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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Japan has some of the world’s longest working hours, but some companies are starting to realize that their workers also need to sleep in order to be productive. One such company is actually encouraging employees to sleep more by rewarding them with points that can be spent at cafes and cafeterias.

CRAZY, a Tokyo-based wedding planning company, recently announced the implementation of a “sleep remuneration system” to encourage its workforce to get more sleep. It has teamed up with Airweave, a startup specializing in sleep analysis technology and will be monitoring its employees sleep patterns. Workers who install the Sleep Analysis app on their smartphones and share their data with the company are eligible to receive points according to how many hours of sleep they get ever night. CRAZY hopes that the new reward system will improve the lifestyle habits and overall health of its employees, as well as boost their productivity.

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Japanese people are renowned for their manners and politeness, but this incident shows just how far that politeness can go. A man recently went into a convenience store, asked the manager if he could rob the place and upon being refused, he left and later turned himself in to police.

The bizarre robbery attempt took place on October 5, at a Lawson convenience store in Ogori City, Japan’s Fukuoka Prefecture. According to police, the unnamed man allegedly entered the store at around 1:40 AM and told the manager “I’ve come with the intent to intimidate you and rob this store, may I ask you to please cooperate with me?” in the most unintimidating way possible. He didn’t get the answer he was hoping for so he turned around and walked out quietly without taking anything.

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International media outlets have been reporting the shocking case of a dolphin, dozens of penguins and other wildlife that have been abandoned in a derelict Japanese aquarium that closed down months ago.

The operator of the Inubosaki Marine Park Aquarium in Choshi, a city in Japan’s Chiba Prefecture, closed down in January 2018, citing a steady decline in visitors following the strong earthquake and nuclear crisis of 2011. However, the marine life that used to entertain guests – including a bottlenose dolphin and dozens of humboldt penguins – has been locked inside the abandoned facility ever since and are living in improper conditions. Although someone has reportedly been feeding them regularly, animal activists claim that Honey the dolphin is showing signs of stress due to loneliness and suffered serious sunburns this summer, while the penguins are living in crumbling pens, among debris. Park representatives could not be contacted about the situation and local authorities claim that their hands are tied.

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For some reason, many Japanese people find it incredibly difficult to quit their job and prefer paying a third party hundreds of dollars to quit on their behalf rather than have to face their boss and co-workers and handing in their resignation personally.

Senshi S LLC is a Tokyo-based startup founded by childhood friends Toshiyuki Niino and Yuichiro Okazaki last year. It operates ‘Exit’ a unique service that basically handles job resignations on behalf od clients, for a fee. Rather, than having to tell their bosses that they can’t or don’t want to work for them anymore, Exit clients prefer to pay between 40,000 yen ($350) and 50,000 yen ($450) to have someone else do it for them. Exit’s founders declared themselves surprised that so many people find quitting their jobs so stressful, but they have been more than happy to help hundreds of them get through this process.

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Hosts are considered the modern version of geishas in Japan. They are charming women who engage in a carefully choreographed performance designed to make clients feel like the most important person on Earth. But in certain clubs around Tokyo’s Kabuchiko district, the tables have turned; here it’s male hosts who cater to the needs of female clients, and there’s no one better at it than Roland, the so-called emperor of Japan’s male host industry.

Like their female counterparts, male hosts work in specialized host clubs in Tokyo’s red lights district and have a very specific goal – to entertain their clients and encourage them to spend as much as possible on drinks. That’s how they earn a living and it’s also how they are ranked. Some clubs actually have posters of their male hosts displayed outside based on how much they managed to convince clients to pay the previous month. This usually involves a lot of drinking on their part as well, but Roland, the 25-year-old head manager of the Platina club and the hottest male host in the business, is a rare exception. He gets clients to spend huge amount of money without having to get drunk himself.

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