As the 21st head of the Ban clan, a line of ninja that can be traced back 500 years and the only living person who learned all the skills that were directly handed down from ninja masters, Jinichi Kawakami is considered by many the last real ninja in all of Japan.

63-year-old Kawakami, a retired engineer, says he started practicing the art of Ninjutsu at the age of six. He was just a young boy when he began training under master Masazo Ishida, a man who dressed as a Buddhist monk, and didn’t even realize what he was learning until years later. He was required to endure extreme heat and cold, as well as pain and hunger. To improve his concentration, he would have to look at the wick of a candle until he got the feeling he was inside it, and practice hearing the sound of a needle falling on a wooden floor. He climbed walls, jumped from great heights, learned chemicals and making explosives and even studied weather and psychology. “The training was all tough and painful. It wasn’t fun but I didn’t think much why I was doing it. Training was made to be part of my life,” Jinichi told AFP. Just before turning 19, he inherited his master’s title, along with his old scrolls and tools. Although he doesn’t claim the title of “last ninja” for himself in order to avoid disputes with other claimants and doubters, he is recognized as Japan’s last real ninja master.

Read More »

I first wrote about Tony Alleyne’s amazing Star Trek apartment back in 2009, but after seeing some photos of his ultimate Trekkie crib I decided it was worth another look. It’s yet unclear if the dedicated fan still owns the place, or if it even exists anymore.

It was 1994 when Tony Alleyne started redecorating the apartment he was living in with cream and metallic colors inspired by the interior of the USS Enterprise from 1979’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture. His friend had just given him a Star Trek magazine and he became obsessed with having his own ship. But soon he realized the old Enterprise was a bit boring so he decided to start over and this time recreate the set of the starship Voyager from the 1990s series. Soon his conventional apartment featured a computerized flight deck, a voice-activated computer system, bleeping panels and fluorescent lights inspired by his beloved TV show. Even the windows had been replaced with layers of wood and perspex so they would appear to look out on outer space, and the doorbell played a sample of Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean-Luc Picard. It was a dream home for any real Trekkie  and Tony had spent just £4,000 ($6,000) sourcing the materials and building it himself. His only mistake was doing it in an apartment he didn’t own. And that apparently cost him everything…

Read More »

In 1999 a man from Utah bought a McDonald’s hamburger and kept it around for a month just to show his friends how it would look exactly the same because it was full of preservatives. Fast forward 14 years, the burger is almost unchanged .

David Whipple originally intended to hang on to his burger for 30 days, but somehow forgot it in the pocket of one of his coats and only found it two years later. Seeing the fast food looked almost the same as the day it was first flipped, he decided to continue his experiment just to see how long it would take until the burger disintegrated. It’s been 14 years now and the burger simply refuses to age. “It wasn’t on purpose,” Whipple said about his decision to keep the hamburger for so long. “I was showing some people how enzymes work and I thought a hamburger would be a good idea. And I used it for a month and then I forgot about it. “My wife didn’t discover it until at least a year or two after that. And we pulled it out and said ‘oh my gosh. I can’t believe it looks the same way.'” His “edible” keepsake has been recently showcased on the popular TV show “The Doctors”, and while the pickle had disintegrated, you could clearly see there was no sign of mold on the buns or the meat.

Read More »

Would you sign up for a one-way trip to Mars? So far over 10,000 people from all over the world have answered the call of Dutch company Mars One who plans to send volunteer colonists to Mars for a unique new reality TV show.

No human has walked the Moon since 1972, and no one has ever traveled as far as Mars. But Dutch company Mars One plans to change all that in just 10 years time, by sending groups of colonists to the Red Planet and leaving them there for the rest of their lives. The first group of four astronauts will leave Earth in 2022 and theoretically arrive on Mars the following year, when they will start growing their permanent colony. Every two years after that new groups will be making the seven-month journey never to return again. The project has been received with a lot of skepticism from the science world, with many experts expressing doubts about its success due to a series of major drawbacks, including the inability to return to Earth, the lack of food on the barren planet, the atmosphere that consists mainly of carbon dioxide, a temperature of -55 degrees Celsius, the radiation endured during the trip and the risky landing. But Mars One has the backing of renowned physicist and Nobel Prize winner Gerard’t Hooft, as well as the support of major aerospace companies around the world, who have agreed to supply all the equipment necessary for the mission.

