A Chinese woman recently decided to have a stomach reduction operation after seven years of taking weight loss pills and actually putting on 100 pounds more than when she started taking them.

25-year-old Xiaoli (pseudonim) started taking weight loss pills seven years ago, after watching a convincing commercial on TV. She weighed around 100 pounds at the time, but felt like she needed to lose a bit of weight, and if some pills could help her do that, than why not? The young woman recalls that the results were encouraging at first, but as soon as she stopped taking the pills, she not only put on all the pounds she had lost but added a few extra as well. Little did she know that this was the beginning of a vicious cycle that would see her spend around 200,000 yuan ($30,000) on various weight loss pills and custom diet plans over the next 7 years, only to have her weight double during that time.

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Body odor is a very serious issue, so serious in fact that there is actually a market for high-tech devices that alert users if they start to stink.

The problem with body odor is that you can’t really smell is on yourself, and in an exceptionally polite society like Japan’s that can put people in uncomfortable situations. Carrying a bottle of deodorant on you at all times during the summer is quite common in Japan, but putting on too much of that stuff too often can irritate the skin or stain clothing, so it’s not exactly a fool-proof solution. If only we had a way of knowing when we smell, and how bad… Thankfully, Japanese wellness device maker Tanita just unveiled its newest creation, a handheld smell checker that analyzes body odor and ranks its intensity on a scale of 1 to 10.

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Indonesian media has been buzzing with news of a woman declared missing over one and a half years ago, after being swept away by a large wave, who was allegedly found alive three days ago,on the same beach that she disappeared from, and wearing the exact same clothes she was wearing on the day of her disappearance.

52-year-old Nining Sunarsih was on vacation in Sukabumi, West Java, when she was swept away by a strong wave on Citepus Beach, and carried out to sea by strong currents. At the time, eyewitnesses said they heard the woman screaming and waving her hands for help, but they were too scared to go in after her. Search and rescue operations didn’t find any sign of her, until a week after the tragic disappearance, when a dead body was discovered in the area. They asked Nining’s family to come and identify the body, and even though it was reportedly in very bad condition, her relatives were convinced that it wasn’t her, because it lacked a distinctive birthmark on the abdomen, and the fingernails looked very different.

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The Japanese are no strangers to unusual competitions, so I guess it makes sense that they’ve found a way to turn a rage-induced reaction like flipping a table into an annual contest.

On June 16, a shopping mall in Japan’s Iwata Prefecture hosted the 12th annual World Chabudai-Gaeshi Tournament, an offbeat competition where participants try to flip a small tea table as far as possible. The premise is pretty simple: anyone can sign up for the competition, from young children to the elderly, and the goal is to flip the small wooden tea table as hard as possible to send the fake food on top of it flying as far as possible. In fact, the winner is judged not by how far they flip the table, but how far a plastic fish set on top of it travels.

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A restaurant in Shanghai, China, recently made headlines for employing two young crayfish peelers who do the dirty work right at the customers’ tables, while they check social media or play mobile video games.

Wouldn’t it be nice if someone could handle those nasty crayfish shells and then just hand you the succulent flesh?Well, at one particular restaurant in Shanghai’s Huangpu district, you can actually request a crayfish peeler that will be glad to take care of the dirty work while you watch or chat with your friends or play on your smartphone. Crayfish are really popular in China these days, so the two young peelers usually handle around 100 crustaceans every day, which earns them a nice monthly salary of over 10,000 yuan ($1,500).

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The owners of a struggling hotpot restaurant in Chengdu, China, hoped that a month-long all-you-can-eat promotion would bring in new customers, but it actually put the place out of business in under two weeks.

On June 1st, Jiamener, a relatively new hotpot restaurant in Chengdu, China’s Sichuan province, kickstarted its cheap all-you-can-eat buffet in the hopes of gaining a new client base. Patrons were offered the chance to fill their bellies for just 120 yuan (US$19) per day, for a whole month. The two owners had anticipated that they would suffer a financial loss during this period, but they hoped that the promotion would pay off in the long run, with some visitors becoming loyal customers. They couldn’t have been more wrong.

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If you’re looking for a way to get your restaurant business off the ground, this unique eatery in Bangkok, Thailand is proof that having a team of hot male waiters dress in skimpy female garb and scream like damsels in distress as they serve patrons is a sure way to success.

Staneemeehoi (Shell Station) is one of many seafood restaurants in Bangkok. As the name suggests, it specializes in shellfish, and judging by the hundreds of reviews on TripAdvisor and Facebook, the dishes and dips served here are above average, but that’s not really what has people coming back. Staneemeehoi is famous for its unique service. It employs a team of muscular young men who wear skimpy female clothing and try their best to act girly as they serve and entertain customers. That includes imitating a girly scream, dancing provocatively and puckering their lips as they pose for pictures.

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The Gomi Hiroi Samurai – “trash collecting samurai” – are members of a street performance group who walk the streets of Japan collecting trash with their katanas and trusty garbage grabbers.

