Catching fish as small as a penny would be nothing short of embarrassing for the average fisherman, but in Japan it’s a source of pride, as in the old art of Tanago Fishing, the smaller the fish is, the bigger a catch it represents.

Most fishermen believe that the bigger the fish they catch, the greater their fishing skill is, which is why you routinely see them posing only with very large fish, and hear them telling tales about veritable sea monsters that only narrowly eluded them. However, things are very different in Japan, a country where minimalism is pervasive in all aspects of life, from gardening, to architecture. Fishing makes no exception, so it’s not very surprising that fishermen judge their skills not by how large their catch is, but by how small it is.

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Beijing-based technology company Kuaishou recently sparked outrage on Chinese social media after videos of digital timers over employee toilet stalls went viral online.

The photos showed digital timers hanging over each cubicle and small sensors installed on the cubicle doors to trigger the timers. Chinese social media users slammed the company for monitoring and timing its office workers’ time in the toilet to increase productivity and its profits, with some calling the practice a breach of human rights and privacy. Some on the other hand defended the company, saying that some employees abused bathroom breaks, using it as an opportunity to waste time on their phones.

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A loyal pooch reportedly managed to walk 60 km back to his home after being forgotten by his owners in a highway service area 26 days prior.

According to local media, the 7-year-old dog, named Dou Dou, was forgotten in a by a Chinese family in a motorway service area when they stopped for a break on a long trip. Apparently, no one noticed that Dou Dou was missing until they arrived at their destination, several hours later. They reportedly went back to look for the pet the very next day, but found no trace of him. Luckily, the fluffy canine was able to return home by himself, after nearly a month. He was filthy and emaciated after the 60km walk, but otherwise ok.

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A middle-aged Vietnamese man is being hailed as a TikTok phenomenon after achieving stardom on popular video app TikTok by doing nothing but staring into his smartphone camera.

With streaming and video content being so popular these days, wannabe influencers really have to work hard and find new ways of attracting and entertaining audiences. Or so they say… In reality, it seems some people can make it by doing nothing but turning on their phone cameras and recording themselves literally doing nothing at all. Don’t believe me? Just check out Vietnamese “uncle” Anh Tran Tan, whose TikTok profile features only clips of him staring into the camera, with Vietnamese music playing in the background.

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Claw machines are infamous for being deceptively easy, but actually excruciatingly difficult to master, and one Japanese man found out just how difficult after failing to win a single price after 200 consecutive tries.

Twitter user Ogarun, who happens to be a big fan of claw machine games, or “UFO Cathers” as they are called in Japan, visited an arcade earlier this month and was so frustrated with one claw machine there that he ended up calling the police. He reportedly tried his luck 200 times in a row and failed to catch a single price, and after getting into an argument with the staff at the arcade, he called the authorities. Interestingly, the police asked the arcade operator to demonstrate that the machine could be beat, but the guy failed 300 times in a row as well…

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A Chinese steel production company recently made international news headlines for offering 4,116 of its employees brand new cars as bonus for surpassing profit targets for the fifth consecutive year.

On October 1st, Jiangxi West Dajiu Iron & Steel Corporation organized an epic event to celebrate its success and reward employees for contributing to its yearly growth. It was reported that the company had reported increasing profits for the last five years, and management wanted to do something special to thank the staff, so they decided to give each one of them a car. A total of 4,116 new vehicles – 2,933 Jiangling Ford Territory and 1,183 FAW-Volkswagen Magotan – were distributed in batches in the weeks prior to the National Day holiday.

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A 29-year-old woman in China has suffered paralysis in the left side of her face after having wrinkle fillers injected at a cosmetic clinic. Doctors fear that the symptoms may be permanent.

On September 12, Ms. Zhao, from Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province. went to the local cosmetic hospital for a procedure she had undergone several times in the past – filler injections to remove some visible wrinkles on her face. Only this time things didn’t go as smoothly as usual. On September 19, a week after getting the filler injections, the 29-year-old woman woke up with half-face paralysis. Her mouth was crooked, she had a permanent frown in her left brow, and she couldn’t completely close her mouth and her left eye. She is still unable to chew food correctly or drink liquids, and has to use a straw.

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Mikishi, a 25-year-old girl from Japan, has been getting a lot of attention on Asian social media lately, because of her drastic plastic surgery transformation.

Ever since taking to Twitter to confess that her appearance is the result of several bouts of plastic surgery, back in March of this year, 25-year-old Mikishi has become somewhat of a poster-girl for early plastic surgery. She had her first cosmetic procedure, a facial reshaping, on the first day after graduating high-school, and she has since turned to plastic surgery several more times, spending about 4 million yen ($40,000) in the process. But she considers it money well spent, as plastic surgery changed her life, giving her back her self-esteem and helping her lead a happy life, instead of sinking into a depression. Today, Mikishi actually advocates for plastic surgery for people who really feel like they need it, and she has even founded a company that provides consultancy  services to such individuals.

