Odd

Japan’s high-tech toilets are often featured by the foreign media, but whilst well aimed washlets and the like are all well and good, the simple heated toilet seat is still the biggest bonus of most bathrooms. A water closet wonder that is even more welcome now that winter is well on its way, making the commode a terrifically comfortable place to type a few tweets whilst tackling a turd, or even dabble in a doze when doing a dump.

And for those who like to indulge their love of literature at the same time as offloading a log, help is also at hand, so to speak, as toilet giant Toto has opted to produce some paper featuring flowery language rather than flowers, allowing the perusal of a few poems when performing a poo.

Or, to be slightly more specific and somewhat less subtle, a shit and several senryu.

Seeing young Japanese kids careering about on unicycles is not uncommon, but fellas who could feasibly be their fathers tackling tricks on them is.

Yet whilst it may be fun.

It looks far from easy.

If not, it’s probably fair to say, practically impossible.

With wars and economic woes dominating much of the news, it must be terribly difficult indeed for a disgraced academic to get some much needed media coverage to counter a dismissal concerning data discrepancies.

Yet regardless or not of whether he fabricated the facts in a published plasma experiment, former University of Tsukuba professor, Teruji Cho, can definitely not be accused of lacking the tools to get the necessary attention, as wearing what could well be the worst wig in the world will undoubtedly produce publicity,

if not necessarily a pardon.

(image via the FG Forums)

The apparently small size of most Japanese apartments is often mentioned in the media, but it’s far from the case for a huge number of homes.

That said, however, stereotypes invariably contain a considerable amount of truth, although even this previously posted monolith-like place is positively massive when compared to the preposterously narrow apartment pictured below.

Its mindbogglingly compact design making simply getting a cat inside somewhat complicated, let alone setting about trying to swing it.