Japan opens ice hotel, tourists rush to book rooms.

Following the model of norththern-European countries like Sweden, Japan opened an ice hotel in Alpha Resort Tomamu’s ice village, on Hokkaido Island. The living-rooms, bath-rooms and bed-rooms are all made out of ice, and it costs two people 80,000 yen ($696) to spend the night.

Dinner is served on an ice plate while drinks come in ice glasses, so you have to sip them quickly, before they freeze.

Japan’s ice hotel is not for everyone of course, if you can’t handle the cold, you better not pack your bags just yet. Guests sleep dressed appropriately , in layers and thick winter jackets. If you think you can handle freezing cold, the hotel closes on February 15, so hurry up.

The ice hotel of Hokkaido looks good but it still doesn’t come close to Sweden’s ice hotel.

Photo credits: Xinhua/Reuters

The traditional Neuburg Ice Swimming event is considered the biggest swimming event in Europe.

This year over 2,000 brave swimmers from all over Germany gathered in Neuburg an der Donau for the 40th anniversary of the event. Neuburg Ice Swimming 2009 took place on January 31. Europe’s biggest swimming extravaganza featured swimmers desguised as sea-gods, frogs, clowns and other crazy things, and funny messages referring to new US President Barack Obama and the international financial crysis.

As you can see from the photos, Neuburg an der Donau hosted quite a fun event this year.Seems like a breeze compared to the ice swimming in Russia

Photo credits: Johannes Simon (Getty Images)

The chocolate fountain at the Bellagio, in Las Vegas is simply delicious.

Rising 27 feet above ground, and touching the ceiling, the chocolate funtain in Jean Philippe Patisserie displays a spectacular series of small chocolate waterfalls, filled with white, dark and milk chocolate.

Over 2,100 punds of tasty melted chocolate circulate through this wonder of engineering, at a rate of 120 quats per minute. Designed by award-winning pastry cheff Jean Philippe Maury, the chocolate fountain of the Bellagio took a year and a half in planning and design alone.

Sadly the whole fountain is enclosed by a glass wall, so no, you can’t dip your finger in it for a taste. Maury says the glass maximizes the color of the three types of flowing chocolate.

Photo source: 1, 2

For some Americans the Super Bowl was not the most important sports even of the past week, the Wing Bowl was.

You gotta love Buffalo wings, they’re delicious, but would you get up at 5 in the morning to eat as man as you can?That’s what the contestants of Wing Bowl 2009 had to do in order to win the 17the edition of the event, on January 30.

23-year-old first-timer Jonathan Squibb managed to eat his way through 203 delicious chicken wings, 23 more than the runer-up. Squibb‘s prizes were a brand new Mini Cooper and a very good meal, of course. he said he’ll be back next year to defend his title.

Wing Bowl 2009 took place at the Wachovia Center, in Philadelphia, a town that is said came up with this competition 17 years ago because the locals were getting tired of their sports teams never winning competitions.

I’d enter Wing Bowl over The Big Eat any day.

Image Credits: William Thomas Cain (Getty Images)

Who better to make time sand than one of the world’s most famous time-piece manufacturers, Rolex.

In order for an hourglass to  acurately measure time, its sand would have to be of uniform size and texture. Michael Marcovici used this kind of sand in one of his latest artworks. Famous for stacking 10 million $100 bills on 12 pallets, to offer a view at $1,000,000,000, Marcovici now stacked 972 Rolex Time Sand bags, on 18 pallets. Each bag weighed 30 kg and it would last for 30 days, flowing through an ordinary hourglass.

All the sand bags, weighing over 29,000 kg, represent a generous estimation of an average lifetime, 81 years. The second photo shows the amount of life already consumed by the artist, 39 years.

via Artmarcovici

One of the oldest castles in Scotland, Kelburn is now also one of the most modern.

Kelburn castle was built in the 13th century, remodelled in the 16th century, and opened to the public, as a country park, in 1977. It’s one of many beautiful castles in Britain, but Kelburn stands out through its bizarre, grafitti-covered exterior. In 2007, after experts told him the outer facing would have to be replaced in order to prevent further damage to the castle walls, the Earl of Scotland invited grafitti artists to prove their skills on the walls.

The grafitti-painted walls of Kelburn Castle will be reconditioned in 2009 at the earliest, so you still have time to admire one of the most unusual-looking medieval castles in the world.

Photos via Hohota.net

Well Greenpeace is definitely not the most loved organization in Russia.

