Kaisefu Mudazono is a self-taught food artist who uses all sorts of ingredients, from dried seaweed and pickled vegetables, to ham and rice, to create the most amazing edible artworks.

When it comes to food art, it’s hard to find something more adorable, and at the same time impressive, than  kyaraben (or Charaben), the Japanese art form of arranging various foods to create eye-catching designs. When done right, kyaraben turns out almost too good to eat, and Kaisefu Mudazono is definitely a master at it. Whether expressing her creative talent on a bento box, or on her grandchildren’s bowls, she always manages to impress.

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Inakadate, a nondescript village of around 7,000 people, located in Japan’s Aomori prefecture is considered the home of a rice field art form more elaborate than anywhere else in the world.

The story of Inakadate village as a world-renowned tourist destination began in the early 1990s, when local authorities realized that youths were moving to large urban centers in droves, and started brainstorming for ways of breathing new life into the village. One of the proposed ideas was an art form inspired by the local’s traditional rice cultivation, done by hand for hundreds of years. Called Tanbo Art (rice field art), it involved the use of different-color rice varieties to turn local rice fields into giant canvases for intricate designs that revealed their beauty when viewed from above.

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Carlos Alberto GH, a Mexican artist based in Guadalajara, specializes in anamorphic street art representing all sorts of surrealistic scenes that come to life when seen from just the right angle.

From birds and reptiles seemingly coming out of walls, to whales floating above urban sidewalks, street artist Carlos Alberto GH seems capable of turning anything he can think of into a stunning optical illusion. A former archaeological restorer focusing on Mayan sites and artefacts, the 31-year-old artist now dedicates all his time and attention to anamorphic art and detailed street murals.

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A talented Japanese art student has created a mantua-inspired life-size dress exclusively out of thousands of plastic senbei wrappers.

The mantua fashion of the 17th and 18th century Europe was one of the most flamboyant and elaborate in human history, but that didn’t stop one very talented art student from recreating one such life-size dress using only “Happy Tour” plastic senbei wrappers. It’s unclear how long Twitter user @nokyo spent collecting and piecing together the 4,000 or so wrappers used for this unique dress, but he clearly put a lot of time and effort into the project.

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Japan’s Kubota Pharmaceutical Holdings claims to have developed smart glasses that, if worn just an hour per day, can allegedly cure myopia.

Myopia, or nearsightedness, is a common ophthalmological condition in which you can see objects near to you clearly, but objects farther away are blurry. To compensate for this blur, you have the option of wearing eyeglasses or contact lenses, or the more invasive refractive surgery. But a Japanese company claims to have come up with a new non-invasive way of dealing with myopia – a pair of “smart glasses” that project an image from the lens of the unit onto the wearer’s retina to correct the refractive error that causes nearsightedness. Apparently, wearing the device 60 to 90 minutes a day corrects myopia.

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Japanese artist Kotetsu blends illustration photography and kirie (Japanese traditional paper cutting) to create beautiful works of art that bring anime heroines into the real world.

Instead of using ink or colored pencils to color the outfits of his illustrations, Kotetsu cuts out the paper canvas and juxtaposes his creations against various backdrops, thus letting Mother Nature do the coloring for him. The result is stunning, often-times bordering on breathtaking. From autumn foliage, and fields full of flowers, to picturesque sunsets and starry night skies, Kotetsu uses nature’s most beautiful elements to complete his artworks.

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Chinese social media has been in uproar over reports of a technology company that allegedly used smart cushions to secretly monitor the activity of its office staff.

An employee of Hebo Technology, a high-tech company based in Zhejiang Province, recently took to social media to expose a practice that he considered illegal and immoral. The woman man, known only as Wang, said that she and at least nine other employees in her office had been monitored via seat cushions for the last several months. The smart cushions were a gift from company management and were supposed to help them them stay healthy, by monitoring their vitals and offering healthy advice, but it turns out they had a more sinister purpose.

Wang said that she and her colleagues initially welcomed the company’s gift, as the smart cushions offered a wealth of data, including breathing rate, heart rate, and sitting posture, and even reminded them to stretch or get up, if they sat down for two long. The 10 employees genuinely believed that the company cared about their health and wellbeing.

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Kay Pike is a talented designer and model from Calgary, Canada, who spends hours on end skillfully covering herself with body paint to transform into popular superheroes and villains.

Cosplaying used to be a big part of Kay Pike’s life, but after being diagnosed with congenital arthritis in her hips, which caused her excruciating pain, she just couldn’t sit and sew for hours, like she used to. Luckily, in 2015, during the Edmonton Comic and Entertainment Expo, she discovered “cospaint”, an intriguing art form that allowed her to transform into virtually any comic, cartoon or video game character by using body paint.

