A 33-year-old Japanese man has been raising eyebrows because of his radical change in appearance after making drastic lifestyle changes and turning to cosmetic enhancements. Aki, who goes by @Aki_fit on X (Twitter), was recently featured on a popular show by Japanese online television network ABEMA, where he spoke about the shocking physical transformation that made him somewhat of an anti-aging guru on social media. The 33-year-old man said that everything started 10 years ago, after his boss at the time ridiculed him for looking much older than his age and going bald. His girlfriend broke up with him soon after that, so he was in a real dark place, but instead of wallowing in self-pity, he decided to completely change his way of life to become a better version of himself. Read More »

A 25-year-old Japanese man who spent most of his time looking down at his phone eventually became unable to raise his own head and was diagnosed with ‘dropping head syndrome’. The rare case report published a couple of years ago in the medical journal JOS Case Reports detailed the disturbing consequences of holding one’s head bent down for hours on end over long periods of time. The patient, a 25-year-old Japanese man who spent most of his time playing on his phone, had developed a large bulge at the back of his neck and could no longer lift his own head using his neck muscles. Before seeking medical help, the man had reportedly experienced serious neck pains and had difficulty swallowing food, which caused him to lose weight rapidly. Eventually, his neck became s weak due to the unnatural position that he became unable to lift his head. Read More »

Kansai International Airport welcomes tens of millions of passengers every year, but it has developed a system that ensures none of their baggage ever goes missing. Losing a piece of baggage is always a risk at airports. For example, in the US, data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics shows that domestic flights lose about 3 million bags every year. With hundreds of millions of individual bags to handle, losing some of them seems like an inevitability, and yet, one busy airport in Japan claims to have never lost a piece of baggage in its three decades of operation. Kansai International Airport, which serves the city of Osaka, opened in September 1994, to relieve the overcrowded Osaka International Airport and has been welcoming millions of passengers per year ever since. The staff at Kansai Airport pride themselves on being extremely efficient at handling passenger baggage, so much so that they have never once lost one. Read More »

A Japanese bus driver with 29 years of experience on the job lost his $84,000 retirement package after being caught stealing $7 in passenger bus fares. In 2022, while checking dashcam footage, members of the Kyoto Municipal Transportation Bureau spotted one of the Japanese city’s bus drivers pocketing a 1,000-yen bill, instead of putting it into the fare processing machine, as per standard procedure. When confronted about the incident, the man denied responsibility, but was eventually fired, and his retirement fund of more than 12 million yen was cancelled. The unnamed driver sued the city of Kyoto, but a Supreme Court ruling upheld the city’s decision, arguing that the man’s behavior could erode the public’s trust in the local transportation system. Read More »

After saving up for 10 years to buy his dream car, a brand new Ferrari 458 Spider, a Japanese man had to sit by and watch it burn within an hour of driving it for the first time. Japanese social media has been abuzz with the sad story of Honkon, a young music producer who spent a fortune on his dream Ferrari sports car only to watch it go up in flames on the day he drove it for the first time. The 33-year-old recently took to X (Twitter) to share the story of how he could only enjoy his dream Ferrari for a few minutes because it just caught fire while he was driving it on the Shuto Expressway in Tokyo, on Wednesday, April 16. Apparently, the 458 Spider had only just been delivered to him, and he was out on a test drive with it when he noticed white smoke. At first, he thought it was coming from the car next to his, but as that vehicle pulled away, it became obvious that the smoke was coming out of the Ferrari. So Honkon just pulled over, exited the vehicle, and called the fire department. He spent the next 20 minutes watching his dream burn down almost completely. Read More »

A Japanese man named “Happy” has been struggling with his unusual name for as long as he can remember, claiming that it had attracted bullying as a kid and ridicule as an adult. When Terauchi Happy’s mother chose his unconventional name, she had no idea the kind of problems it would pose for him throughout his life. The 27-year-old man insists that he bears no grudge towards his mother, as she only named him “Happy” to express the overwhelming joy she felt when he was born. In fact, that is the only reason why he never went through with legally changing his name, despite the misery it caused him. When he was a small boy, the other kids teased and even bullied him because of his name, and unfortunately, things didn’t improve with age. Companies always thought he was joking when he sent in his resume for employment, and the unusual name even ruined his romantic relationship. Read More »