I don’t know exactly what that adorable human trash can told those guys from the “OMOH“(Russian Police), but one thing is for sure, they didn’t like it. So they decided to throw the poor protester in their van and take him to the gulag (or is it police station these days?), the way police handles peaceful protesters in any other democratic country.

So if you’re a member of Greenpeace and want to raise awareness on pollution and other environment issues, don’t go to Russia. Unless of course you’re going dressed as a Playboy bunny, they love those.

via English Russia

Doesn’t look like a very natural cake, I know, but what’s a few chemicals here and there.

i just thought I’d post the images of the whole “making a rainbow cake” process, but if you’re interested in getting the recipe and other pointers on baking one of these babies, visit Omnomicon.

Not sure if I could ever taste anything these colorful, even though it is a light cake, but I’d definitely like to wake up and take a look at it every morning. I’m sure it would brighten up my whole day.

Photo Credits: Omnomicon.com

Ever wondered what a professional camera looks like on the inside?

You know how merchants slice watermelons at the market, so you can see they are ripe? I think somebody used the same sales strategy on this professional camera. How else would you explain this oddity, a camera sliced in half. I can think of just one other possibility that makes everything possible, art. The weirder the exhibit, the more successful it is.

If you happen to know why someone would ruin a great camera like that, shre your knowledge with the rest of us.

Amazons don’t just live through legends and myths, they live in the real world.

French explorer Guillaume Herbaut stumbled upon a group of young amazons deep in the Ukrainean forest. They dress in traditional outfits of their people, study martial arts and live together, away from men, just like the ancient female warriors used to do.

The idol of these modern amazons is the Ukrainean prime-minister Iulia Timoshenko.

Just what we guys needed, another group of women who could kick our asses.

via English Russia

55 Mexican cooks worked hard to create the world’s largest cheesecake.

The giant cheesake was presented to the world on january 25, in Mexico City. It took the 55 cooks 60 hours to make, using almost a whole ton of cream cheese, nearly a ton of yogurt, 350 kg of pastry, 250 kg of sugar and 50 kg of butter. The final result was a 2 ton calorie bomb.

This was the first cheesecake record aknowledged by the Guinness Book of Records, so there wasn’t any competition. The  world’s largest cheesecake was sliced into pieces and given to over 20,000 people throughout Mexico City.

Photo credits: Luis Acosta/AFP/Getty Images

It may look dirty, but believe me it’s not what you think!

Sasha Grey plays the sexy Catholic school girl perfectly, but somehow that mechanic has nothing but pussy on his mind…the wrong kind of pussy.

Roadside Ass-sistance | Girls | SPIKE.com

Some people love anime heroes that much.

We all know how popular anime are worldwide, but especially in the coutry that invented them, Japan. Known as Itasha, the art of covering the body of a car with fictional anime characters, is very popular in the Land of the Rising Sun.

Gatherings to show off the coolest Itasha cars are held regularly, and the latest was organized in Nagara town, just north of Tokyo. Called “Winter 2009 Itasha Collection“, it was held on January 25 and brought together over 150 cool cars. A 20 million-yen Itasha car was reportedly also presented there.

Source [Mainichi via Bouncing Red Ball]

T-34, known as robocop, was developed by two Japanese tech firms, Tmsuk Co. and Alacom Co.

This smaller version of the popular 90s robotic super-hero travels with a speed of up to 10km/h and can be controlled by someone who sees real-time images through a cell-phone. The small robot is equipped with motion sensors that detect movement, and can hurl a net to trap the intruders.

The T-34 robocop is an improves on the common security sensors that often trigger false alarms. With the use of the built-in camera, anyone can examine the location from anywhere, via there mobile phones.

For the first time ever, a polar bear has been spotted floating on a small iceberg, in London.

It’s not ever day you see a polar bear floating on the river Thames, let alone one that is 100% recyclable. To celebrate the opening of Eden, a new natural history television channel, a sculpture of a stranded polar bear and his cub was comissioned and set afloat in Greenwich, southeast London.

The whole point of Eden‘s 16-foot-sculpture was to attract attention on a burning environemental issue, the melting of the polar bear‘s habitat. If extreme measures are not taken, the largest land predator on Earth could become extinct.

The recyclable polar bear was launched on the Thames on January 26, at 6:30 in the morning, and traveled for 7.5 miles before stopping beside Tower Bridge for a photo shoot.

via Planetsave.com