People vanish from their established lives all the time, but nowhere is this phenomenon as prevalent as in Japan, a country that has even devised a term for the phenomenon – “johatsu”.

The most common reasons that drive people to disappear without a trace are exactly the ones you’re probably thinking about – inescapable debts, loveless relationships and Japan’s notoriously harsh work culture. But there are certain cultural factors that make these reasons much more serious in Japan than anywhere else. The shame of burdening one’s family with debt, going through a divorce – which have always been very rare in the Asian country – or even quitting a job is considered unbearable by many Japanese people. This only leaves them with very few options – taking their own lives rather than living with the shame, working themselves to death, or becoming “johatsu”, which literally means evaporating from their lives.

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A New Zealand man allegedly got 10 Covid-19vaccine doses injected in only one day, after being paid by other people to get the shot on their behalf.

New Zealand is on its way to reaching a 90% tw0-dose vaccination rate before Christmas, but it’s still dealing with a number of citizens who aren’t even considering getting the job. However, remaining unvaccinated means giving up certain liberties that are only reserved to those with vaccination certificates, and many aren’t willing to do that. So, they reportedly try to circumvent the system by paying someone else to get the vaccine on their behalf. And, for the right price, people are apparently willing to get up to 10 doses of vaccine injected into their bodies.

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A German Federal Court recently ruled that a man who broke his back by falling down the stairs from his bedroom on his way to his home office should be covered by his employer’s workplace accident insurance.

According to court documents published last Wednesday, Germany’s Federal Social Court ruled in favor of an unnamed area sales manager who broke his back in an accident that occurred in his home in 2018. The man was allegedly walking down the stairs from his bedroom on his way to his home office when he slipped on his spiral staircase and broke a thoracic vertebra. The plaintiff’s lawyer argued that his client, who typically starts his workday without eating breakfast, was headed for his home work station, which makes his accident work-related and should be covered by insurance.

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A 45-year-old woman who stole her estranged daughter’s identity managed to fool everyone that she was 22 for two years, enrolling in university and dating boyfriends who were convinced she was in her early 20s.

Laura A. Oglesby risks spending five years behind bars without parole, as part of a plead deal, after admitting to stealing her 22-year-old daughter’s identity and comitting Social Security fraud. The 45-year-old woman had lived with her daughter in Jonesboro, Arkansas, before moving in Missouri, after they lost contact. In 2016, after reportedly fraudulent Social Security card in her daughter’s name, she used that card to obtain a driver’s license. A year later, the woman also enrolled at Southwest Baptist University in Missouri, as her daughter, and even applied for student loans and grants in her name. The charade went on for two years, and no one once questioned Oglesby’s age, apparently convinced that she was 22.

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For the last 11 years, “Turkey’s first and only stress coach” has been making a living by letting people punch him, without ever punching back.

Hasan Riza Gunay started working as a human punching bag in 2010, after finding inspiration in Turkish director Kemal Sunal’s classic movie “Sark Bulbulu” (Eastern Nightingale), in which the protagonist voluntarily allows himself to be beaten. He realized that while some people relieve stress by exercising, meditating or sleeping, other need to let off some steam by screaming, or better yet, hitting someone. So he turned his realization into an unusual business, allowing himself to be punched by strangers, for money. He has been working as a “stress coach” for a decade now and hopes to train others to pick up his role before he becomes too old to take a punch.

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In an attempt to keep artificially-enhanced camels out of official beauty pageants, Saudi authorities recently disqualified 43 camels over the use of Botox and other cosmetic procedures.

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdulaziz Camel Festival is one of the several annual events that features a camel beauty pageant. As funny as that might seem to us westerners, it’s no laughing matter in the Middle East. In fact, these sort of competitions is such a big deal that some breeders reportedly resort to Botox injections and other cosmetic touchups to make their animals prettier. The Saudi Press Agency recently reported that over 40 camels were disqualified from this year’s King Abdulaziz Camel Festival pageant because of Botox injections and other cosmetic procedures.

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An Indian pensioner recently set a bizarre new national record after allegedly spending an entire hour staring directly at the sun without sunglasses and without blinking once.

The 70-year-old retired Government officer from India’s Uttar Pradesh state was identified as Mr. MS Verma. He apparently trained for this incredible feat for 25 years, after being inspired by an Indian guru. His attempt to beat the previous record of staring into the sun without blinking was overseen by a representative of India’s Book of Records, as well as a group of politicians and physicians. After an hour of staring directly at the sun without sunglasses and without even blinking, Mr. Verma’s eyesight was deemed normal, as was his overall eye health.

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Nowadays, most people would rather die than go anywhere near anything containing asbestos, but there was once a time when people literally sprinkled themselves with fake snow containing the proven carcinogenic.

