Posts Tagged ‘amazing’

Cucumber cutting champions

TV Tokyo’s “Champions” assembled a group of chefs and held a cucumber cutting battle:

The object was to see who could cut the most cucumber slices in three minutes. One chef was a specialist in Japanese cuisine using a Japanese knife, one was a specialist in French cuisine using a western knife, and the other was an expert Chinese chef (there was also a celebrity contestant, but he doesn’t count). Each slice had to be under 3 millimeters. Watch the clip and find out who won!
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Bonus clip: This isn’t exactly new, but here’s a related video of a drifting car cutting a cucumber.

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• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
• dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)
• Kirainet.com – A geek in Japan (Subscribe)

Samurai vs. Baseball

A Japanese swordsman takes down a 130km/h fastball:

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• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
• dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)
• Kirainet.com – A geek in Japan (Subscribe)

The World’s Most Dangerous Hiking Trail

There are few mountain tourist trails as dangerous as the above pictured route on Mt. Hua in China’s Shaanxi Province. Not only does much of the trail consist of narrow footpaths and extremely steep staircases, but there are also a few sections where hikers must scale across cliffs on a rusty chain and some foot-sized holes chiseled in the rock. There’s even a place where one must descend a 20 meter chain to reach the continuation of the trail!

Here’s a video of a Japanese TV show visiting the trail:

The video report claims that sometimes about 100 climbers a year fall to their deaths on the trail. Luckily, people who don’t want to risk death can take a far safer trail on the other side of the mountain!

For more information on Mt. Hua, check out this post at BestHike and this photo gallery at Damn Cool Pics [the source of the pics in this post].

World’s Shortest Man & World’s Tallest

Back on October 10th, FTV aired a special in which a 240cm tall man and a 70cm tall man traveled from their hometowns in China to experience life in Japan. The show billed itself as having the world’s shortest and tallest living humans, which was at least true in the case of the short guy, He Pingping of Inner Mongolia. However, I could not find much information on the tall guy, Chao (チャオ）, who is apparently not the world’s tallest living man, but it was still cool to see such a bizarre pairing.

Let’s take a look at some highlights from the show!

19 year-old Pingping alonside a 1 year-old baby:

Pleasing the crowds in Shibuya:

Being introduced to one of Japan’s living freak shows, super eating queen Gal Sone:

Visiting Hokkaido’s famous Asahiyama Zoo:

Experiencing life on a Hokkaido dairy farm:

Ping Ping taking the ice cream machine he got as a present in Japan and returning to his Inner Mongolia hometown to make ice cream for his friends and family [it is their first time]:

Pan-kun Rescues a Photograph

After enjoying a trip with Ken Shimura, genius chimpanzee Pan-kun finishes up his “farewell to the outside world” trip by going with James to buy Shimura a special present — a picture frame. It sounds like a pretty simple task, but disaster strikes and they are forced to perform some rescue work [with lots of melodramatic fun]:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

I’m not really sure what was with all the tears, considering the fact that Pan-kun will still be appearing on TV…

[This segment is the final part of a series that aired during a two-hour Shimura Zoo special last week [If you haven't seen them, watch part 1 and part 2]. Those of you who understand Japanese probably noticed that the video says this is Pan-kun’s last trip. It may be true that Pan-kun will not be going on trips into the outside world anymore, he will still be making plenty of television appearances. Future Pan-kun segments will be filmed on the grounds of Pan-kun’s home. He won’t be able to ride trains or go to udon restaurants, but he’ll still be able to take part in wacky experiments involving slow motion, house thieves, and evil twins!]