A Japanese acupuncture clinic has gone viral for the large number of needles it sticks into patients to help cure them of physical and spiritual ailments.

Acupuncture has been around for thousands of years, but practitioners often develop their own techniques in order to stand out from the competition. One such example is the Shirakawa acupuncture clinic in Tokyo, Japan, which relies on a large number of needles inserted in various parts of the body including the face, to relieve patients of all sorts of ailments, from muscle stiffness to bad luck and even possession by evil spirits. The clinic reportedly charges upwards of 200,000 yen ($1,400) per session and is very popular with Japanese celebrities and athletes.

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Saki Tamogami, a 37-year-old real-estate agent, is known as Japan’s most frugal woman for her commitment to spending as little money as possible on things like food, clothes, and self-care.

“Never buy anything that isn’t on sale!” This has been Saki Tamogami’s motto for the last 15 years, and she claims it has helped her save enough money to buy three houses, a goal she set for herself when she was only 19 years old. The first thing she did was stop buying new clothes, instead accepting handouts from family and friends and taking better care of the clothes she already had. She then started cutting down on food expenses, relying mainly on cheap dishes like udon noodles, toast, and discounted radishes for sustenance. After 8 years of frugal living, Tamogami was able to buy her first home, and by 2019, she had already achieved her goal of owning three homes.

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Founded in the year 578, Japan’s Kongo Gumi construction company is recognized as the oldest continuously operating company in the world.

Thousands of companies are founded and liquidated daily around the globe, many of which only operate for a few years, maybe even months. The world’s most valuable companies have only been around for a few decades and with technology changing the business landscape at breakneck speeds, who knows how long they’ll be around. Today, there are only a few thousand companies older than 200 years, and even those seem relatively new compared to the world’s oldest continually operating company, Kongo Gumi. Founded in the 6th century by a Korean carpenter specializing in Buddhist temple construction, the Japanese construction company has been operating for a whopping 1446 years.

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40-year-old Yoshitaka has been happily married to 65-year-old Aki for over eleven years, despite only learning about the age gap between them on the day before their wedding.

Yoshitaka was only 29 when he met the love of his life. Aki was running a Japanese-style bar and after making some small talk, they realized they had very much in common. They had both gone through failed marriages and were raising children alone, and after visiting Aki’s bar a few times, Yoshitaka asked her out on a date. The Japanese man could tell she was a bit older than him, but he never guessed her real age and she didn’t reveal it either, fearing that it would just scare him away. She was 54 at the time, but told Yoshitaka that she was 44, and he never suspected anything. Aki was always cheerful and her smooth skin didn’t betray her age, so she was able to keep her secret for seven years, up until the day before their wedding.

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A Japanese man’s personal life has recently become the talk of the internet after he revealed that he is perfectly ok with his wife of three years having a boyfriend and even bringing him into the family home.

Prince Soy, a young Japanese chef and blogger who promotes and sells additive-free okara granola online, has recently been drawing a lot of attention for very different reasons. On July 8th, he took to X (formerly Twitter) to announce that his wife Seira would be returning home after spending six months studying abroad and that she would be bringing her new boyfriend along. The controversial post quickly went viral, sparking a heated online debate about Prince Soy’s marriage and the three-way relationship. The controversy didn’t seem to bother the married man who actually documented the visit of his wife’s boyfriend through short clips and multiple social media posts.

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Japanese police recently arrested a group of unlikely criminals, three grandpas in their late sixties, seventies, and eighties accused of breaking into at least two homes and suspected of ten other burglaries.

Hideo Umino, 88, Hidemi Matsuda, 70, and Kenichi Watanabe, 69 allegedly met behind bars and decided to team up after being released in order to commit crimes more efficiently. The trio, dubbed “G3S” by police (homophonous for ‘grandpas’ in Japanese), stand accused of breaking into an empty house in Sapporo, the main city on the island of Hokkaido in May and stealing 200 yen ($1.3) and three bottles of whisky worth about 10,000 yen ($65). the following month, they allegedly robbed another empty house and stole jewelry worth approximately one million yen (US$6,400). Police is currently investigating the group’s involvement in 10 other burglaries in the cities of Sapporo and Ebetsu.

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A Japanese man recently shocked the internet after announcing that he managed to save 132 million yen ($640,000) over the last two decades with the goal of retiring early from his stressful job.

The unnamed 45-year-old man took to social media to announce that he had finally achieved FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) after dedicating the last twenty years and ten months to this goal. In the early 2000s, he managed to secure a stable but very demanding job where he was constantly required to work overtime, sometimes past midnight. He had a decent salary of around five million yen ($32,000) per year, so instead of quitting his job and looking for something less stressful, he decided to push through all the hardships and save as much money as possible so he could retire early. However, the level of frugality he endured throughout the last two decades left a lot of people wondering if his efforts were worth it.

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Fourteen high school students in Tokyo, Japan were recently hospitalized with stomach aches, nausea, and mouth pain after sharing a bag of potato chips infused with Bhut Jolokia peppers.

On July 16, around 12:40 pm, an emergency call was made after several first-year students at Rokugo Koka High School in Tokyo’s Ota Ward started complaining of nausea, as well as stomach and mouth pain. The thirteen girls and one boy had apparently been among 33 students at the high school who had shared a bag of super-spicy potato chips infused with “Bhut Jolokia,” which was once listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the “world’s hottest pepper.” The students ended up at the emergency room, treated for their mild symptoms, and released later that day. Jiji Press reported that some of the students collapsed in the school infirmary because of the pain. The incident is being promoted as a cautionary tale for young students considering trying such spicy snacks.