Up to the late 1920s, cotton was the main ingredient used for fake snow on Hollywood film sets and in people’s households, but in 1928 a firefighter raised questions about the safety of cotton fake snow, noting that it was a fire hazard, and proposing the used of asbestos as a safer alternative. Obviously, this was long before we realized that asbestos was a known risk factor for an aggressive form of cancer known as mesothelioma, but still, the fact that people used asbestos-containing holiday decorations for decades is shocking.

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A brave Indian woman reportedly chased after a leopard for over a mile, fighting it with her bare hands in order to rescue her young son from its claws.

The woman, identified as Kiran Baiga, from Badi Jhiriya tribal village, in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, was reportedly sitting outside her hut with her three children, including an infant in her lap, on November 28, when a leopard suddenly pounced on her six-year-old by, Rahul. Before she could even react, the strong feline grabbed the boy in its jaws and took off running toward the nearby Sanjay Gandhi National Park. Kiran quickly handed her infant to her other child, told them to stay in their hut, and started running after the leopard, in a desperate attempt to save her child.

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A Chinese art student recently conducted an intriguing experiment in which she spent three weeks living the good life in Beijing without spending a dime, by pretending to be a well-off socialite.

Zou Yaqi, a 23-year-old art student at the University of Beijing has been getting a lot of attention for her unique graduation project which saw her disguising herself as a socialite in order to enjoy special treatment and help her survive for three weeks without spending any money. For most of May of this year, the young student slept on plush sofas in the lobbies of five-star hotels in the Chinese capital, sipping wine at various events and stuffing her face at free buffets. And she did it all just by pretending to be a rich socialite.

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An Australian man managed to break a decade-old Guinness record, after letting out a belch louder than the average electrical drill.

Neville Sharp, from Humpty Doo, Northern Territory, has been belching ever since his sister, Sandy, taught him how to do it when he was only six years old. He has been honing his “skill” ever since, but it was when his wife encouraged him to put his unusual talent to good use by going for a world record that he really started improving his belching. Neville has been practicing hard for the last five years, and in August of this year, the 51-year-old managed to break a record that had been standing for nearly 12 years, after letting out a 112.4-decibel burp.

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A Chinese man recently went through the worst week of his life after being arrested five times in only three days due to his uncanny resemblance to a prison escapee.

In October of 2021, a criminal by the name of Zhu Xianjian managed to escape from a prison in Northeast China’s Jilin Province. Authorities scrambled to locate him, but after spending valuable and time and resources they were forced to offer a 150,000 reward, which was then bumped up to 700,000 yuan, for any information on the fugitive’s whereabouts. This made Zhu a valuable target in a part of China where the average monthly income is only 2,000, and an unlucky doppelganger of the criminal suffered the most for it, after being arrested by police no less than five times in three days.

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A 50-year-old Italian man was caught trying to get a coronavirus vaccine certificate without actually getting the shot, by using a fake arm instead of his own.

Today, Italian media reported the bizarre case of a man who visited a vaccination center in Biella, northwest Italy on Thursday evening, claiming he wanted to get a dose of the Covid-19 vaccine. Everything went smoothly until the 50-year-old man, whose name was not made public for privacy reasons, was asked by the nurse to lift up his sleeve. He only partially revealed his upper arm, which the nurse thought was a bit odd, but she was only certain that something was wrong when she touched his skin and felt that it wasn’t quite the wrong texture…

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An Icelandic brewery has been getting a lot of attention because of its newest creation – a holiday beer that tastes like green peas and pickled red cabbage – which has been selling like crazy.

Ora jólabjór, the beer that has taken Iceland by storm, is brewed by RVK Brewing in a modest Rejkiavik brewery with an annual capacity of 50,000 liters. Master brewer Valgeir Valgeirsson had already made beer from unusual ingredients like seaweed or even dried fish, so when he received a call from preserved vegetable company Ora about a possible collaboration, he welcomed the challenge. Traditionally used as a side dish for smoked lamb leg and potatoes at Christmas, the preserved peas and pickled cabbage proved an excellent brewing ingredient, as the first batch of the unusual beer sold out in just six hours.

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Woodmere Avenue in Watford, UK, has become world-famous for an “evil” width restriction made up of six steel bollards after videos of cars crashing into it started going viral online.

On the 24th of March 1980, local authorities in Watford decided to combat rat-running through the city’s residential area by installing what would eventually become the most hated width restriction in the United Kingdom. Made up of six beefy steel bollards, this “abomination” limits the width of vehicles that can pass through it at 7 feet (2.1 meters), which, for a lot of motorists has proven too narrow, despite their vehicles being nowhere near 7-feet-wide. Despite countless complaints from local residents fed up with the mayhem of cars getting stopped in their tracks by the bollards, and motorists afraid they’ll suffer the same fate if they pass through, the width restriction has endured and recently achieved worldwide notoriety.

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