Nights out on the town are much better when shared with friends or loved ones, but while most bars and clubs around the world welcome groups, one particular Tokyo establishment only welcomes parties of one.

Hitori, a small bar in Tokyo’s Shinjuku neighborhood, has a very particular admission system – everyone is welcome as long as they come alone, no groups allowed. They make that abundantly clear from the front door, where a sign informs would-be patrons that this is a “bar limited to parties of one”. If you and your work buddies want to get a beer after a long day, or if you’re on a date with a special someone, this is most definitely not the place for you. But that doesn’t mean Hitori is a bar for loners or the socially awkward, quite the contrary…

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A Chinese woman who spent 13,000 yuan ($1,850) on cosmetic double eyelid surgery has become unable to fully close her eyes, even when she sleeps.

Around 50 of Asians are born without a visible eyelid crease above their lash line, which basically means they have what is called a “monolid”. In 1896, to address this aesthetic issue, Japanese surgeon Mikamo developed a procedure called blepharoplasty or double eyelid surgery, which has since been performed millions of times. It’s the most requested plastic surgery in Asia, and in countries like South Korea, it’s been normalized as a way of becoming more attractive. But while the results of double eyelid surgery can indeed be visually appealing, in some cases it can have some really nasty consequences, like leaving patients unable to fully close their eyes.

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Staff at a popular zoo in Guanxi, China, have been accused of animal cruelty and trying to swindle visitors, after it was revealed that they had glued a basket to the carapace of a large tortoise so superstitious people could throw coins in it.

Throwing coins at specific objects, from temple bells and statues to airplane engines before a flight, is believed to bring good luck, but this superstition sometimes crosses certain boundaries. Case in point, this African spurred tortoise at Nanning Zoo, in the provincial capital of Guangxi, that had a straw basket glued to its carapace for people to throw coins into. Photos of the animal crawling around in its enclosure with the basket sticking up went viral on Chinese social media and attracted criticism both from animal lovers and those who saw the gimmick as a way to swindle zoo visitors.

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Japanese Police arrested a man suspected of assaulting a young pop star he was obsessed with, after allegedly figuring out where she lives by analyzing her social media photos, specifically the reflections in her pupils.

Hibiki Sato, a 26-year-old unemployed man from Saitama, a city north of Tokyo, has been arrested for allegedly attacking Ena Matsuoka, a 21-year-old pop singer with the group Tenshi Tsukinukeni Yomi. It is believed Sato was able to narrow down the area of Tokyo Ms. Matsuoka lived in by going through her social media profiles, enlarging her photos and analyzing the reflections in her pupils. He was thus able to recognize some Tokyo scenery and a bus stop, which he then located using Google Street view. Some sources claim that the alleged stalker had even approximated the storey Matsuoka lived on based on the windows and the angle that sunlight hit her eyes.

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Yan Junhai, a talented street artist from the Chinese city of Changsha, in Hunan Province, has been getting a lot of attention online thanks to his ability to create detailed busts of passers-by in a mater of minutes.

Junhai recently rose to internet fame after a video of him working his magic on the streets of Changsha went viral on Chinese social media. Posted by CGTN, the short video shows him moulding pieces of clay into shockingly detailed busts of random people on the street. Yan Junhai only uses his bare hands and a fine clay sculpting knife, in  what seems like dim light, but the results of his work are nothing short of awe-inspiring.

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A male Russian Blue cat who was left to roam freely in a pet hotel in Sichuan, China, ended up needing a glucose drip to recover after mating with at least five female cats in just a few hours.

News of the cat’s exploits was shared on Chinese social media by his owner, a certain Mr. Zhao, after receiving complaints from the pet hotel staff. Apparently, workers there neglected to feed his pet Russian Blue, named Xiaopi, and simply let him out of his cage to roam freely with all the other felines at the hotel, despite being explicitly told that he had not been neutered. Zhao wrote that the staff simply opened the cats cages and went home, leaving them to their own devices for the whole night.

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One of the weirdest questions you can find on law forums is “can I sue for a broken condom?” (don’t ask me how I know that). Well, a woman in China went even further than that, suing the man who delivered the condoms she ordered too late, thus causing her unwanted pregnancy.

Chinese media recently reported the somewhat funny case of a young woman from Xuzhou, in Jiangsu province, who allegedly sued a deliveryman for bringing the box of condos she ordered online eight minutes late, and thus indirectly causing her to become pregnant. Apparently, the woman, referred to as Su (pseudonym), had her boyfriend over one evening in August, to watch a movie together. The movie lasted longer than expected, so the young man ended up spending the night. And that’s how the trouble started.

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Looking at 22-year-old Ian Francis Manga’s face it’s easy to see why some people have a hard time believing he is a kindergarten teacher, and not a student himself. Luckily, he towers over the children, but his face still looks uncanny.

