Inakadate village, located near Hirosaki city in Japan’s Aomori prefecture, is one of the few places in the world where farming and art go hand-in-hand. The village is renowned for its unique form of landscape art created in paddy fields. These artistic paddies are so popular that they attract over 200,000 tourists a year.

For centuries, farming has been the main source of income for the people of Inakadate. The amount of farmland available to the relatively small population of 8,000 villagers is massive. Paddy fields make up over fifty percent of the entire village land. The soil in these lands is so fertile that the yield from the rice crop has consistently been higher than any other village or town in Japan.

In the early 1990s, archeologists discovered that the rice strains of Inakadate were over 2,000 years old. To celebrate this fact, and to make the village more attractive to visitors, the local tourism office hatched a plan – to make use of their abundant production of rice to attract more tourists. And that’s how their amazing rice paddy artworks were born.

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When 63-year-old Ding Liang was found crying on a street in eastern China’s Hangzhou city, her story attracted widespread media coverage. The poor woman had traveled five hours from her village to meet her son and his newborn child. Unfortunately, the son refused to see her for the strangest of reasons – because she’s too ugly!

Ding’s confession has pretty much shocked the nation – her story is currently one of the most discussed in Chinese social media with hundreds of thousands of hits and comments. It all started when 53-year-old local man Hsin Pai spotted Ding standing outside a housing complex. He asked her what the matter was and the tired old woman spilled her guts to him.

Ding told Hsin that she was from a village outside Yuyao city, in the same province as Hangzhou. Years ago, her son moved to the city to pursue a college education – he did well at school, landed a job at an upmarket car dealership and got married. When Ding attended the wedding dressed like a peasant, the son was apparently mortified and too embarrassed to admit his relationship to her.

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Contrary to its name, Grundhofer’s Old Fashioned Meats carries a rather interesting and unique range of sausage meats. Their website boasts of 50 different flavors of fresh brats, including a few regulars – Turkey, Chicken and Three Cheese – and a few strange ones – Bloody Mary, Cherry Kool-aid and Blueberry. But the world-famous Gummy Bear brat has got to be their funkiest one yet.

Spencer Grundhofer, who founded the business in 1983 in his hometown of Hugo, Minnesota, says his love for meat developed quite early. “I started when I was 11, working at a local grocery store down the road.” Spencer quickly gained a reputation in the region as an expert in high-quality cuts of meat.

And his passion for meat took a weird turn a few years ago, when his friend decided to play a prank on him. Joe Berglund, a mechanic who works at the shop across from Grundhofer’s, gave Spencer a few friendly suggestions of what flavor brats to try. “So I gave him a list,” said Joe. “One of them happened to be Gummy brats. And he told me, ‘I’m not making those.’”

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Artist Augusto Esquivel is an expert at transforming mundane objects into spectacular works of art. One of his specialties is working with standard sewing buttons, which he uses to create stunning, larger-than-life celebrity portraits.

Augusto’s technique is as tedious as you’d imagine – it’s not an easy arranging thousands of buttons to form an easily recognisable pattern. To create a single portrait, he starts off by suspending hundreds of monofilament strings from the ceiling. Then, he threads black, white and grey buttons into those strings in a particular order.

Individually, these strings might not amount to much. But this is where Augusto works his magic – when he brings the strings together, pixelated images of popular icons emerge. Some of his most notable works include button portraits of stars like Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, Salvador Dali and James Dean.

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More and more young couples in Hong Kong are turning to McDonald’s fast-food restaurants to fit their shoestring wedding budgets. With prices starting as low as $350 per wedding, the place is pretty much a steal – the deal includes the venue, decorations, audio equipment, food, gifts and invitations. The dream wedding has only one drawback – years later, couples will have to tell their kids that they got married at McDonald’s.

Surprisingly, not many couples are bothered by this. The demand for McDonald’s weddings is growing in Hong Kong – the wedding party program that was started in three locations in 2011, has now been extended to 15 branches. And, believe it or not, it’s not just about the money, there’s a sentimental value associated with getting hitched at McDonald’s.

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At an age when most people begin their business careers, German Sterligov was already a millionaire. He was only 24 years old when he founded the company that would make him one of the richest men in Russia. The financial empire he built – with offices in London and New York – ensured a lifetime of comfort for the young man. But his life today is the opposite of everything you’d imagine – after 15 years of fame and riches, he gave it all up in for the quiet life of a peasant living in the woods.

