Guinness World Record
Their amazing speed has them joining the ranks of other incredible record-holding skippers from Japan.
The Guinness Book of World Records awarded Sofia Pichihua of Peru with a certificate recognizing her as the owner of the world’s largest Cardcaptor Sakura memorabilia on December 11.
Avery Chin and Sylvia Lim make the record books for their impressively quick quick-change act.
An insanely flexible young Indian athlete breaks the Guinness World record for limbo skating.
What began as a simple list compiled to settle bar bets has snowballed into an international organization that documents the best of the best of the weirdest records you can possibly imagine. Just thumbing through a copy of Guinness World Records will give you more useless trivia knowledge than anyone could possibly want in a lifetime. Some of these records are so bizarre that once you discover them, it’s hard to ever forget that fact again.
Never mind important information like the 35th President of the United States, do you know what the world record is for the number of times someone can kick themselves in the head? Keep on reading to find out.
On 30 June, 2008 Yasushi Takahashi, or Yassan for short, quit his job and set out on a trek across Japan. He took with him a GPS logger to document the journey as he experienced the “Japan that [he knows] only in books.”
That might seem like a reckless choice for a man in his thirties, but as we can see, along with Japan he was also mapping out his future during this half-year travel. Yassan also recorded parts of the trip on video and uploaded it to YouTube in a video titled Tegami-Letter.
Curry is pretty much the ultimate Japanese comfort food loved by children, adults and picky eaters alike. And with data showing that Japanese people eat curry more than once a week, it has definitely become one of the country’s national foods despite its Indian-British origins. And one curry restaurant in particular, Curry House Coco Ichibanya or “Coco Ichi” to its patrons, is reaping the benefits of this curry craze, claiming about 80% of the market share! With more than 1,200 shops in Japan and 116 overseas franchises, it seems like nothing can stop this curry giant.
Takahiro Ikeda is a 23-year-old pro BMX rider who defeated many opponents and overcame numerous challenges to win a world championship in 2010. If that weren’t enough his good looks have also earned him several TV appearances.
However, last July he had to face off not with other skilled opponents, nor with the lights and cameras of the media, but with himself as he attempted to set a Guinness World Record in the “megaspin” – a move in which the rider spins around on their back wheel without touching the ground with their body or other wheel.
Perhaps the 11th tip to keeping cool during the scorching Japanese summer is to enjoy a cool bowl of somen for dinner. Somen are thin noodles served chilled with various vegetables, sauces and other toppings.
However, if you want to add a little challenge to your somen experience, we’d recommend trying some nagashisomen. This involves the noodles zooming past you in cold water flowing along a bamboo half-pipe while you try to pluck them out with your chopsticks.
And if you really want a challenge you can try to catch one of the World Nagashisomen Association’s somen noodles. On 11 July they set out to break their previous Guinness World Record for fastest flowing somen noodle: 14.5 km/h.
Every year on 11 November people in Japan celebrate Pocky & Pretz Day. In case you don’t already know, Pocky are thin cookie sticks with chocolate, strawberry, or other flavored frosting. Pretz are a more mature stick with salty flavors. Their simplicity is matched only by their sheer addictiveness.
Because of the date’s resemblance to the snacks (11/11), every year, their maker Ezaki Glico cooks up a special campaign. In 2011 on Pocky & Pretz Day if you tweeted a special sentence using Pocky and a particular hashtag you could have won free snacks.
However, for Pocky & Pretz Day 2012, Glico has their sights set on entering the Guinness World Records.
Has anyone living in Japan noticed an upgrade in quality of convenience store food lately?
One of our Japanese reporters frequents his local convenience stores twice daily and, as an avid fan of their food, tells us that he has been pleasantly surprised by the recent rise in quality of convenience store food.
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