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A Japanese couple known for uploading wholesome family videos on YouTube sparked controversy after filming their 2-year-old daughter crying inside a locked car on a hot day for about 30 minutes instead of getting her out.

At the end of May,  ラウなのファミリー (“Rau-nano Family), a YouTube channel that documents the daily life of a Japanese couple with their three children, uploaded a video titled 炎天下の中…2歳娘が車に閉じ込められました (“Under the blazing sun… my 2-year-old daughter was locked in the car,”).  The shocking title hints at the couple’s goal of grabbing attention and boosting viewership, but while the video managed to do just that, they didn’t anticipate the criticism coming with their new-found fame. That is surprising, to say the least, as the controversial video shows the father of the family casually filming his 2-year-old daughter as she cries desperately for about 30 minutes after accidentally getting stuck in the family car on a hot summer day with no windows open.

The disturbing video, which has since been removed from the Rau-nano Family YouTube channel, shows the head of the family placing the older daughter, two-year-old Nanoka, in the backseat of the family’s Toyota, and preparing to do the same with her younger sister. It is at this moment that Nanoka, who is holding the car keys as her father handles the little sister, accidentally locks herself in the car.

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Shogo Yoshida, a young hairdresser from Nagoya, suffers from a genetic condition that causes his fingertips to swell up like ping-pong balls, but he has managed to turn this physical defect into an asset.

Yoshida, who goes by Bachi Yubi-san (Mr. Drumstick Fingers) on social media, started attracting attention in Japan in late 2022 by posting photos and videos of his deformed fingers on social media. The feedback wasn’t always positive, as some called his hands ‘gross’ or ‘grotesque’ and scolded him for trying to make money off of his disability, but the young Japanese man had been used to criticism for a long time. Ever since he was diagnosed with pachydermoperiostosis (PDP), a rare genetic condition that caused his fingertips to swell up like small balls, Shogo Yoshida had to face the ridicule and disgusted looks of his peers, but as he grew older, he learned to manage his uniqueness and turn it into something positive.

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A Japanese supermarket that implemented an extra-slow checkout where customers are never rushed recently reported a ten percent increase in sales.

Most supermarkets these days are constantly looking for ways to speed up the checkout process, and for good reason – with time being such a valuable commodity, many customers feel pressured by their peers to pack their groceries and pay as quickly as possible, so as not to hold up the line too long. Unfortunately, some people just can’t be that fast, either because of their age, various disabilities, or even being pregnant. Some of these individuals are often left feeling guilty about moving too slowly, so much so that they avoid going to the supermarket altogether. However, one supermarket in Japan’s Fukuoka Prefecture seems to have solved the problem with an extra-slow checkout register where people can spend upwards of 20 minutes without feeling pressured in any way.

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Benten Mountain, in Tokushima Prefecture, is considered Japan’s shortest natural mountain with a height of just 6.1 meters and a diameter of under 60 meters.

Located in the middle of fertile paddy fields along Tokushima’s Prefectural Road 10, Benten Mountain is the shortest mountain in Japan and one of the shortest in the world. It takes the average person just one minute to reach the summit and yet over 10,000 people make the journey here every year for this specific purpose. For some, it’s just the novelty of scaling a 6.1-meter-tall mountain, others come to admire the wax tree, camelias, and other flowers that call the rocky mass their home, and a few make the short trek to reach the Itsukushima Shrine built in honor of Benzaiten, the goddess of wisdom.

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Japanese tech company Kirin Holdings recently unveiled the commercial version of its taste-enhancing spoon, dubbed Elecispoon, which improves taste buds’ perception of salt, thus making food taste better.

We originally covered Kirin’s taste-enhancing technology a couple of years ago. The company’s researchers had teamed up with scientists at Meiji University to develop a line of smart kitchenware that used electricity to make food taste saltier and tastier than it actually was. Back then, they were testing a smart spoon and bowl which worked in tandem to make foods about 1.5 times saltier than they were, but it seems that only the spoon made it to market. Kirin Technology recently announced its newest product, Elecispoon, a smart spoon designed to improve people’s health by helping them cut salt from their food.

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Armpit onigiri is a bizarre take on the classic Japanese snack where cute girls allegedly press the rice using their armpits and infuse it with their pheromone-containing sweat.

The origins of armpit onigiri, aka underarm onigiri, are not very clear. Some sources claim it was inspired by an iconic scene in the manga Mahōjin Guru Guru (Magicle Circle Guru Guru), where an old man assists the protagonist by rolling rice balls with his armpits. This theory is supported by the plethora of armpit onigiri anime-style artworks that can be found online, but as for how the bizarre treat transitioned into real life, that still remains a mystery. And it was weird enough to know some people are actually trying armpit-rolled rice balls in their own homes, but apparently there are restaurants that proudly serve armpit onigiri to customers willing to pay 10 times their regular price.

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A Japanese boy allegedly spent three weeks piecing back together a 10,000 yen bill like a jigsaw puzzle after it had been accidentally put through a paper shredder.

Japanese Twitter user ‘Tomo’ recently completed one of the hardest puzzles he’s ever done – putting back together a 10,000 yen ($65) bill that had been shredded into thousands of pieces. Apparently, his father accidentally shredded an old envelope at work after forgetting that he had put a 10,000 yen bill in it months ago. Realizing his mistake, the man decided to use his mistake as a challenging project for his son. He took home the entire shredder waste basket and told his son that if he could piece together the shredded bill and exchange it for a new one at the back, he could keep it. It was a daunting project for even the most avid jigsaw puzzle enthusiast, but one the boy gladly accepted.

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