Long haul truck driving is generally seen as a man’s job, but Rino Sasaki, a young female truck driver from Japan, is challenging this stereotype and conquering social media in the process.

Rino Sasaki grew up in Kochi Prefecture as the daughter of a long haul truck driver, but never really considered the idea of becoming one herself until seven years ago, when her father became sick. He continued working, but she couldn’t stand the thought of her father all alone on the road, thousands of miles away from home, with no one to care for him. So 21-year-old Rino, who worked as a traditional dance teacher at the time, got a truck driving license and decided to join her father on his long haul trips. She tried teaching her dance classes as well, but soon learned that driving thousands of miles around the country meant that she might not always be back home on schedule, so she eventually abandoned her old career and became a full-time truck driver.

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Horse races are usually all about speed, but in Ban’ei, a form of horse racing unique to the Japanese island of Hokkaidō, it’s strength and stamina that matter most.

Ban’ei race horses, also known as ‘banba’, are very different from the fast thoroughbreds we associate with horse racing. They can weigh up to 1,200 kilograms and are more than twice the size of the small dosanko horses native to Hokkaidō. These horses are crossbred descendants of workhorses imported from France and Belgium at the end of the 19th century to help farmers work their land, and are now considered a Japanese breed in their own right. Depending on their size, these strong animals can pull up to a ton of weight, and that’s exactly the kind of strength required to win the world’s slowest horse race.

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Japanese design studio CWF has created the “Backpacker’s Closet”, a backpack so large it can literally be used a closet or even to carry a grown person around.

Measuring 100 cm in length by 68 cm in width, the Backpacker’s Closet features a maximum holding capacity of 180 liters (48 gallons), making it ideal for carrying a young adult. And if you’re worried about the shoulder straps snapping under the weight, don’t be, as this accessory is not only designed to withstand the advertised maximum weight, but also features padding and an extra middle strap to reduce stress on the wearer’s back and shoulders.

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S Legend, a red and white Koi Carp bred in Japan became the most expensive live fish ever sold, after fetching a mind-blowing price of 203 million yen ($1.8 million), more than $1.3 million more than the previous record.

The 101cm-long Koi Carp from the highly-regarded Kohaku variety was bought by a collector from Japan after a fierce bidding war  at the Saki Fish farm in the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The female carp won first prize at the prestigious All Japan Koi Show last year, and is expected to bag her second title this year, which greatly increased collectors’ interest. Fans and collectors of Koi carp are now expected to travel from all over the world to catch a glimpse of the most expensive fish ever sold.

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Japanese fashion design studio Mimi recently launched a collection of insanely realistic snake-print stockings that make your legs look like real snakes and, if social media feedback is any indication, they’ll soon be challenging animal print for supremacy in the fashion world.

Mimi claims its new snake pattern designs put all previous models to shame as they are based on scans of real snakes adapted to fit human legs. The upper portion is designed to mimic snake scales, while the part that goes over the foot replicates a snake head that changes its expression whenever the wearer moves their toes. Some of the pairs are even designed to make the back of the legs mimic the snake’s abdomen to enhance the optical illusion.

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A 15-year-old Japanese boy has been getting a lot of attention in his country and in neighboring South Korea for his unusually feminine looks and voice.

Idegami Baku’s meteoric rise to fame occurred late last month, when he became a finalist in Japan’s popular talent contest JUNON Super Boy. Organized by famous entertainment magazine JUNON, the Super Boy competition has been offering attractive boys aged between 13 and 28 the chance to fulfil their dreams of becoming singers, actors and television stars for the past 28 years. Baku didn’t win the competition, but if the online attention he’s been getting for the past couple of weeks is any indication, his future success in the entertainment business is guaranteed. But while his talent may have gotten him into the finals of JUNON Super Boy, people can’t stop talking about his looks. You see, Idegami looks more like a young girl than a boy, and he even sounds like one.

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A viral video that has been viewed over 50,000 times shows a fish being frozen in ice at a fish market in Japan and then seemingly brought back to life in a tub of warm water.

The video starts with the fish being submerged in a vat full of crushed ice and then cuts to a thermometer that indicates that the temperature inside the vat is -2.10 degrees Celsius. A man than takes the fish, which at this point looks frozen solid, and passes it to a man wearing a black suit who then puts it into a plastic tub filled with warm water. The video then cuts again, this time showing the same man grabbing the fish by its tail and trying to turn it under the stream of warm water, at which point the fish starts to move. Gasps of amazement and laughter can be heard from the people witnessing the ‘miracle’, before the video cuts forward once again, showing the fish thrashing around in the warm water, to prove that its movements are not just involuntary nerve spasms.

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A 23-year-old man has filed a criminal complaint against his ex-boss for dunking his face into a scalding hotpot at an office party, as a joke, causing severe burns to his face that required over a month to heal.

The shocking event reportedly took place at a company party on December 20, 2015, but was made public just last week, after a couple of videos recorded on mobile phones went viral online. One of the clips shows a group of people sitting around a table in a Japanese-style restaurant. In the center of the table is a “nabe”, a pot of boiling water used for cooking meat and vegetables over an open flame. At one point, a man whose face is not shown in the video grabs the one of the people around the table by the back of his head and dunks his face into the nabe, holding him down for a couple of seconds before he manages to wrestle free, knocking over the pot.

