Japanese Grape Cluster Sold For 210,000Yen


Fruit is an expensive commodity in Japan and is considered a gift of great luxury. The wealthy consider it a sign of prestige to pay exorbitant prices for high-end fruits, especially the very first ones of the year.

The Ruby Roman is a variety of table grape, which is red in color and about the size of a ping-pong ball. Its one unusual feature appears to be the price it fetches.

A bracelet from Tiffany’s or something of that ilk for the same amount of cold hard cash would certainly last a lot longer than a cluster of grapes, one would think, but then there’s no accounting for taste when “keeping up with the Jones family” takes its own particular hold on one’s thinking.

Local farmers are hoping to sell 1,500 bunches, the equivalent of one ton of grapes by mid-September. Just do the math on that one, if you dare!

A Japanese hotel manager did dare to do the math and paid what comes out to be about $70 dollars per grape for a one-and-one-half pound of Ruby Roman grapes.

He hopes that the publicity surrounding the auction and his purchase will attract even more guests to his upscale hotel. Can you imagine what he will charge them for just a taste of one of these? (And he better hurry. No one likes sour grapes at any cost!)

“We believe the price was probably a record high. They’re delicious, sweet but fresh at the same time, very well balanced,” said local agricultural official, Hirofumi Isu.

Credits by weirdasianews.com

Incredible Boy

Same-name couple to wed

This is no joke. Kelly Katrina Hildebrandt, 20, and Kelly Carl Hildebrandt, 24, expect just over 100 guests at a ceremony at the Lighthouse Point Yacht & Racquet Club in South Florida, where they will become husband and wife.

Their modern romance was a match made in cyberspace. She was curious and bored one night last year, so she plugged her name into the popular social networking Web site Facebook just to see if anyone shared it.

At the time, Kelly Hildebrandt, of Lubbock, Texas, was the only match.

So she sent him a message.

"She said 'Hi. We had the same name. Thought it was cool,'" Kelly Carl Hildebrandt said. "I thought she was pretty cute."

Would you like to take a trip of Ohio Roller Coaster?







Well,do you still want to take the ride?






Panty Stealing

Amazing way to steal a panty...hahaha..

Japan got a blue beer?

We all know the color of beer, or do we? That deep amber hue is as ubiquitous as the blue of the sky. But in Japan it would appear that things are not what they seem, and that creativity has seeped its way into beer-making in a country where artful innovation is king.

Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido is the home of the Abashiri brewery. Known for its most unusual beers, the Takahshi Company owns and operates the brewery. One of its… er, specialties is a concoction with an allegedly fruity flavor that was invented back in 2007 and is known as Bilk or Beer Milk.

Bilk represents a combination of two easily regurgible components; namely, beer and milk. It bears no semblance to the original meaning of the word meaning to dupe or fool, and was a sincere attempt to attract more females to beer drinking.

Beer yeast and hops are put into milk and the mixture is maintained in a temperature lower than the milk’s boiling point. Alas, it was hardly worth the trouble for it did not fare too well. Those who have dared to try it claim its odd taste is light and somewhat refreshing, but does not even closely resemble beer.
Combination of beer and milk meant to appeal to the female demographic, deservedly made the Ten Even More Weird And Bizarre Japanese Soft Drinks.

Another specialty is something known as Drift ICE (Ryuho Draft) which is also called Okhotsk Blue Draft. This beer is brewed using water that has melted from icebergs in the sea of Okhotsk, an arm of the North Pacific Ocean bordered by Japan and Russia.

The blue color is like no other anywhere in the world. The brewery did not stop there and began to utilize seaweed, which rendered the blue icy in tint.

It is said that the taste isn’t at all bad and that if the drinker did not know their beverage contained seaweed, there is no way he or she would ever guess that it did.

What color is YOUR beer and are you ready for a change?

Amazing Hotel lets you sleep among the Gods

When a travel agent offers you “a peach of a hotel room,” she’s usually referring to the view or the size of the Jacuzzi. But a hotel in China’s Hebei province lends that expression a whole new meaning.

The Tianzi Hotel, in Yanjiao, doesn’t look like a place where you’d spend a few nights on a business trip. But that’s just what it is: a colorful ten-story hotel in the shape of a familiar trinity of Chinese Taoist figures.The giants are known as Fu, Lu, and Shou. Their names translate as “good fortune,” “prosperity,” and “longevity,” traditionally considered the three attributes of a good life. They in turn represent three important stars, which are said to embody these attributes.



The longevity concept gets a further boost from the peach in Shou’s left hand. Peaches, too, are a classic symbol of long life, but this one has a little something extra: It’s actually one of the hotel’s suites, and the two holes in front are windows!