Read More »

Locomotive-shaped grills are not exactly unheard of, but a team of Russian metal workers have taken it upon themselves to set a new standard by building a unique and awesome-looking Steampunk locomotive barbecue grill.

This practical work of art was created by a group of metal workers from the village of Deulina, near the city of Ryazan, in Russia, who specialize in interior, exterior and landscape design. The one-of-a-kind Steampunk grill was apparently forged from scrap automobile, motorcycle and train parts, and is currently installed on a private property where very few have the privilege to see it in person. Luckily for the rest of us, the builders took a set of photos for a Moscow exhibition-competition, since their locomotive was too heavy to transport. The grill was apparently built in 2009, but the pics only recently surfaced on a series of Western sites and forums. The little information available on the Steampunk locomotive grill is in Russian, and although Google Translate does a decent job of revealing the essential, there are few paragraphs that don’t make much sense. Here is what I was able to make out: the locomotive has three work bays – two 60-cm-long grilling pits in the main body and a trailer that acts as a stove. The first compartment is designed for barbecuing kebabs and can accommodate up to twenty skewers, while the second one is equipped with a rotating spit for roasting chicken and large pieces of meat. Some of the locomotive parts are actually functional, like the large brass wheel in the cabin that rotates the spit.

Read More »

French artist Hubert Duprat supplies Caddisfly larvae with precious materials like gold flakes, opal, turquoise, rubies, and pearls which they use to build protective casings which can be strung and worn as unique pieces of jewelry.

Caddisfly larvae live in rivers and streams, where they collect natural materials like gravel, sand, twigs and just about anything else they can carry to build elaborate armors that provide protection from various threats. The larvae glue all the debris with silk excreted through salivary glands located near their mouths. Using this knowledge, Hubert Duprat places the Caddisfly larvae in climate-controlled tanks and replaces their usual building supplies with precious and semi-precious materials and lets nature take its course. This unique collaboration between art and nature yields impressive results in the form of one-of-a-kind gilded sculptures that sometimes look a lot better than some designer jewels. The French artist views his intriguing project as a collaborative effort, and says “it is their work as much as it is mine”.

Read More »

Australian fashion designer Stephanie Wilson married her high-school sweetheart in a unique dress made from 100,000 plastic bread tags she had collected over the last 10 years.

Stephanie Wilson and Will Wapling met and became friends while attending Belmont High School in Geelong. After completing Year 12, the two became a couple and moved in together. Stephanie remembers there was a pile of bread tags on the window sill of their home which they kept adding to. She and Will used to joke that when there were enough tags to make a wedding dress they would get married. It may have been a joke to them, but as soon as people found out about their plan they started collecting bread tags and giving them to the lovebirds. At one point, they were getting so many that Stephanie had to get bigger jars to store them in. Then, 10 years later, they realized their idea wasn’t so crazy after all, and decided to go through with it. Having dozens of jars full of plastic tags sitting in their home, Stephanie and Will were sure they had enough bread tags to make the dress. It turned out they were wrong, but luckily the groom-to-be had a baker cousin who came to the rescue with rolls of fresh tags.

Read More »

This amazing waterfall seen frozen on the side of a building in Jilin City, Eastern China, is the work of 58-year-old Wen Hsu, the only remaining resident, who left the tap on all winter to make sure his uninsulated pipes didn’t freeze.

