Kayashima Station, in Neyagawa, a north-eastern suburb of Osaka, is one of the most unusual-looking train stations in all of Japan. Despite being located on an elevated platform, Kayashima has a giant broccoli-like tree pocking out through a rectangular hole in its roof.

The Big Kusu Tree of Kayashima, as the camphor tree is commonly known in Japan, is older than most records, but officials estimate that it has been around for at least 700 years. In 1910, when Kayashima train station was originally opened, the tree stood right next to it, offering travelers some much needed shelter on both sunny and rainy days. It didn’t bother anyone for the next 60 years, but as Japan’s population increased at an accelerated rate, overcrowding became a problem and local authorities decided that the train station needed to be expanded. Plans were approved in 1972, and the old camphor tree was going to be cut down.

The stories about how the ancient camphor tree of Kayashima cheated its fate vary, but they all border on the supernatural. Spoon & Tamago reports that the tree had long been associated with a local shrine and deity, and news of its removal caused an uproar in the community. Rumors about the tree being angry about the authorities’ decision also coincided with a series of bizarre events. People reported seeing a white snake slithering through the branches of the tree, others claimed to see smoke rising up from the tree, and a worker who cut off one of the tree branches developed a fever later that day.

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In a bid to give their children a head start in life, wealthy Chinese parents are enrolling them in all kinds of early education programs, including CEO training courses.

Chinese state media reports that an early education institute in Guangzhou, China’s Guangdong province, is offering a ‘CEO training course’ for kids aged between 3 and 12, at a price of 50,000 yuan ($7,500) per year. Kids attend two classes per week, during which they engage in activities such as filing in missing words in sentences and stacking up toy bricks. That doesn’t sound like anything special, but according to a promotional brochure released by the institute, the course “enables young children to become a powerful, competitive leader”.

There’s no denying that China probably has the most competitive educational environment in the world, which means parents would do almost anything to make sure their children don’t get left behind, but experts believe such extravagant courses ultimately benefit the parents rather than the children. They regard their kids’ attendance to such classes as evidence of the family’s social status, completely disregarding the fact that the syllabus they offer is of no real value.

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If the loudest, most annoying alarm clocks have failed to separate you from your beloved bed, ‘Shock Clock Wake Up Trainer’ might be just the thing for you. This wearable alarm clock will literally shock you awake every morning, if beeps and vibrations don’t do the trick.

Pavlok, the company behind Shock Clock, is a wearable-device startup founded by entrepreneur Maneesh Sethi, who first rose to internet fame after hiring a woman to slap him every time he opened Facebook. Having had previous success with his ‘Pavlok Breaks Bad Habits’ device that helped people quit bad habits like nail biting and smoking, Sethi based the new Shock Clock on the popular concept of classical conditioning that Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov used to train dogs to respond to a stimulus. He claims that the device’s ‘sensory inputs’ have the potential to create permanent behavioral changes. It is apparently world’s first device that “uses effective, tested sensory inputs to wake you up and keep you alert.”

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A Brooklyn-based personal trainer spent three months systematically wrecking his perfectly toned physique, just so he could accompany his client on her weight loss journey. The duo were featured on the third episode of a new A&E show titled Fit to Fat to Fit.

Having struggled with a food addiction only a few years back, going on this new unhealthy regime was a huge challenge for 35-year-old Adonis Hill. But he did it anyway by stopping exercise and gorging on donuts at breakfast, hot dogs and pizza at lunch, McDonald’s at dinner, and Oreos in between. He stopped gaining weight in the third month, so he added a gallon of soda a day to his diet, a move that sent him to the ER with high blood pressure.

Doctors warned Hill that he was doing serious damage to his body, but he had already put on 69 pounds by then, thanks to the 8,000-odd calories he was consuming per day. He was finally ready to take up the Fit to Fat to Fit challenge along with his client Alissa Kane, an overweight teacher. Together they quit junk food, but stayed on a high-fat, high-protein, low-carb diet in order to burn fat. They spent an hour lifting weights and an hour on cardio about five to six days a week. After four months, Hill managed to lose 57 pounds, while Kane lost 58.

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Japanese student Reikko Hori is in the news for choosing to be a real-life castaway on the uninhabited island of Amparo in Indonesia. After 19 days of complete isolation, during which her only companions were a spear and a magnifying glass, the 22-year-old claims to have returned to normal life with a newfound appreciation for civilization.