The Tianzi Hotel has been around since 2001, and it reportedly landed some kind of Guinness Book record. The question is, for what category? Fanciest Hotel Room that Looks an Awful Lot like a Peach? Largest Depiction of Three Mythical Figures that Also Features Room Service? Or maybe Scariest Hotel to Return To after Drinking Too Much at a Dinner with Clients?


Credits by weirdasianews & killerdirectory.com

A memorable date with a korean celebrity


Wanna win a date with your favourite celebrity?
Here's your chance!
The contest date starts from 13 July - 30 August 2009
The winner will be announce on 7 September 2009.
You may be one of the 11 lucky winners for Around trip Air-Plan Ticket to Seoul.
Click on the pic now!

Lingerie model Lisa was once a man called Louis (and her boyfriend didn't know)

With her striking looks, statuesque size ten figure and 34DD boobs, she's perfect for the frilly undie ads. But ten years ago she was a bloke called Louis in Y-fronts.

And the surgical sex-swap transformation is so good that her electrician FIANCÉ didn't know the truth until she rang him and confessed!

MODEL: Sex swap Lisa

Freaks

Brunette Lisa, 35, boasted: "I let people think I was a natural-born woman for a long while and had a great time seeing how many men I could pull and get away with it.

"But now I'm ready to let the world know who I really am. I want people to know that transvestites and transsexuals aren't all ugly freaks."

As well as Lisa's online lingerie shop liselou.com , her glam pictures have been used on dating websites, nightclub posters and adverts for contact lenses.

"But actually becoming a woman was hell," she admitted. "On a scale of one to ten, the pain was a ten. I had to go on morphine to cope.

"Obviously I can't have kids, but when people say I don't know what childbirth feels like, I say I DO! It was agony. But now I look like this I have absolutely no regrets."

The long road to womanhood began when Lisa, then Louis, was seven. My sister Belinda got a make-up set for Christmas and I stole the red nail varnish," she said.

BULLIED: Schoolboy Lisa

"I'd put it on and love how it looked. We'd play dressing-up together and I'd end up looking like a girl. I suppose I knew I was different from a young age. I'd been trapped in the wrong skin since birth.

"I'd always been feminine and looked girly. It meant I got bullied badly at school and called faggot. Sport was a huge problem, some boys refused to get changed in front of me."

But after leaving school a visit to a gay club convinced the teenage Louis he wasn't homosexual. "It was the first time I saw men kissing each other and I just instantly knew that's not what I was," recalled Lisa. But it was only after meeting a transvestite that Lisa realised she would never be satisfied as a man. At 22 she started oestrogen injections and testosterone suppressant then had therapy to prepare for the swap.

And in 1999, after living as a woman full-time for two years, Lisa - from Enfield, Middlesex - had the surgery that finally allowed her to make love as a woman.

"It was amazing," she said. "I did have orgasms as a man but they're better as a woman.

"When I met my fiancé John Ward in a pub a year ago we hit it off right away but I didn't tell him about the surgery.

"We dated for a few weeks, kissing and cuddling, and then it got to the stage where I knew I had to tell him.

WEDDING PLAN: Lisa & John

"I took the easy way out and phoned him."

John admitted: "I didn't know what to say at first, But I accept Lisa as she is, we're in love and going to get married."

Credits by newsoftheworld.co.uk

In love? It's not enough to keep a marriage, study finds

SYDNEY (Reuters Life!) – Living happily ever after needn't only be for fairy tales. Australian researchers have identified what it takes to keep a couple together, and it's a lot more than just being in love.

A couple's age, previous relationships and even whether they smoke or not are factors that influence whether their marriage is going to last, according to a study by researchers from the Australian National University.

The study, entitled "What's Love Got to Do With It," tracked nearly 2,500 couples -- married or living together -- from 2001 to 2007 to identify factors associated with those who remained together compared with those who divorced or separated.

It found that a husband who is nine or more years older than his wife is twice as likely to get divorced, as are husbands who get married before they turn 25.

Children also influence the longevity of a marriage or relationship, with one-fifth of couples who have kids before marriage -- either from a previous relationship or in the same relationship -- having separated compared to just nine percent of couples without children born before marriage.

Women who want children much more than their partners are also more likely to get a divorce.

A couple's parents also have a role to play in their own relationship, with the study showing some 16 percent of men and women whose parents ever separated or divorced experienced marital separation themselves compared to 10 percent for those whose parents did not separate.

Also, partners who are on their second or third marriage are 90 percent more likely to separate than spouses who are both in their first marriage.

Not surprisingly, money also plays a role, with up to 16 percent of respondents who indicated they were poor or where the husband -- not the wife -- was unemployed saying they had separated, compared with only nine percent of couples with healthy finances.

And couples where one partner, and not the other, smokes are also more likely to have a relationship that ends in failure.