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A Chinese woman who underwent a CT scan following a minor car accident learned that she had two metallic needles embedded deep in her brain.

The 29-year-old woman from Zhengzhou had been involved in a car accident and was advised to get a CT scan to make sure that there was no damage to her head. Luckily, the investigation showed no trauma related to the accident, but it did reveal something much stranger: two needles, approximately 5cm in length and 4.9mm in diameter embedded deep in her brain. The strange thing was that the needles were not related to the car accident, as there was no visible skull or scalp injury, and the woman had no recollection of any serious head trauma at any point in her life.

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Chinese media recently reported the fascinating story of a young boy who, after witnessing his father’s murder at the hands of a neighbor, when he was 9-years-old, spent the next 17 years trying to catch the culprit.

Looking back on that fateful day of August 9th, 2000, Xiang Mingqian wishes he had never thrown that stone that eventually got his father killed… He was only 9 at the time, playing with his neighbor, Zhang Jun in a ditch, by the side of an old road in Changba Town, Zhenxiong County. Jun had thrown a stone into a puddle, and the splash had hit Xiang Mingqian, so he decided to return the favor by throwing an even bigger stone into the water. It was just a childish game, but the quarrel that erupted between the two boys would eventually involve both boys’ families and result in a tragic death…

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A fifteen-year-old boy and a twelve-year-old girl in Indonesia were reportedly forced to marry after breaking a local custom that forbids dating after sunset.

Child marriage has been a controversial issue in Indonesia for a long time, and last week it was once again brought into the limelight by the story of a young teenage couple forced to marry after only four days of dating. According to multiple media reports, 15-year-old Suhaimi and his 12-year-old girlfriend, Nur Herawati, were pressured into the marriage by the girl’s parents, after allegedly breaking customary dating laws, which forbids young couples to return home after dusk. Since the teenage boy brought his young girlfriend home after 7:30 pm earlier this month, her parents gave them no choice but to marry…

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Laungi Bhuiyan, a pensioner from the Indian state of Bihar, has become known as “Canal Man” after it was revealed that he spent 30 years of his life digging a 3-kilometer-long water canal, all by himself, using hand tools.

The remote village of Kothilawa, in the Lahthua area of Gaya district, had always suffered water shortages, with most of the rainwater falling in the nearby hills flowing into the river, instead of towards the village. This was one of the reason that some residents decided to move away and start anew, but one man decided to stay behind and fix the problem instead of running away from it. 30 years ago, local man Laungi Bhuiyan decided to take matters into his own hands and dig a canal to bring the water from the hills to a pond near his village. No one offered to help, so for three long decades he dug the 4-feet wide and 3-feet deep canal himself, using only whatever hand tools he had available.

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The Qiyi City Forest Garden residential complex in Chengdu, China, was supposed to be a green paradise for its residents, but two years on, the vertical forest concept has turned into a nightmare.

Back in 2018, the idea of living among dozens of exotic plants proved very exciting for the people of Chengdu, one of China’s most polluted cities, and by April of 2020 all 826 units in the Qiyi City Forest Garden complex had been sold. Each unit had up to 20 types of plants growing on the balcony, and filtering the city’s air and noise pollution. However, instead of an urban paradise, the eight-tower complex looks like a scene out of a post-apocalyptic film, with balconies overrun by sprawling greenery and plagues of mosquitoes.

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Hongeo is a bizarre South Korean dish with a pungent aroma that most people describe as a mix of dirty public toilet and wet laundry left untended for days.

Made from skate, a bottom-dwelling ray fish, Hongeo is considered by far South Korea’s smelliest food. It’s so stinky that many South Koreans wouldn’t come near it, let alone put in their mouths. However, its many fans can’t get enough of the ammonia fumes it emanates and swear that once you get used to it, it’s impossible to replace with anything else. But feasting on this stinky delicacy comes with a social cost, as the smell tends to linger in the mouth as well as on clothes. In fact, hongeo-specialized restaurants advise customers to seal their jackets in plastic bags before eating, and spray them with deodorant before leaving.

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Chinese social media has been abuzz about the controversial story of a couple who took their own daughter to court in order to make her raise her toddler brother, because they couldn’t afford to.

According to several news reports in China, a couple who for several years had survived on their child’s monthly allowance alone decided to have a second child. They soon realized that they couldn’t actually afford to take care of the child, so they asked their 22-year-old daughter to raise the toddler on their behalf. The girl, referred to only as Le Le in the media, had managed to support herself through college and was dreaming about building a career for herself when she got the news of her new “job” from her parents. She flat out refused to bring up her brother by herself, so her parents sued her.

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