If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if you left the water on for an entire winter, here’s the answer you’ve been waiting for – a giant frozen waterfall. The bizarre sight looks like an original work of art, but it was actually born from one man’s fear of being left without running water. 58-year-old Wen Hsu has been living in the same apartment building for the last 35 years. As was the case in many other cities around China, the property was recently scheduled for demolition, to make room for a new shopping center. Developers tried to settle the matter by offering apartment owners a sum of money so they could buy another home some place else, but Hsu says he refused their offer because it wasn’t enough to get a decent place, so even after all the neighbors moved out, he remained in his old apartment. The loneliness was hard enough to deal with, but this past winter he had a bigger problem to deal with. The cold temperatures threatened to freeze the water in the building unisulated pipes, leaving him without running water, and with no other choice than to leave. But he’s not one to give up easily, so he came up with a weird plan…

Read More »

38-year-old Chris Weir is so fascinated with Batman that he spent around $100,000 transforming his large basement into a veritable Batcave, complete with a custom home-theater, a secret entrance and even a life-size Batman suit used by the Dark Knight in the latest trilogy directed by Christopher Nolan.

Chris’ fascination with the caped crusader started at age three, when he and his uncle played Batman and Robin in the yard. Like many other young boys, he spent his childhood years playing with action figures from the Batman universe, and at 14 he bough his first comic book “The Legends of The Dark Knight”, and continued paying for a monthly subscription with his pocket money. Nothing unusual for a young boy, but Weir never really grew out of it. Even as an adult, he kept buying comics, action figures and posters of his favorite superhero, only at one point it just wasn’t enough anymore. He wanted to take his passion for everything Batman to a new level, and when he and his wife decided to look for a new house, Chris got the opportunity he had been waiting for. Weir wanted his very one Batcave so bad that when shopping for houses the deciding factor was always whether their future home would have enough basement space for his dream. In the end, he gave his wife Joanna two options to choose from, one of which happens to be their current home.

Read More »

David Rees, a cartoonist, humor writer and self-proclaimed pencil sharpening artisan runs a truly unique business. He charges customers $15 to sharpen their pencils to perfections, using a variety of tools, from pocket knives to sandpaper.

I know what you’re thinking – is this a joke? The 39-year-old entrepreneur gets asked that question a lot, so to clarify everything he even created a special section on his Artisanal Pencil Sharpening website telling everyone that he’s actually providing a real service: “If you start a pencil-sharpening business, you can expect to hear this question a lot. The short answer? No, this is not a joke. You pay David Rees money and he sharpens your pencils. It actually happens.” You can supply your own pencil or you can have Rees sharpen his one of his favorite #2 pencils and ship it to you in a in a display tube with the shavings in a separate bag along with a certificate of authenticity that just happens to mention the pencil is so sharp it is considered a dangerous object. To achieve the desired result, the master sharpener uses all kinds of tools, including general sandpaper, pocket knives and even a special $450 sharpening machine. “It depends on what the client wants to use their pencil for,’’ he says. “That determines the most appropriate pencil technique. Some buy them as inspirational tokens, and others for nostalgic memories of classic No. 2 pencils. There also are journalists who prefer my pencils to pens especially in really cold weather because a pen will freeze up, whereas a pencil won’t.’’

Read More »

Barbers in China’s Sichuan Province have practiced the art of eye-cleaning with a sharp blade for centuries. Like many other ancient traditions, this dangerous trade is slowly vanishing, but you can still find a few barbers willing to scrape your eyeballs with a knife for as little as RMB5 ($0.80).

According to an old Sichuan saying, cleaning the eyes makes the beauty of life more visible, and some people are prepared to go under the knife to make sure they don’t miss a thing. Nicknamed “knife-blade eye cleaning”, the practice of scraping a person’s eyeballs and eyelids with sharp utensils has been a part of Chinese culture ever since ancient times. The craft was supposedly popularized by brothers Zhou Chengfu and Zhou Chengyin, who followed their father’s footsteps and excelled in the technique of servicing the eyeballs, ears and necks of clients, but in recent years it has almost died out. Still, if you look hard enough, you can still find eye-cleaning stands even in modern cities like Sichuan’s capital, Chengdu. 53-year-old Liu Deyuan has been successfully running his small eye-cleaning business for 7 years, offering a head shave and an eye scrape for just RMB5. With many long-term clients lining up to get their eyes cleaned every month, the skilled barber says business is still pretty good. Read More »

Christians make up only 1.4% of Japan’s 127 million population, but Western “white weddings” now account for around three quarters of all bridal ceremonies, which means Christian priests are in high demand. To meet their clients’ expectations bridal companies have given up on trying to find ordained ministers and have kept requirements to a minimal – men looking foreign-enough to pass as Christians who can speak a little Japanese and perform the ceremony in 20 minutes.

