And that’s how their amazing rice paddy artworks were born.

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Lonely Japanese Teen Turns Shower Head Creepy Girlfriend

Most DIY projects are fun and interesting, but here’s one that’s downright disturbing – a lonely Japanese kid converted his shower head into a doll that he now claims is his girlfriend. He recently posted step-by-step pictures of his project on the popular Chinese social networking website Weibo, where they went viral almost instantly. Some of the photographs of the ‘girlfriend’ are actually pretty creepy, so viewer discretion is advised.

To create his bizarre mannequin-girlfriend, 19-year-old Kiyuu Oikawa first taped a human mask onto his shower head. He then attached a balloon-stuffed piece of lingerie for the body and made stringy arms out of packing tape and wire. He painted the face pink, threw on a wig, and his girlfriend was pretty much ready.

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