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Why get a carpet when you can have one a permanent etched into the floor? Unfortunately, we don’t all have the skill of Spanish artist Selva Aparicio.

Originally unveiled in 2017, Childhood Memories is a visually-striking installation by Selva Aparicio, a talented artist whose thought-provoking works tackle a variety of topics, from politics to the environment. Aparicio spent days hand-carving an intricate carpet pattern into a discarded wooden floor, and the result was so realistic that people only realized it wasn’t a real carpet only when they got close.

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Spanish artist Okuda San Miguel turned a non-descript lighthouse in northern Spain’s Cantabria region into an eye-catching work of art.

Inspired by the “natural wealth of the region by representing local fauna and, with its textures, the cultural diversity of a modern and open Cantabria, which is connected to the world,” Okuda San Miguel turned the Faro de Ajo lighthouse into a technicolor work of art, featuring more than 70 vibrant hues. Okuda started work on the 16-meter-tall lighthouse in August and completed the project, titled “Infinite Cantabria”, in September. Now, the region’s last built lighthouse is meant to become a symbol of the cultural diversity of a modern and open Cantabria.

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The Covid-19 lockdowns have had a very different effect on people. While the boredom made some depressed, it actually helped others discover hidden talents. Take Anna Chojnicka, who started creating adorable banana peel artworks.

To pass the time and keep her creative juices flowing, social entrepreneur Anna Chojnicka started experimenting with banana peel oxidation as an art medium. Instead of doodling on canvas or paper, she decided to simply bruise bananas with thin, blunt objects and let oxidation do the rest. The bruised peel becomes darker as the hours go by, revealing the design etched into it.

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The Brazilian city of Santos is famous as the birthplace of Pele, regarded by many as the greatest football player ever, but also for its unique looking waterfront skyline, which looks, well, a bit tilted.

The leaning apartment buildings of Santos have been around for decades, and even though the problem has been getting worse over time, so far authorities have chosen not to intervene, claiming the edifices are perfectly safe. The Santos skyline is made up of 651 buildings, all of which are somewhat tilted, some only about 5cm out of level, which counts as a construction flaw, others almost 2 meters, which makes them visibly tilted. But the issue isn’t only aesthetic, some apartments have windows and doors that no longer close properly, and others have plumbing issues. There have also been reports of inhabitants experiencing loss of balance issues on level ground, from spending too much time in their tilted apartments.

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Turkish artist Deniz Sağdıç creates stunningly detailed portraits out of pieces of denim, using the different available shades of fabric to highlight even the tiniest details.

Deniz Sağdıç grew up surrounded by arts and crafts. Her father was a stained glass master, her uncle was a carpenter and a wood sculptor, her aunts worked as tailors, so she was exposed to art from a very early age. Ever since primary school, she spent a lot of time in her father’s workshop, helping him prepare the materials and cut his stained glass windows. She also spent a lot of time in her aunts’ tailor shop, discovering the secrets of the trade. So it didn’t really surprise anyone when the decided to go to art school.

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Inspired by the Covid-19 pandemic, French artist Gaetan Marron has confined himself to a transparent, 4m² plexiglass cube located inside a Marseille shopping mall for 20 days.

Titled “Non-Essentiel”, Gaetan Marron’s art performance is all about highlighting various issues caused by the lockdowns tied to the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, like the lack of human interaction, the lack of freedom, and the role of so-called non-essential activities like culture and art. Earlier this month, the Marseille-based artist locked himself in a small, transparent plastic cube located inside the local Les Docks Villages shopping center, for a period of 20 days. Passers-by can see him, they can talk to him, and, most importantly, they can donate to him, as Marron depends on donations from his visitors for food.

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A 65-year-old kung fu master is practicing an ancient technique known as “iron crotch”, which involves ramming a large wooden pole into his crotch to build-up the resistance of his private parts.

Wang Liutai is the curator of the Martial Arts Museum in Juntun Village, a small settlement on the outskirts of Luoyang, one of the four ancient capitals of China. He is also a kung fu master, but not the kind you’re used to seeing in old martial arts movies; Liutai specializes in a rare technique specific to Juntun known as “iron crotch”. It involves swinging a 2-meter-long, 40-kg-heavy wooden log with a steel plate cap straight into his crotch, while using qigong breathing techniques to steel himself.

A father-of-two, Wang has been practicing iron crotch for half a century and claims that if done correctly, the kung fu technique does not hurt and does not affect fertility. The technique is just one of many devised in Juntun to help practitioners resist pressure, pain or hits to various sensitive areas. Other similar techniques involve iron throat, iron head, iron chest, and iron back, but iron crotch is definitely the rarest, with just 5 practitioners still around in the village.

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