Factors found to not significantly affect separation risk included the number and age of children born to a married couple, the wife's employment status and the number of years the couple had been employed.

The study was jointly written by Dr Rebecca Kippen and Professor Bruce Chapman from The Australian National University, and Dr Peng Yu from the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs.

Disappearing Car Door

Man's Debit Card Charged $23 Quadrillion


MANCHESTER, N.H. -- When Josh Muszynski checked his bank account online, he didn't expect to find a $23 quadrillion debit.

"If it were to be true that someone actually compromised that money and got that money, they could do some severe damage with that amount of money," he said.

Muszynski expected to see a couple hundred dollars in his account, but a 17-digit number that rivals even the national debt confronted him instead. The mistake alarmed Muszynski, who has downsized to an apartment in efforts to save money to buy a house.

"I thought my card had been compromised. I thought somebody had bought Europe with my credit card," Muszynski said. "It was very concerning."

What Did He Buy?

"I thought somebody had bought Europe with my credit card."
- Josh Muszynski

Muszynski swiped his debit card at a local Mobil gas station to buy a pack of cigarettes for a few bucks, Instead, his Bank of America account indicated he spent $23,148,855,308,184,500 at the gas station -- an amount for which he probably could have used to buy the entire company.



Credits by wreg.com

Man tries to fix airbed, blows up apartment




Berlin: A German who tried to fix his leaky air mattress blew up his apartment instead, the fire brigade in the western city of Duesseldorf said on Wednesday.

The 45-year-old man used tyre repair solvent to plug a hole in his airbed and left it overnight.

But it blew up when he went to inflate it the next day."A spark from the electric air pump ignited it," a fire brigade spokesman said.

The blast pushed his living room wall into the building's stairwell and caused extensive damage to walls, windows and furniture.

Fire fighters evacuated the 12-apartment building and a neighbouring housing block while they checked for structural damage.

The man suffered burns on his arms, while a three-year-old girl suffered first degree burns.



Credits by reuters.com

Chinese Baby with 3 Feet


A doctor examines a seven-month baby who has three feet in Xiangfan of Hubei Province, China. The baby will take an operation in the hospital to remove her third foot.

What's inside a crocodile?





Thailand Newest Pandas are Elephants

With the recent birth of a baby Panda cub to Lin Hui and Xuang Xuang at Chiang Mai zoo in Bangkok everyone in Thailand has had Pandas on their mind. This has upset local Elephant keepers at the Ayutthaya-Elephant Kraal.

With announcements of a 20 million baht snow house being built for the Panda family the keepers are wondering just why Thailand has forgotten that the Elephant is their national symbol.

Aside from speaking up about the problem the Elephant keepers at the Ayutthaya-Elephant Kraal have taken it one step further by painting five of their elephants to look like Pandas. This attention grabbing effort seems to be doing the job as Thai people are not only noticing but applauding their efforts. Although rumor has it some Panda lovers are slightly irked.

The keepers were quick to let everyone know that the paint was only water colors but I for one hope that these images make a lasting impression long after the paint has been washed off. Much still needs to be done to protect Thailand’s national treasure and make sure they will always be safe and well treated in the kingdom.

It may be a publicity stunt but I have to say that the Elephant Pandas are much cuter than their Chinese friends currently in the spotlight.



Baby can't sleep

Watch the videos and you will know...

Shanghai Building Falls

In Shanghai, a newly build and thankfully unoccupied high rise overlooking the Dianpu River suddenly and, so far without explanation, fell over like a domino. Only one person was killed in what could have been a horrific tragedy.



North Korea’s Ryugyong Hotel: Ugliest Building on Earth?


The 105 story Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang North Korea is considered the worst building on the planet. Dominating the skyline, it has been described as a hideous structure, a twisted version of Cinderella's Castle. The building is so ugly, that government propaganda does not even mention the eyesore and it is frequently airbrushed out of shots of the city.

This 3000 room hotel has set unfinished since 1987 when the first shovels broke ground. Ryugyong Hotel is ugly, badly designed, and considered by many to be the worst-built building in the world. It's also said that North Korea spent almost 2 percent of its GNP to build this empty hotel.

Construction of the behemoth stopped in 1992 and there is no hope that it will ever resume mostly due to the fact that North Korea ran out of money for the building and that the tourist industry in Pyongyang is virtually non-existent.

Today and as far as anyone can tell, the Ryugyong will continue to dominate the skyline of the city of Pyongyang. Unfinished, unneeded, and unwanted.


Japanese Kanji Shirts

Kanji, a Japanese written language, have always been extremely popular. People use them in art, as decoration in their homes, as tattoos on their bodies, and even in clothing fashion.