Created by Japanese manufacturer Shimadzu Corp, the Aether Clock OC 020 is a strontium optical lattice clock advertised as the most accurate clock in the world and sold for over $3 million. The world’s most accurate clock looks less like you’d imagine and more like a small refrigerator. Its rectangular case is around three feet tall and has a volume of 250 liters. Frankly, it doesn’t look like much, but this contraption is so precise that it would take about 10 billion years for it to deviate by a single second, according to Kyoto-based manufacturer Shimadzu Corp. The Aether Clock OC 020 is reportedly 100 times more accurate than cesium atomic clocks, which set the standard for the current definition of a second. Although optical lattice clocks have been around for a while, the Aether Clock OC 020 is the world’s first commercially available model. Read More »

A tiny park roughly the size of a newspaper in the Japanese town of Nagaizumi currently holds the Guinness Record for ‘world’s smallest park’. A decade ago, we wrote about Mill Ends Park, the former world’s smallest park. At just two meters in diameter, it only had room for one tree and a few tiny plants, but it was of decent size compared to the newly crowned smallest park on Earth. Located a short distance from Nagaizumi town hall, in Japan’s Shizuoka Prefecture, the tiny park measures 2.6 square feet and consists of a tiny patch of grass, a couple of stone plaques, and a stool for visitors to sit on and admire their surroundings. The park has reportedly been around since the late 1980s, but it was only recently recognized by Guinness Records as the world’s smallest recreational park. Read More »

Isamu Tomioka met his wife, Midori, when he was still in school. She was the mother of one of his classmates and 21 years his senior, but he didn’t let that stop him from marrying her. Isamu and Midori’s unusual love story went viral in Japan after the Shizuoka couple spoke about their relationship on a popular television show. The 32-year-old man said that he first saw Midori at a parent-teacher at his school when he was a minor. She was the mother of one of his classmates, and he recalls thinking that the woman was very beautiful. When they met again, 20 years later, he was attracted by the woman’s mature and dignified look and contacted his ex-classmate in order to get close to her. Midori rejected his advances at first, thinking that the significant age difference made them incompatible, but she was eventually overwhelmed by his persistence and grew to like him too. Read More »

Japanese coastal containership operator Imoto Lines operates a number of feeder vessels with a unique look inspired by the nose of large passenger airplanes. In 2015, the Kyokuyo shipyard in Yamaguchi, Japan, completed the first SSS-feeder (Semi-Spherically Shaped-feeder) commissioned by Imoto Lines. It was one of the largest feeder vessels ever built in Japan, but what really separated it from other ships in its class was the unusual design. The 600-TEU Natori featured a hemispherical bow that looked very similar to the nose of a large Airbus passenger jet that no one had dared implement before. But this wasn’t just a design option to make the vessel stand out, it had functional aspects that won the Natori the title of “Ship of the Year” from the Japan Society of Naval Architects and Oceanographers as well as numerous other awards in the small cargo vessel category. Read More »

Unable to offer attractive wages, a Japanese tech company has been trying to attract new talent by offering ingenious benefits such as free alcoholic drinks at work and hangover leaves. Since the burst of the Japanese economic bubble in the early 1990s, the Japanese economy has been stagnating along with employee salaries. Even though some corporations have announced plans to increase starting wages in hopes of attracting new talent, small and medium-sized companies simply don’t have that option because their budgets don’t allow it. In order to compete with big players, they have to think outside the box and offer appealing and sometimes unorthodox benefits to potential employees. One small technology company in Osaka recently went viral in the Land of the Rising Sun by offering its staff free alcoholic drinks during work hours and hangover leaves to clear their heads. Read More »