Sterligov’s life story is as interesting as it is unusual. Inspite of having been a very rich and powerful man, the 47-year-old feels that he is now far better placed to withstand the global economic crisis than most of the other Russian oligarchs. “I’m in clover compared to them,” he said in an interview, a few years ago. “I’m free here. I don’t depend on anyone and we’re totally self sufficient. Most of my friends thought I had taken leave of my senses but I think I have been proved right.”

In the early 1990s, as the Communist era was fading, Sterligov set up Russia’s first commodities exchange. The business grew quickly, and he soon became Russia’s first legal millionaire since the 1917 Revolution. At one point, he had over 2,500 employees and was getting along quite well with the Americans as a ‘new type’ of Russian. In the mid-2000s, at the helm of his success, he stunned the world by announcing his intention to run for the Russian presidency.

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Each time we feature hyper-realistic paintings on OC, I think, “This is the best I’ve ever seen.” But then we get to see another artist’s work, and I’m amazed all over again. This time it’s the work of New York-based Israeli painter Yigal Ozeri. I’m still having a hard time believing that these paintings aren’t actually photographs of women.

Seriously, there’s no denying the fact that Ozeri’s taken hyperrealism to a whole new level. You can’t spot a single brushstroke in these photograph-inspired paintings, that’s how perfect his work is. He starts each piece by photographing beautiful women in nature-themed sceneries, while staying hidden at a safe distance from his models. Back at his studio, he alters the shots with Photoshop and prints them out. Using the prints as a reference, Ozeri then spends days recreating them with oil on canvas

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The Americana municipality, in São Paulo, Brazil, is home to a very unique subculture – the Confederados. The members of this culture are the descendants of 10,000 Confederate refugees who chose to leave the United States after they lost the American Civil War. Today, the Confederados make up 10 percent of Americana’s population; they’ve managed to preserve the unique culture and traditions belonging to the Confederate South of the 19th century.

When the war ended in 1865, many former Confederates were unwilling to live under the rule of the Union. They were unhappy with the destruction of their pre-war lifestyle that included slavery. So when Emperor Dom Pedro II of Brazil sent recruiters to the Southern States of Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, South Carolina and Texas to pick up experienced cotton farmers, many disgruntled Southerners jumped at the opportunity.

Slavery was still in existence in Brazil at the time, which greatly attracted the Southerners. Combined with their humiliating defeat at the hands of the Union, many felt that moving out of America was the only option available to them. Dom Pedro, who wanted to encourage the cultivation of cotton, made an offer they could not refuse – he offered them a package of tax breaks and grants, as well as a section of the Brazilian forest that they could call home. It was more than they could ever ask for – a chance to start over and create a new community with Southern values.

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One-year-old Kimberly Gordon was born under the most unusual circumstances. She was delivered last year by emergency C-section after her mother was struck by lightning in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Surprisingly, the miracle baby survived the electrical jolt, but with consequences – she now has the most adorable static hair that stands perfectly straight.

The bizarre event took place on July 4 last year, when Ian Gordon and his 38-weeks pregnant girlfriend Kendra Villanueva were outdoors watching the Independance Day fireworks. It began to rain and a thunderstorm soon followed, and the couple were forced to run for cover. As they passed under a tree, both of them were struck by lightning, knocking them out instantly.

According to Ian, the lightning traveled through his ears, jumped to Kendra’s body and left through her thumb. “They were both awake and looking at us,” said Lt. Ryan Perry of the Albuquerque Fire Department, who had rushed to their rescue. “But we knew that there was underlying injuries that we possibly couldn’t see that we needed to treat quickly and get them to the hospital.”

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Most DIY projects are fun and interesting, but here’s one that’s downright disturbing – a lonely Japanese kid converted his shower head into a doll that he now claims is his girlfriend. He recently posted step-by-step pictures of his project on the popular Chinese social networking website Weibo, where they went viral almost instantly. Some of the photographs of the ‘girlfriend’ are actually pretty creepy, so viewer discretion is advised.