Japan’s love affair with Christian wedding is believed to have started in the 1980s with the televised weddings of Prince Charles and Lady Diana and was fueled by the nuptials of Japanese pop star Momoe Yamaguchi. People, women especially, were attracted by the idea of celebrating their marriage through a ritual that revolved around love and that elevates the bride to the status of princess even for a short while. Traditional Shinto weddings, on the other hand, encase women in a wig and kimono, and are focused more on the merger of two families. The Japanese simply  fell in love with the sharp dress code, the kiss and the overall image of Western weddings over their centuries-old traditions. But in order to have a genuine-looking ceremony, they wanted Christian priests, which were pretty hard to find. That started the now famous “foreign fake pastors” trend that saw companies and hotels hiring average foreign gentlemen with minimal knowledge of the Japanese language to perform Christian weddings.

Read More »

A photo of an Ultra Orthodox Jewish man wrapped in a life-size plastic bag aboard an airplane recently went viral on news-sharing site Reddit, sparking an intense debate concerning his motives.

At first it was believed that the man had donned the bizarre see-through garb to distance himself from women, as some Ultra-Orthodox Jews obey strict rules of gender segregation in public. Now, however, it is believed the man dressed entirely in black and wearing a Jewish skullcap or “kippah” may be a member of the Kohanim, who believe they are descended from the priests of ancient Israel and cannot come in close contact with dead in order to protect their higher-than-average kedushah (holiness). Apparently, the strict religious code prohibits visiting cemeteries except for the funerals of close relatives, and even flying over burial grounds. However, the Haaretz newspaper reports that Rabbi Yosef Shalom Eliashiv, leader of the Lithuanian Haredi community in Israel, has recently “found a solution to this issue, ruling that wrapping oneself in thick plastic bags while the plane crossed over the cemetery is permissible”, which would explain the man’s bizarre protective travel gear.

Read More »

Luo Dan, a painter and designer from Chonqing, China has been wearing a big deer mask over his head every day since 2009. He claims the bizarre accessory has helped him find inner peace and release the deer within.

Finding artistic inspiration can be pretty tough for an artist, but for 32-year-old Luo Dan it’s as easy as putting on a mask, literally. The young painter says he started wearing his weird deer head in 2009, and quickly got used to putting it on while working and in his spare time. “The deer is a tame animal,” he explained. “Wearing its mask, I could find a long-missing inner peace. When I wear the mask, I feel I am a deer from within.” The fake animal head has also influenced his art, taking a center role in most of his works. Dan doesn’t know exactly how long he’ll keep wearing the deer head, but considering the therapeutic powers he attributes to the mask it’s unlikely he will be taking it off anytime soon. I can understand keeping it on in the privacy of his home, but this guy seems to take the head with him everywhere he goes. I wonder how people react when he comes up to them wearing the ridiculous disguise? It must be really difficult to take a guy wearing an animal mask seriously…I always knew artists were a little cooky, but this is too much.

Read More »

You could say Albert Krtalic is a cut above other artists. The Croatian creator uses an industrial angle grinder to engrave beautiful landscapes on ceramic canvases. He recently showcased his original works during a exhibition in his home town of Makarska.

The industrial angle grinder isn’t exactly what you would call an artistic tool, but self-taught artist Albert Krtalic has been using it to engrave detailed landscapes inspired by the beauty and culture of his home country on to fragile ceramic surfaces. Asked how he came up with such an unusual engraving method, Krtalic said that the fact that he is a self-taught artist makes him more open to experimenting with different tools and mediums, hence the industrial angle grinder technique. He says mastering the industrial equipment wasn’t easy, and thathe had a lot of “casualties” in the early days, but working with a power tool has paid off in the end, as it gives his artworks an “edgy, industrial look”. Local collectors think he’s on to something and are snapping up his creations while they’re still cheap ($75 each) convinced they’ll one day be worth a small fortune.

Read More »