Located in the basement of a department store in Kawasaki, Japan, the world’s smallest escalator only has five steps and measures 83.4 centimeters (32.8 inches).

The escalator is one of humanity’s most useful inventions, allowing people to effortlessly travel between floors in places where elevators would be impractical, but the world’s smallest escalator is actually a useless oddity that holds no real purpose than to claim the Guinness record for the world’s smallest escalator. Known as the ‘Petitcalator’ or ‘Puchicalator’, this unusual contraption is located in the basement of More’s Department Store in the city of Kawasaki and is considered more of a tourist attraction than a useful piece of technology. Yes, it’s useable, but it measures just 83.4 centimeters so it offers no real benefit to whoever is riding it over traditional stairs.

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A Taiwanese plastic surgeon has been getting a lot of attention for sharing a video of performing a vasectomy on himself on social media, as a gift to his wife.

Chen Wei-nong, a father-of-three who works at a plastic surgery clinic in Taipei City, went viral this week after sharing a rather unusual clip on his Facebook and Instagram profiles. To put his wife’s mind at ease, the young doctor decided to get a vasectomy, and to make sure there was no risk of botching the procedure, he performed it himself, recording the entire process for educational purposes. After presenting a list of 11 steps involved in the operation, Chen got local anesthesia and then started working on himself, so to speak. Because operating on yourself isn’t very common, a procedure that usually takes about 15 minutes ended up taking an hour, but it was a success.

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A Shanghai man was shocked to find the apartment he had rented out two years ago had been turned into a chicken coop and damaged beyond repair.

Imagine putting all of your savings into buying and renovating an apartment, and then renting it out for a small profit only to find out that the tenant has been using it to raise chickens. It sounds like a joke, but it’s the true story of a Chinese man who was recently alerted by his neighbors that there were strange noises and a foul smell emanating from the apartment he had rented out to a tenant two years ago. Content to receive the monthly rent on time, the man hadn’t checked the flat until last month when he was shocked to find it full of chickens roaming and flying around the place.

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A middle-aged Japanese man known as ‘Uncle Praise’ has been making a living by standing on the street and showering strangers with praises for a small fee.

Uncle Praise first made news headlines in Japan in September of last year when Fuji TV released a short documentary on his unique “profession”. The 43-year-old man reportedly used to work for a company in his hometown of Tochigi, but at one point in his life, he got so addicted to gambling that he lost both his family and his job. His father fell ill, he lost his job and couldn’t pay the mortgage anymore, his family eventually cut ties with him, and he found himself living on the street. It was a rude awakening that helped him beat his gambling addiction and really assess his life. The middle-aged man had always dreamed of being a street performer, but he had no special skills such as magic tricks or singing, so he came up with the idea of praising people for money.

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Every year, during the rainy season, a scenic road winding through China’s Poyang Lake like a mythical dragon becomes flooded, offering a unique driving and visual experience.

Yongwu Road is the only stretch of road connecting Wucheng, one of the oldest townships in China, to neighboring townships and counties. Part of the X219 county road, this 5.05 km piece of infrastructure was built straight through Poyang Lake, China’s largest freshwater lake, making it one of the most famous tourist attractions of Jiangxi Province. But Yongwu is most popular with tourists at the onset of the rainy season, during Spring when the water level starts rising. When the level of the surrounding lake reaches about 18.6 meters, water submerges segments of the road, turning Yongwu Road into “China’s most beautiful road under the water.”

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Liu Liange, former Chairman of the Bank of China, allegedly convinced his son to break up with his fiancée just so he could court and marry her instead.

Liu Liange most recently made news headlines in November of last year when he was issued a suspended death sentence with a two-year reprieve for accepting 121 million yuan ($17 million) in bribes and issuing illegal loans of over 3.32 billion yuan ($450 million) during his tenure Chairman of the Bank of China, but he previously became known for his love of young women. After divorcing his first wife, Liange remarried three times, with people remarking that his wives got younger and more attractive each time, culminating in his controversial fourth marriage to his son’s ex-fiancée.

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Rain Report Cafe in Seoul is a unique cafe where it rains perpetually every 15 minutes and patrons are offered umbrellas, rubber boots, and raincoats.

If you find nothing more relaxing than a cup of hot coffee on a rainy day, you’ll probably love the concept of Rain Report Cafe, a South Korean cafe where it rains heavily every 15 minutes. Rain is definitely an unusual concept to design a cafe around but judging by the very positive Google review score this place currently has, Rain Report is definitely a very special place. Nestled in the middle of a residential area in Itaewon, Rain Report is almost completely decked in black and lined with bamboo trees, which really makes you feel like you’re outside the busy South Korean capital when the downpour starts. And that happens very frequently.

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A 21-year-old student from Taizhou, China, managed to extort over 60 different hotels for free stays and financial compensation by creating fake hygiene problems and promising to take actions against them.

Jiang, a resident of Taizhou City, in China’s Zhejiang Province, came up with a particularly gross way of funding his traveling habit when he became short on funds. In September of last year, after deciding to put off university enrollment in favor of using the tuition to travel around China, the 21-year-old man quickly saw his funds diminish, which forced him to come up with an alternative way of covering his expenses. After analyzing his expenditures, Jiang realized that hotels were particularly hard on his wallet, so he came up with a creatively devious way of blackmailing hotel staff into giving him accommodation for free.