Located in the basement of a department store in Kawasaki, Japan, the world’s smallest escalator only has five steps and measures 83.4 centimeters (32.8 inches). The escalator is one of humanity’s most useful inventions, allowing people to effortlessly travel between floors in places where elevators would be impractical, but the world’s smallest escalator is actually a useless oddity that holds no real purpose than to claim the Guinness record for the world’s smallest escalator. Known as the ‘Petitcalator’ or ‘Puchicalator’, this unusual contraption is located in the basement of More’s Department Store in the city of Kawasaki and is considered more of a tourist attraction than a useful piece of technology. Yes, it’s useable, but it measures just 83.4 centimeters so it offers no real benefit to whoever is riding it over traditional stairs. Read More »

A middle-aged Japanese man known as ‘Uncle Praise’ has been making a living by standing on the street and showering strangers with praises for a small fee. Uncle Praise first made news headlines in Japan in September of last year when Fuji TV released a short documentary on his unique “profession”. The 43-year-old man reportedly used to work for a company in his hometown of Tochigi, but at one point in his life, he got so addicted to gambling that he lost both his family and his job. His father fell ill, he lost his job and couldn’t pay the mortgage anymore, his family eventually cut ties with him, and he found himself living on the street. It was a rude awakening that helped him beat his gambling addiction and really assess his life. The middle-aged man had always dreamed of being a street performer, but he had no special skills such as magic tricks or singing, so he came up with the idea of praising people for money. Read More »

A Japanese company came up with the genius idea of selling plastic bags of popcorn as an edible alternative to conventional cushioning materials like styrofoam pellets and cardboard. Azechi Foods, a popcorn manufacturer and delicacy wholesaler in Japan’s Kochi City, has become famous for using and selling popcorn not just as a snack but as a cushioning material. The company’s manager, Shihoko Wada, had been struggling to promote popcorn on the Azechi Foods online store where people mainly bought delicacies when she was inspired by a laptop repair technician at a management seminar. The man used Umaibo sticks (cylindrical puffed corn snacks) as a cushioning material, and while some in attendance found it funny, for Wada it was a revelation. Not only could the popcorn be used as an actual snack after use, but it was also an incredible opportunity to attract attention. “If Umaibo can be used as a cushioning material, then I thought the popcorn that our company makes could also be used as a cushioning material,” Shihoko Wada told Gendai Magazine. “Once it’s finished serving its purpose as a cushioning material, it can be eaten, so it doesn’t become useless garbage. Above all, I thought that the customers who received it would be happy with the surprise, they would get a sense of value, and it would also help improve the company’s image.” Wada’s idea was to package the popcorn in a transparent plastic bag that had “not edible” printed on it, only with the ‘not’ crossed out, and then use the bags as cushioning material in the packages they sent all over the country. People loved the idea and before long, photos of the bags started going viral on Japanese social media. Azechi Foods filed for a trademark registration and soon started receiving orders from all sorts of businesses, like a company that sells used video games, a greengrocer, a wine seller. etc. As photos of its unique cushioning material went viral online, the number of orders increased and they even got requests for coverage from national TV outlets. Although the bags of popcorn are more expensive than conventional cushioning materials like styrofoam or cardboard, they also come with a few definite advantages: they can be eaten, and thus eliminate the risk of waste, which can’t really be said about other cushioning or filler materials, most of which end up in the trash after one use. Azechi Foods currently offers two package sizes – 40g and 13g – but Azechi Foods hopes to start offering it in other sizes, as well as other styles of packaging to keep customers entertained.

Fillico Jewelry Water is a Japanese company known for selling one of the most expensive bottled waters in the world, with exclusive limited editions selling for up to $10,000 per bottle. Water is one of the most basic human needs, so marketing and selling it as an ultra-luxury product is a pretty big challenge, even among the snobbiest of snobs, but a Japanese company proved it can be done successfully. Launched in 2005, Fillico Water set out to create a complete luxury experience that would make people reach for their wallets and pay obscene amounts of money to have it. Using some of the purest mineral water in Japan wasn’t nearly enough, so they put a lot of work into the design of the packaging, which was marketed as a work of art in itself. Somehow, they made it work, and today Fillico Jewelry Water is one of the most sought-after ultra-luxury bottled water brands in the world, with prices surpassing $1,000 per liter and even several thousand for limited edition offerings. Read More »