The paid experience was arranged by Docastaway, a tour company that specialises in holidays in remote islands across the world, with packages that include varying levels of comfort. Hori, a self-described loner, chose ‘adventure mode’, the most extreme category, therefore becoming the first female voluntary castaway in history.

But the company was worried about her choice because she had no survival training whatsoever and was completely unprepared to live all by herself in the wild. According to their official website, Hori wouldn’t answer any questions or respond to their emails during the preparation phase a few months before the actual experience. She apparently wanted to survive in the wild as naturally as possible, with very little interference from experts.

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The Dutch are using an ingenious, low-cost, totally organic solution to the country’s increasing drone problem – they’re having eagles trained to attack the flying machine as they would their usual prey.

Drones are becoming a major problem all over the world – they block airspace and interfere with official operations like emergency air ambulance landings. Despite regulations, drone operators are able to get away with misuse. They’re often hidden from view, making it very difficult for authorities to detect their exact position and take action against them.

The Dutch police were looking at tech-based solutions like remotely taking control of drone operating systems, but forcing a drone to autoland could backfire as it could go completely out of control. Thankfully, raptor training company ‘Guard From Above’ came up with a much better idea – to make use of eagles’ natural hunting instincts.

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Last Friday, China’s CCTV News posted a heart-warming story on Facebook about how Japanese railway authorities are keeping a train station in a remote village open for the sake of only one passenger – a high school student.

“The Kyu-Shirataki-Shirataki train station is located in Japan’s north island of Hokkaido,” the post read. “Three years ago, due to its remote location and ending of freight trains, the Japan Railway (JR) decided to close it down. However, they changed their minds after they discovered a young girl used the station to go to high school every day.”

According to the report, the only two trains that stop at the station now are just for this girl, with a “unique timetable depending on when the girl needs to go to school and back.” Japan Railway apparently intends to keep the station open until March this year, when she will finally graduate.

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Ever since he retired 15 years ago, Eugene Bostick has spent a huge chunk of his time caring for animals. Among the many awesome things he does perhaps the most interesting is playing train conductor for a bunch of rescued stray dogs. He actually built a custom train for the canines, consisting of a tractor pulling a row of plastic barrels with the tops cut off.

The 80-year-old from Fort Worth, Texas, says he never planned on spending so much time with dogs, but it sort of just happened. “We live down on a dead-end street, where me and my brother have a horse barn,” he told online magazine The Dodo. “People sometimes come by and dump dogs out here, leaving them to starve. So we started feeding them, letting them in, taking them to the vet, to get them spayed and neutered. We made a place for them to live.”

But Bostick has done more than just give the strays a place to live. He’s actually made their lives fun, by constructing a unique train to take them on little trips. “I started out with my tractor,” he explained. “I had a little trailer and I put four or five dogs in there and took them riding. Then more dogs started to show up and I thought ‘Uh-oh! That’s not enough room.’”

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When 24-year-old Bhanu Prakash, from Hyderabad, India, realised that his job was eating into his precious selfie-time, he decided to quit working altogether. He now spends all his time taking pictures of himself, and training to break the world record for most selfies in an hour. The record currently belongs to American football player Patrick Peterson, who managed to click himself 1,449 times!

Bhanu, who studied pharmacy in college, was working as a research assistant at a hospital in Hyderabad. He was already into the selfie trend big time, ever since his brother got him a smartphone with a front-facing camera, three years ago. “Almost the first thing I did when I got the phone in my hands was click a picture,” he recalled.

But his obsession reached new heights in May this year, when he overheard a conversation between a few kids on a bus – they were talking about Dwayne Johnson’s feat of clicking 105 selfies in three minutes. “It immediately struck me that it was a guy who did this,” Bhanu said. “I mean, people keep saying selfie is a very girly thing, but here Dwayne Johnson was doing it. And I knew I was up for it now.”

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Tired of putting up with her landlord’s tantrums, a German student has decided to give up renting apartments altogether and live on trains instead!

“It all started with a dispute I had with my landlord,” said Leonie Müller. “I instantly decided I didn’t want to live there anymore – and then I realized: Actually, I didn’t want to live anywhere anymore.” So she purchased a special ticket that allows her to board any train in Germany at no charge. She now showers, changes, eats, sleeps, and even does her homework while traveling at speeds of up to 190mph. Sometimes she gets pizza delivered to the tracks at stopovers.