To create his bizarre mannequin-girlfriend, 19-year-old Kiyuu Oikawa first taped a human mask onto his shower head. He then attached a balloon-stuffed piece of lingerie for the body and made stringy arms out of packing tape and wire. He painted the face pink, threw on a wig, and his girlfriend was pretty much ready.

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Notebook manufacturer Magnus Ferreus recently launched a quirky new product – the Onion Note. True to its name, the notebook will make you cry every time you scribble something in it. Thankfully, it doesn’t stink like an onion, it only has the same effect as cutting one.

The pages of the Onion Note have been treated with allyl propyl compounds – the same ones found in onion oil, which are responsible for bringing people to tears. You don’t have to chop up the pages for the oil to work, though. The heat caused by the friction of writing on the page will evaporate the compounds, releasing tear-inducing gas into your face.

According to Thomas, the CEO of Magnus Ferreus, we all spend a lot of time writing in notebooks, but we’ve never been emotionally moved by them. So he wanted to change that by introducing a revolutionary product we could use to ‘make notes in a dramatic way’. And what better way to do that than with an onion?

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Tokyo used to have one of the best nightclub scenes in the world, but all that has changed dramatically ever since the local police started enforcing a very old law that had been ignored for at least half a century. According to this law, commercial establishments cannot host dance parties unless they have a valid license.

In order to obtain such a license, venues must have at least 66 square meters of unobstructed floor space for dancing. They also need to make sure that all dancing stops at 1 am, which the law says is the curfew. Failure to comply with the rules could get club owners into serious trouble, including getting thrown in jail for weeks, or having their businesses closed down.

“Dancing is not a crime,” pointed out Ryo Isobe, a music writer from Tokyo. “But the current situation can easily make people believe that dancing is a crime. Under this law, there are almost no legal nightclubs in Japan. All-night dance parties are against the law.”

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I wouldn’t blame you if you thought these were just simple photos of discarded trash. I was fooled as well, until I actually read the story behind them. In reality, these are pieces of wood expertly painted by super-talented Kentucky artist Tom Pfannerstill. From crushed Starbucks coffee cups to crumpled Goldfish cracker packages, he is able to create perfect replicas of all sorts of garbage he finds on the streets.

Tom calls the series ‘From the Street’; he starts off by choosing a real piece of trash and traces the outline of the object onto a flat piece of wood. Once his wooden canvas is ready, he fills it in with acrylic paints, in painstaking detail. The two-dimensional painting soon comes to life, looking exactly like a piece of trash it was modeled after.

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Last winter, when Jeremiah Heaton’s daughter Emily asked him if she could be a real princess, the doting father didn’t have the heart to refuse. Even though he didn’t want to raise her hopes or make any false promises, he found himself agreeing to the outlandish request of a six-year-old.

“Over the winter, Emily and I were playing, and she has a fixation on princesses,” he said. “She asked me, in all seriousness, if she’d be a real princess someday. And I said she would.”

So Jeremiah spent hours scouring the internet for a suitable piece of unclaimed territory. He focused his search on the Latin term ‘terra nullius’, which means ‘land belonging to no one’. After several months of searching, he has now managed to locate an 800-square mile desert in Africa, thousands of miles away from his home in Abingdon, Virginia.

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The Mueller family have a unique living arrangement – they are, in fact, part of an ‘elite’ group of middle-class nomads who have agreed to a very peculiar lease agreement. They get to live in for-sale luxury homes at dirt cheap prices, but of course, there’s a catch – the house must always be in squeaky clean, in case it gets bought, and they have to be ready to move out immediately.

So while the Muellers get to enjoy the very best of houses, they need to keep things meticulously clean and maintain a precisely pleasant temperature. The mirrors have to be crystal clear at all times, and the bed needs to look like it’s never been slept in. They need special approval if they want to have more than 10 people over. When a prospective buyer wants to view the house, the family needs to disappear. And when the property is sold, they’ve got to pack and move to the next luxury destination.

It seems like a bizarre way to live, but there’s a very specific reason for it – according to real estate companies, houses sell better when they’re being lived in. Families like the Muellers lend an unmistakable energy to an otherwise empty home. The effect of their presence is so great that home-staging firms say they’re able to sell homes faster and for more money. The Muellers pay the firm about $1,200 for rent and household bills, and the firm reimburses costs every time they need to move.

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