These modern-day samurai are part of “Issei Ichidai Jidaigumi”, a performance group that originated in Kyoto but has since opened branches in other Japanese cities as well. They sport a very similar look to the samurai of old, but often spice up their appearance with stylish hats, and modern footwear. They are known for performing samurai-inspired songs, dances, and sword shows at various public events, but in the last few years, the Tokyo branch of the Jidaigumi has been making national news headlines for their theatrical trash-cleaning endeavours. They basically turn collecting street garbage into a performance worth buying tickets to.

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People turn to plastic surgery to copy the look of their idols all the time, but few of them, if any, manage to successfully turn themselves into lookalikes. One such case is that of He Chengxi, a young Chinese woman whose efforts to copy the look of famous actress Fan Bingbing have been so successful that she now gets confused with her all the time.

Despite currently being under investigation for tax evasion, Fan Bingbing remains one of China’s most popular celebrities. She is a successful actress, film producer, singer and a fashion icon, among others. Her attractive looks have captured the imagination of millions of people in China and abroad, so it’s no surprise that many women want to be just like her. Many have tried, but the only known successful attempt is that of He Chengxi, a 23-year-old social media star who reportedly spent tense of thousands of dollars on cosmetic surgery, over a period of 8 years, to make herself look just like her idol.

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Students at the No. 11 Middle School in Hangzhou, China, may want to think twice before dozing off or getting distracted in class as a new facial recognition system will be scanning their faces every 30 seconds to make sure they are paying attention.

Called a “smart classroom behavior management system”, the new monitoring solution recently installed at Hangzhou’s No. 11 Middle School is made up of three high-tech cameras positioned above the blackboard that constantly feed information to an AI-powered software that analyzes the students’ facial expressions and general behavior and assesses whether they are enjoying lessons or if their minds are wandering.

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Joe Quililan, a young snake catcher from the Philippines, has been dubbed “Venom Man” for his unusual habit of allowing poisonous snakes to bite him every week and even injecting small quantities of venom into his body in order to boost his resistance to it.

31-year-old Quililan, from Cagayan de Oro City, caught his first Northern Philippine Cobra when he was only 14-years-old. Back then, he didn’t have much experience handling snakes, so one day the cobra bit him, only instead of going to the hospital, the teen just brushed it off and got on with his day as if nothing had happened. Most people would have experience severe breathing problems soon after being bitten, followed by a loss of consciousness and then death, but not Joe. He claims that that first snake bite made him realize that he had an unusual resistance to cobra venom, and spent the following years trying to become completely immune to it.

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Authorities in Hejiang county, China’s Sichuan province, have come up with a controversial method of convincing borrowers to pay up their debts – showing their faces and names during short clips played in cinemas before the main movie starts.

Called “Reel of Shame”, the clip features an animated character who tells the audience “Come look at these laolai” before showing the borrowers’ faces, names and other details on the big screen. The derogatory term ‘laolai’ refers to borrowers who fail to pay their debts on time. To maximize the technique’s effectiveness, authorities show the borrowers’ faces in cinemas in their local area.

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Two Singaporean women recently contacted police after being conned out of $S1,450 ($1,080) by a man who sold them nine small bottles of “holy water” which he claimed could cure their bad luck and solve all their problems.

We’ve all heard of cunning snake oil salesmen using their power of persuasion to sell fake cures to gullible people, but it takes a special kind of talent to sell a small quantity of water for a small fortune. Well, either that or you need to find potential customers naive enough to fall for your lies. In retrospect, 30-year-old Ms. Yang, from Singapore, admits that she and her sister probably should have thought twice before spending a total of $S1,450 on nine small bottles of water just because the seller told them it was capable of turning their luck.

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Risa Hirako is a charismatic Japanese fashion model whose age-defying looks have become a hot topic among beauty bloggers and people looking for an anti-aging regimen that works. She is 47-years old, but looks better than most women in their 20s.

A successful model, fashion entrepreneur and the former wife of actor Eisaku Yoshida, Risa Hirako has been a celebrity in Japan for a relatively long time. However, her Instagram profile attracted a considerable number of western fans as well, many of whom started following her after falling in love with her youthful looks and charming personality. They just assumed that she was a young up-and-coming Instagram influencer, but then, a couple of years ago, someone shared a Wikipedia entry on Risa Hirako which mentioned that she was born in February of 1971.

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A 20-year-old man from the Japanese city of Himeji has been hailed as a modern-day ninja, after managing to live unnoticed in an elderly woman’s house for half a year.

The young squatter’s incredible run came to an end earlier this week, when his 90-year-old host’s son came to visit and cook her dinner. During his time there, the man heard some strange noises coming from the second floor of the house, and walked up the stairs to investigate. When he opened the door to one of the upstairs bedrooms, he was shocked to find a young man sleeping on a futon. Instead of losing his composure and confronting the intruder, he kept his composure, simply closing the door very slowly and going back downstairs to ask his mother if she new anything about someone else living in her house. The 90-year-old woman had no idea what her son was talking about, so the man called 110 (emergency number) to report the trespassing.

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