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The whole of Thailand was shaken by the death of a young singer as a result of getting a neck-twisting massage that left her with a herniated spine disk in her neck.

Doctors in Thailand started issuing warnings against getting neck-twisting massages after the tragic death of Phing Chyada, a young woman from Udon Thani who reportedly died from complications related to neck massage sessions she underwent at a studio in her home city. According to Chyada’s mother, she started experiencing shoulder pain a couple of months ago, and instead of going to a hospital, she opted to visit a local massage studio. She had always loved massages, so she thought it would be a good way to relieve pain. Only two days after the neck-twisting massage session, the young woman started feeling pain in her neck as well, and things only got worse from there.

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A Japanese man was recently admitted to trespassing onto other people’s properties over 1,000 times as a hobby because he found it thrilling and exhilarating.

A couple of weeks ago, Fukuoka Prefectural Police arrested a 37-year-old man on suspicion of trespassing onto a couple’s property in the city of Daizafu. Little did the police know that this had hardly been an isolated incident and the man was a serial trespasser who had done it countless times for his personal enjoyment. During questioning, the man, identified as Yuta Sugawara, not only admitted to trespassing onto the couple’s property when he thought they were away but casually told investigators that this was a hobby of his and that he had trespassed onto other people’s properties over 1,000 times. Sugawara was apprehended by the victims of his latest trespassing attempt, who saw him on their land and chased after him when he ran. The man managed to immobilize the culprit while his wife called the police.

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A Chinese man bored with his daily life recently got detained for posting a “wanted order” in his name on social media and bragging about the countless crimes he had allegedly committed.

Can you imagine being so bored that you start posting made-up crimes online and posting as a criminal mastermind, hoping to get some kind of attention? That’s exactly what a man from northern China did last month, taking to social media to spread lies about himself, including that he had recently extorted 30 million yuan ($4million) from a company, that he owned a firearm and ammunition, and challenging people to find him if they wanted a 30,000 yuan ($4,000) reward. His post went viral, but it also caught the attention of Chinese law enforcement monitoring social media, and he ended up behind bars for his unusual stunt.

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Osaka-based showerhead maker Science Co. has developed a cutting-edge washing machine for humans aptly named “Mirai Ningen Sentakuki” (Human Washing Machine of the Future).

At the 1970 Osaka Kansai Expo, Japanese tech giant Sanyo Electric Co., now Panasonic Holdings Corp., launched the world’s first-ever human washing machine. Its futuristic egg shape and bubble technology captured people’s imagination and drew huge crowds to the manufacturer’s booth. Yasuaki Aoyama was one of the many people who got to see Sanyo’s washing machine in action. He was only a curious fourth-grader at the time, but the feeling of awe stuck with him all through adulthood, and today, as the chairman of Science Co., a company specializing in bathtubs and showerheads, he is preparing to launch his very own modern washing machine for humans.

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The newly-opened Surat Diamond Bourse in Gujarat, India, is a massive office complex made up of nine rectangular buildings interconnected through a central “spine”.

For 80 years, the Pentagon held the title of the world’s largest building, but it was recently dethroned by the Surat Diamond Bourse, a massive diamond-cutting and trading hub, that exceeds the Pentagon’s area of 66,73,624 sqft by almost 55,000 sqft. The sprawling 15-story complex covers more than 35 acres of land on the outskirts of Surat, in India’s Gujarat state and features over 4,700 office spaces and workshops, as well as 131 large elevators that make traveling between the nine buildings of the Surat Diamond Bourse a breeze. Interestingly, surpassing the Pentagon was never the plan; instead, Indian architecture firm Morphogenesis just struggled to meet the huge demand for space.

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A popular Chinese clothing store sparked controversy by showcasing its products on female models walking on treadmills rather than old-fashioned mannequins.

You could say the marketing team at Chinese designer brand store ITIB was thinking outside the box when it decided to replace plastic mannequins with live models walking on small treadmills. The official explanation was that the new way of displaying garments really allowed customers to see how they fit when moving rather than in a stationary position, but few doubted that it was just an ingenious gimmick meant to draw attention. The plan worked perfectly, as videos of the young models mounted on small pedestals outside ITIB flagship store in Hangzhou spread like wildfire on social media, while crowds of people gathered to watch them walk on their little treadmills. However, what the designer collective brand probably didn’t anticipate was the wave of criticism regarding the “dehumanization” and exploitation of the young models.

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A 47-year-old Chinese woman who spent most of her life searching for her young brother’s cruel killer recently reached her goal, putting her target in prison after nearly three decades.

Li Haiyu’s heartbreaking tale of revenge began in December of 1992 when the woman’s father and another man started arguing about wages. Things got so heated between them that at one point, the other man decided to get back at Haiyu’s father by kidnapping his 9-year-old son, Li Huanping, as he left school. Police were called and a search for the boy and his kidnapper was organized in the area around their village in Hunan Province. Li Huanping’s clothes were found on the outskirts of a nearby village, but his body was only found in February of the following year, by which time his kidnapper had disappeared. The police report concluded that he had been stabbed and abandoned in a sugarcane field, but his father didn’t tell his wife and five daughters the truth until his dying day, letting them hold on to the hope of one day being reunited with Li Huanping.

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