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In an effort to spare her young daughter from being ostracized by other children for not having a father, a Japanese single mother made the controversial decision to hire an actor who has been posing as the girl’s father for the last 10 years.

Megumi was only a baby when her parents separated and he father disappeared from her life. The mother, Asako, remembers that the girl started asking where her father was very early, but that her father’s absence didn’t seem like a big deal until she was about 10-years-old. That’s when Asako noticed a change in her daughter’s behavior; she stopped talking to her, became withdrawn, and eventually stopped going to school. Her mother soon learned that she wasn’t just blaming herself for her father’s absence, but she had also become a victim of bullying at school, as it often happens with children of single parents in Japan. Asako was heartbroken, and after appealing to Megumi’s teachers for help, she also decided to give her daughter the thing she wanted most, even if it meant lying to her.

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Yoshitaka Sakurada, Japan’s new cybersecurity minister, recently left the whole world dumbfounded after admitting that he has never used a computer.

Sakurada made the stunning admission during a question and answer session with Japan’s Lower House cabinet committee. When asked about things like the power grid and malware, the newly appointed cybersecurity minister seemed overwhelmed, and at one point said that USB was “basically never used” in Japan’s nuclear power stations, which led many to believe that he didn’t understand the technology at all. Most of his replies were met with laughter from the other politicians, but no one actually expected him to casually admit that he had never even used a computer before.

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Two cute felines who have been trying to enter an art museum in Hiroshima, Japan, a few times a week for the past two years recently went viral online. The cats have yet to get past the guards at the museum’s front door, but their persistence has earned them the adoration of millions of people.

This adorable cat-and-guard game started back in 2016, when the Onomichi City Museum of Art in Hiroshima hosted a cat photography exhibition called ‘Cats – Mitsuaki Iwago Photography Exhibition’. Among the many human visitors who came to admire this collection of photos of street cats in various poses, there was also a black cat who, just like everyone else, tried to access the museum through the front door. However the vigilant guard on duty spotted it and shooed it away. The cute scene was captured by Twitter user @mikusuke, who later posted photos of it online. They got thousands of likes and comments, but there’s really nothing unusual about cat pics going viral. What no one anticipated however, was the black cat’s persistence. For some reason it has been coming back to the museum and trying to get inside every week for the past two years, and at one point it even brought a friend.

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A 35-year-old Japanese man who shunned romantic relationships with real women after being humiliated and bullied by them recently married a popular virtual pop-star named Hatsune Miku.

Akihiko Kondo had been planning his dream wedding to the love of his life since March, and on November 4 the two finally tied the knot during a ceremony in Tokyo attended by around 40 guests, including a member of the Japanese Parliament. Unfortunately, his mother, refused to attend the event and so did all of his other relatives. Not being there on her son’s big day may sound cruel, but Kondo’s mother apparently couldn’t accept the fact that he would rather marry a two-dimensional virtual idol rather than look for love in real life. Akihiko Kondo married Hatsune Miku, an animated 16-year-old hologram with huge anime eyes and aquamarine pigtails, because he simply wasn’t interested in real women.

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Japan has a culture of long working hours, but even in this generally tough and stressful working environment some companies stand out because of the complete disregard for their employees’ well-being. They are known as “black companies” and anyone who has ever wanted to experience what working for such organizations is like, without actually getting a job at one, can find out by applying for a special event called “The Black Holiday”.

It’s hard to imagine anyone ever wanting to experience what it’s like for a ‘black company’ is like, but especially so on Friday, November 23, when Japan celebrates Labor Thanksgiving Day. It’s a national holiday and a rare opportunity to enjoy a long weekend free of work-related stress. But I guess that’s exactly why the organizers of The Black Holiday chose this date for their special event. What better way to emphasize just how bad working for a black company can be then having you do it on your day off, right?

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Ningen, a pop-up restaurant in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district, attracted a lot of media attention over the last two weeks for giving patrons the chance to order the last meals requested by infamous death row inmates before their execution.

The controversial eatery was opened by a Japanese art collective called Chim↑Pom and for two weeks served the last meals of infamous American criminals like armed robber and double-murderer Gary Mark Gilmore, Judy Buonoano, Florida’s “Black Widow”, or real-life killer clown John Wayne Gacy.

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A Japanese Twitter user has been getting a lot of attention online for his ability to create large, dense clumps of foam out of tiny drops of lather or soap, using only his hands.

Ever wish you could produce the same kind of frothy, dense foam as an expensive foam dispenser using only your hands? I know, me neither, but Japanese Twitter user ‘Karin’ (@na_mi_da) has taught himself to do just that, and his seemingly useless ability has mesmerized hundreds of thousands of his countrymen. A video he posted, in which he rubs and squeezes his hands to turn a bit of lather into a fluffy clump of dense foam that then sticks to his hands has been retweeted nearly 140,000 times and received over 450,000 likes. For some reason, people just can’t stop talking about cool this man’s talent is.

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