A teacher in San Jose Del Monte, the Philippines’ Bulacan province, Ian Francis Manga has always looked younger than his years, and that became even more apparent in middle-school, when all the other boys started growing mustaches and armpit hair, but he did not experience any of the changes of puberty. In fact, his facial features remain those of a very young boy, but because he never suffered bullying from his schoolmates, he never felt the need to see a doctor and learn if there was anything wrong with him.

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While most human identification technology companies choose to focus on facial recognition, one Chinese startup claims to have developed  much more accurate identification system based on micro traits of veins within human hand.

Developed by MELUX, AirWave is an incredibly efficient identification system that is said to be a million times more accurate than facial recognition technology. There are only 80 to 280 feature points on the face that artificial intelligence can asses when scanning an individual, but AirWave is able to scan more than a million micro-feature points in the palm of the hand in under 0.3 seconds, making it virtually impossible to cheat. A simple swipe of the palm over a special sensor is all that’s required to get an ultra-accurate authentication and/or authorization in real time.

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News on an Indonesia toddler who has been living on brewed coffee for the last eight months, because her young parents were too poor to afford formula or cow’s milk, recently shocked millions in East Asia.

Hadijah Haura, a 14-month-old girl from the village of Tonro Lima Village, in Indonesia’s West Sulawesi province, consume 3 baby bottles of coffee – around 1.5 liters – every day. That’s more than most grown-ups. She’s been consuming the caffeine-rich drink daily since she was just six-months-old, because her young parents couldn’t afford to buy milk for her. Hadijah has been practically living on coffee for half her life, but appears to be growing at a normal rate and hasn’t had any serious medical problems yet. Her parents are aware that coffee is not fit for a toddler, but claims that they had no choice, because they had nothing else to give their daughter.

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It’s not very common for small ponds to have their own Instagram accounts, let alone tens of thousands of followers, but then again Umbul Ponggok is not your usual village pond.

Located in Indonesia’s Central Java region, Umbul Ponggok is a small pond measuring just 20 meters by 50 meters, but boasting the cleanest water imaginable. It is continuously fed with fresh water from 40 different springs, at a rate of 800 liters per second, so the water is always crystal clear. It’s this fascinating property that makes Umbul Ponggok an ideal location for underwater selfies, and in the age of Instagram you’d best believe people are taking advantage of it.

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Most female fashion models start their careers in their late teens and retire in their early 30’s, but 96-year-old Alice Pang is not your ordinary fashion model. She started modelling at 93, so you could say she’s still a beginner.

A resident of Hong Kong, Alice always liked dressing well and looking elegant, but never actually considered a career in modelling. But her granddaughter always thought she had it in her, so when she saw an online ad for senior models of 65, she sent in Alice’s pictures and she was chosen for a photo shoot. Never one to back away from a challenge, Pang decided to give it a shot and even though she knew noting about modelling, she had all the natural qualities to succeed at it. Today, she is recognized as one of the best senior models in Asia, as well as the oldest.

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We’ve featured several heartbreaking stories of faithful canines waiting for their owners in the same spot for years at a time, never to see them again, but this is one of those rare stories with a happy end. After spending four years waiting for his human masters, a lost dog in Thailand was finally reunited with them thanks to social media.

The story of Leo, a stray dog who has spent the last four years of his life waiting at an intersection in the Thai city of Khon Kaen, went viral at the beginning of this month, after a Facebook user uploaded photos of the canine, sharing that he had seen the animal sitting in the same spot every day, as if waiting for someone. They originally thought the dog had been abandoned, but then realized that he looked well-fed, so he asked around about him. It turned out that the dog had indeed been spending most of his time around that intersection, but a woman had been coming around regularly to bring him food and water. The plot thickened…

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A soon-to-be father in China recently made international news headlines after using 2,000 packets of expired instant noodles to build a playhouse for his unborn son.

Photos of the unusual playhouse went viral online quickly after being posted on social media by the builder, a certain Mr. Zhang, from Huadian county, in Northeast China’s Jilin province. He was swiftly tracked down by Chinese reporters and revealed that he had spent four days building the edible structure out of thousands of of out-of-date noodle packets fixed together with glue.

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When it comes to buying a fashionable handbag, there’s one figure most young Chinese women turn to for advice – Mr. Bags. With millions on followers on China’s most popular social networks and many of the world’s biggest bag brands fighting to gain his favor, this 27-year-old really has the Chinese bag game on lock.

As a student of the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles, Tao Liang (Mr. Bags’ real name) spent most of his free time shopping on Rodeo Drive. While most of his fellow Asian colleagues developed hobbies like playing basketball or video games, he couldn’t get enough of luxury bags. He went on shopping sprees with friends, educated himself on bag culture, followed the biggest trends in fashion and posted his opinions on the hottest bags on various social media. The son of financiers, Mr’ Bags never imagined his passion for bags would one day catapult him to the top of China’s fashion influencers, but that’s exactly what happened.

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