Leonie, 23, says that living out of trains has given her a lot of freedom and she’s enjoying every bit of it. “I really feel at home on trains, and can visit so many more friends and cities,” she said. “It’s like being on vacation all the time. I read, I write, I look out of the window and I meet nice people all the time. There’s always something to do on trains.”

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68-year-old Ekaterina Bilyik is fondly known as ‘The Punisher’ in her home town of Zhidaev, Ukraine. Contrary to her appearance, the frail-looking grandmother is a total badass – she recently completed a gruelling military training alongside army cadets four decades younger than her.

The amount of energy and enthusiasm that she displayed during training is quite awe-inspiring. Footage from the training camp shows her rolling over snow-covered fields, leaping high, and firing assault rifles along with all the young men in her troop. And believe it or not, she is now training to take part in the raging battle in eastern Ukraine.

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Indian weightlifting champion Maibam Itomba Meitei probably has the strongest pinky fingers in the world. The 26-year-old from Imphal city in the state of Manipur recently set the Guinness World Record for the most number of ‘pinky pull ups’ – he used his little fingers to pull his chin above the bar 16 consecutive times in 30 seconds.

Maibam broke the world record previously set by an American weight lifter, who was able to do only 16 pull ups in one minute. He completed the stunning feat quite comfortably during an event organised at the Jawaharlal Nehru Manipur Dance Academy. The audience, consisting of several local politicians, was left speechless by Maibam’s display of sheer strength.

A specially designed iron bar was used for the performance – it had two small hooks for Maibam to insert his two little fingers. Once he laced his pinkies through the hooks, he was able to lift his body (weighing 51 kilograms) up with tremendous ease, bringing his chin all the way over to the bar.

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For centuries, farming was the main source of income for the people of Asola-Fatehpur Beri, twin villages in northern India. But in recent times, the men of Asola have managed to completely reinvent themselves – from poor farmers to strong, well-built bodyguards. Today, almost 90 percent of the men from the 50,000-strong village are employed as bouncers at night clubs in nearby cities like New Delhi.

“In this village, there is not a single boy who does not go to the gym,” said Vijay Pahelwan, head trainer at the local ‘akhada’, or gym. “All boys exercise. They are very careful towards their body. No one drinks and no one consumes tobacco.” Most boys take up wrestling at a very young age in the hopes of making it to the Olympics. But they always have the option of becoming a bouncer to fall back on.

Young wrestling student Keshav Tewar, for instance, spends most of his time at the gym. “No matter what other job I get when I grow up, I’m going to be a bouncer,” he said. “Bouncers have fit bodies and I want to make my body fit too.”

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Japan’s shinkansen (bullet train) is one of the fastest in the world, covering a whopping 200 kilometers in just one hour. But few people outside Japan know that the high-speed train service comes with a high-speed cleaning service to match, which ensures that the shinkansen have virtually no delays. The cleaning crew manage to cover every inch of the train’s interior in just seven minutes flat! The cleaners’ performance is so efficient and impressive that it is known in Japan as the ‘7-minute shinkansen theatre’.

TESSEI is the rail service company in charge of keeping the fleet of bullet trains clean when they make their final stop at Tokyo Station. Their employees are responsible for preparing the trains before the next wave of customers arrive, and they have only seven minutes to do it. The manner in which they’ve organized themselves to complete the job is really quite impressive.

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Tama the cat has been a part of the Japanese workforce for the past seven years. She works as a station master at Kishi station, a remote railway stop in Kinokawa City, Wakayama, Western Japan. Of course, ‘works’ isn’t exactly the right word for what she does there. Her job mostly involves sitting around, posing for pictures and looking rather stern (which reminds me of my ex-boss, actually). But Tama has been rewarded handsomely for her efforts – she has a large window office, a hat with a gold lining, a badge, and her annual compensation is one years’ worth of cat food.

Station Master Tama is special because she attracts tens of thousands of tourists each year. Her presence at Kishi station has helped revitalize tourism in a rural area that was struggling to stay afloat. At one point, the train line that passed through Kishi station saw a 15 percent annual decline in ridership. But when Tama stepped into the role of station master, in 2007, there was a sudden 10 percent jump in the first year.

Tourists continue to pour in from Hong Kong and Taiwan; Wakayama Electric Railway (the company that runs the line) said that at least 20,000 tourists visit the small town annually. The estimated combined revenue from the ticket sales and memorabilia like photobooks and commercial appearances has bumped up the local economy by a whopping 1.1 billion yen ($10.8 million). The company operates just the one line, with about 2.2 million passengers annually.

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