1.Beware of Pervent

Men touching women in trains is a real problem in Japanese urban life, and there are actually signs in some places warning women to “beware of perverts.” Here’s a great T-shirt that captures this zaniness, featuring a bizarre image of a man toughing a woman on a train and a message of “Beware of Perverts” (Chikan chuui), with “Dangerous Persons are in this Area” printed below. A truly bizarre message and image that will cause confusion and funny reactions among Japanese who see it.

2.“Sake-bito” (I Love Alcohol)

A parody of famous shima-bito (Island-Person) designs from Okinawa, this shirt proudly proclaims you as a sake-bito, literally a “person of sake” or someone who loves to drink all forms of alcohol. (Sake, pronounced sah-KAY, can refer to normal rice wine as well as all other forms of alcohol).

3.“Caution: Karoshi” (Death from Overwork)

Caution: Karoshi. Japanese are very industrious and hardworking — in fact they can work so hard that there’s a word for “death from overwork” (karoshi). Here’s a wacky Japanese T-shirt that warns you not to work too hard, to take time to smell the roses as you travel down the road of life. The message on the shirt says “Karoshi: be careful not to work too hard.”

4.“No Normal Humans” ~ Haruhi Parody


The character Haruhi from the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya has become one of the most popular ever. A girl who is bored with school and who has no interest in ordinary humans, she seeks to meet aliens, time travelers, sliders or espers, and yet these people are going to school right alongside her without her noticing. If you love Haruhi, here’s a great T-shirt design for you that says “Not Interested in Normal Humans,” inviting all those who are a little “different” to join their club.

5.“Ecchi” (Ecko Parody)

In Japanese, the letter “H” (pronounced “ecchi”) is a euphemism for anything sexual, and someone who is “ecchi!” thinks about sex a little too much. Here’s a great T-shirt design which parodies the famous Ecko Unlimited rhinoceroses with a fun perverted new version.

6.“It is Forbidden to Urinate Here"

For whatever reason, Japanese men think nothing of stopping to urinate outdoors wherever they might be, along the side of the road or into a rice field, even while passing a beautiful Buddhist Temple. Here’s a cool shirt that says “It is forbidden to urinate here,” that’s modeled after real signs you can see in Japan.

7.“Otaku” (Oakley parody)


The word “otaku” has come to describe anyone who loves manga, anime and Japanese popular culture, although anyone with passion can become an “otaku” about something they love. This T-shirt parodies the famous Oakley logo by changing it into a message that fans can appreciate.

8.“In Case of Emergency, Commit Seppuku Here"

Ancient samurai were famous for committing ritual suicide by disemboweling themselves with their swords, which was called seppuku or harakiri (two ways to read the same kanji characters). This T-shirt features a wacky message in this tradition, with a Japanese warrior pointing to your midsection and the message, “In case of emergency, cut here.”

9.“Ecchi” (I’m Perverted)

The shirt says “Ecchi” (literally, the letter “H,” which is used in Japan as a euphenism for someone who is perverted or who thinks about sex too much) — you never know what will happen with this shirt on!

10.“Noodle Eater” (Cup Noodle Parody)

Are you a “face eater”? That’s what the word men-kui (men-koo-EE) literally means, and it refers to men who are attracted to extremely beautiful women, especially women with incredibly beautiful faces (men in Japanese). Since the word for “noodles” is also men, it sounds like you’re saying “noodle eater,” hence the joke.

11.“Beware of Panty Thieves"

Throughout history there have been men who have been obsessed with women’s panties, and the Japanese are no different. Here’s a wacky T-shirt featuring a man using a fishing pole to catch a pair of women’s underwear, with “Beware of panty thief” written in kanji below it.

12.“Sukebe” (Pervert)

Sukebe (pronounced “su-KEH-beh”), a word which means someone who thinks about sex just a little too much. Similar to ecchi, a sukebe will never fail to mentally undress a pretty girl while he talks to her.

13.“Beware of Men Peeking”

Japanese men are human, just like everyone else, and sometimes they have trouble controlling their inner urges. Here’s a T-shirt that warns people who see it to beware of “nozoki” — peeping toms, who like to watch women secretly, in the bathroom and elsewhere. The text reads “Beware of Men Peeping” in clear, direct Japanese. Because the word “nozoki” is written with the hiragana writing system, it’s someething that only Japanese can read or understand.

14.“I Like Mixed Bathing"

Many gaijin come to Japan and fall in love with onsen (OWN-sen), the famous natural hot springs that have been enjoyed by Japanese for centuries. The best hot springs are, of course, the mixed-bathing variety, called kon’yoku in Japanese, a special bath where men and women can take a bath together. This T-shirt proclaims your affinity for Japan’s mixed-bathing culture, featuring a kanji slogan that reads “I love mixed-bathing hot springs,” with the normal “heart” shape cleverly replaced by the “onsen mark,” a symbol that denotes Japanese hot springs.