Welcome to the World’s Most Controversial Pet Shop
NOAH: The Inner City Zoo is a Japanese pet shop condemned by animal activists for caging and selling penguins, meerkats, alligators, monkeys and other exotic animals. Located in a cramped room, on the second floor of an office building in Yokohama, NOAH: The Inner City Zoo is hardly the kind of place you’d think of keeping exotic animals. […]
Mr. Kanso – Japan’s Weird Canned Food Restaurants
I bet you’d have never thought a restaurant that serves only canned food could ever become popular. Well, it can in Japan. Eating cold food from metal cans with plastic cutlery, is not everyone’s idea of a good eating out experience, but Osaka’s Kanso Restaurant has been offering this exact type of experience for a […]
Japanese Girl Takes Body Art to Photoshop Levels
Look at the photo below. I know what you’re thinking, photoshopped, right? Not exactly, although this person doesn’t really need a change of batteries, the photo hasn’t been digitally altered. It’s just the creepy/cool body art of Chooo-San. Chooo-San discovered her talent for body art during a gap year studying for university admission exams. While […]
Yohio, the Japanese Doll-Like Rock Star Who Is Actually a Swedish Boy
Ok, so we’ve had plenty of doll-like Internet celebrities featured on Oddity Central, but Yohio, a Japanese visual kei singer is pushing the envelope even further, as he’s actually a 16-year-old Swedish bot who looks like an anime girl. The androgynous look isn’t exactly something new in music. Singers like David Bowie, Boy George and even […]
Bullfrog Served ALIVE at Japanese Restaurant
A video shot in Japan recently went viral after it showed a bullfrog served in a Japanese restaurant still blinking and twitching on the plate, after being skinned alive and cut into pieces. This is definitely one of the most disgusting things I have ever seen. Singaporean website STOMP recently released a series of photos […]
SHOCKING: Tokyo Illustrator Has Genitals Removed, Cooks and Serves Them at Public Banquet
Mao Sugiyama, a young Japanese illustrator from Tokyo, recently made headlines after he decided to have his genitalia removed. To top it off, he offered to sell his organs as a cooked meal, for ¥100,000 ($1.250). Six people pre-ordered… “Please retweet. I am offering my male genitals (full penis, testes, scrotum) as a meal for 100,000 […]
Creepy Pillow-Phone Hugs You While You Talk to Loved Ones
Hugvie, the huggable robotic pillow-phone invented by Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro, of Osaka University, has a heartbeat and internal vibrators meant to make it seem more human-like as you put your arm around it imagining it’s the person hundreds of miles away. The concept of enhancing long-distance phone conversations between loved ones isn’t new. Kissinger, the long […]
Japanese Artist Invents New Way of Peeling Tangerines
Yoshihiro Okada has become a popular country in his native country of Japan, after he developed an ingenious way of peeling tangerines, six years ago. It might sound like an arid subject, but the Japanese author has already published two books on peeling tangerines, and even launched a DVD version. If you’ve been throwing away […]
Japanese Goggles Make Food Look Bigger, Help You Lose Weight
A team of Japanese researchers at Tokyo University have invented a pair of “slimming goggles” that make food look larger to help you eat less and thus lose weight. Sounds simple and effective, doesn’t it? We’ve posted our share of wacky Japanese inventions, here on Oddity Central, from the creepy anti-aging mouthpiece and the brainwave-controlled […]
B-Style – Japan’s Fascination with Black Lifestyle
Young Hina has what is most coveted by Japanese women – pale skin. And yet, she visits tanning salons every week. Not just for a sun-kissed look, but for a deeper, darker shade. Hina is one of many young Japanese women who are crazy about B-Style (Black Lifestyle). They adore the African American pop/hip hop […]
Masako Mizutani – Japan’s Lady of Eternal Youth
With the extensive use of Photoshop and other editing software, it’s extremely difficult to tell the difference between real and fake these days. But if the photographs of this Japanese model are to be believed, then she couldn’t be a day over 20. Believe it or not, Masako Mizutani’s real age is 43, and she’s […]
Schoolgirl Falconer Solves Town’s Crow Problem
Sometimes kids can solve problems that adults have no idea how to tackle. 17-year-old Misato Isibashi is a fine example of this. The third year student at Takeo High School, Takeo City, has come to be known as Japan’s only ‘schoolgirl falconer’. Takeo city is located in the Saga Prefecture, a place plagued by flocks […]
Japan Inaugurates World’s First Hotel for Sheep
UPDATE: As it turns out, this story is completely FAKE. After it was picked up by Yahoo News, this story got a lot of attention, but according to popular rumor-busting website, Snopes.com, it was just made up by someone who wanted to have a little fun. Well, I’m sure they had quite a laugh to […]
Eco-Otome – Japan’s Solution to Embarrassing Toilet Noise
The Eco-Otome is a Japanese gizmo that’s intended to make using restrooms other than your own less awkward. Basically it emits a soothing sound meant to cover any embarrassing toilet noises you might be making. Ok, so this isn’t a very new invention, in fact it’s been around for around three years, but I thought […]
Japan’s Okinawa Island – The Healthiest Place on Earth
I used to think that there were only a handful of people over the age of 100 in the world. How wrong was I! The Japanese island of Okinawa alone has about 457 of them. It is considered to be the healthiest place in the world, where the average life expectancy of an Okinawan woman […]