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heartwarming (Page 4)

93-year-old Japanese grandma becomes Instagram smash by modelling granddaughter’s creations

This beautiful grandmother shows the world there’s no age limit when it comes to having fun.

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Train continues to stop at rural station for lone schoolgirl until she graduates in March

The story of the lone schoolgirl and the country train that takes her to school every day is capturing hearts around the world.

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Homeward bound: Professor reunited with missing dog after nearly a decade

Nine years after his dog went missing, a Singaporean professor received a phone call that his long-lost companion had finally been found.

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Twitter users share 16 heartwarming moments of kindness in Japan

It’s far from the happiest place on earth, but Japan certainly has a reputation for kindness and hospitality. Most foreigners that visit the country return home with starry-eyed tales of over-the-top customer service and even random acts of kindness from total strangers.

But, this isn’t just a case of the Japanese putting on a good front for visiting foreigners: heartwarming acts of kindness in Japan are pretty commonplace (although this isn’t a Japan-exclusive thing; let’s be honest). If you’re in need of a Japan-flavored pick-me-up today, check out these stories of people being awesome, via Japanese Twitter users:

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A story of love and bread: British man and Taiwanese wife with cerebral palsy open bakery 【Video】

Peter, a former engineer from Britain, met his Taiwanese wife Liu Yifang through an online dating site years ago. They met, fell in love, got married, and then decided to open a bakery together. Cerebral palsy has not held Liu back in the least, and Peter says it was her strong will and boldness that drew him to her.

While the bread sold in their bakery—fondly dubbed “love bread”—has been satisfying stomachs, their story has been winning hearts as the couple shows us what love is really about.

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Heartwarming response to Twitter question confirms that yes, Tikuwa_0913, there is a Santa Claus

Over a century ago, eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon wrote a letter to the New York paper The Sun asking if the rumors she heard regarding Santa Claus were true. Editor Francis Church’s now legendary response is still widely read today, as even 117 years later, it holds up pretty well. At least to me, anyway.

For today’s youth, on the other hand, coming up in an age of unprecedented surveillance and information it’s got to be even harder to maintain belief in a magical man with flying reindeer sneaking into their homes at night to deliver presents.

And so history repeats itself, but this time with newspapers on the decline, a sixth-grade child using the handle tikuwa_0913 turned to Yahoo! Japan Answers for more information on Jolly old Saint Nick.

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From the mouths of babes – Kids share their thoughts on love, war and everything in between

Last week, we shared a rather unusual ad from Ryugin, an Okinawa-based bank whose approach to selling loans involves robots, doe-eyed anime girls and more pink hearts than you can shake a stick at. As it turns out, this same banking corporation has quite the eye for attention-grabbing ads, as we’ve just discovered an older TV spot from the same company, titled Children and Philosophy, which poses a series of mostly abstract questions to a group of elementary school kids.

Responding to questions about everything from love and war to what it means to be free, the kids’ answers are at once refreshing, thought-provoking, and painfully sweet, to the point that we’re starting to wonder if they’re the ones who ought to be in charge of the world. Full video after the jump.

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Retired soldier and his wife finally get their wedding photos taken after 68 years!

These days, many engaged couples usually choose their gowns and suits, and take a beautiful set of pre-wedding photos before solemnizing their marriage during their wedding ceremonies. In the past, however, not many couples had the privilege of having lavish weddings.

An elderly couple in Hunan Province, China, have been married since 1946, but it is only now, 68 years later, that they put on their wedding dress and tuxedo for the first time!

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Fare-dodging Chinese bus passenger balances karma by repaying years of delinquent fare

In one of the few instances we can think of in which crime actually does pay, a Chinese bus passenger who spent years “ride-and-dashing” to dodge paying the fare repaid her karmic debt by depositing a total of 800RMB (approx. US$130) into the till boxes of two local buses.

Drivers of both buses apparently tried to reject her offering and have her pay the standard 2RMB fare (US$0.30), but the woman reportedly insisted, telling at least one of the drivers, “You’ve always been kind to your passengers. This is to repay the fare I’ve been skipping out on until now.”

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This Thai ad for popular chat application “Line” will break your heart 【Video】

Although still relatively unknown in the West, instant messaging application Line is pretty huge in Asia. Developed by the Japanese division of South Korean internet content gurus Naver Corporation, the application allows free digital voice calls and text messaging, and is loved by both Android and iOS users, no doubt in part thanks to the dozens of cute “sticker” icons that users are able to share.

When promoting the messaging app in Thailand, however, Naver seemingly decided to take an altogether different approach. Tugging at our very heartstrings, this ad tells the story of a recently bereaved father and daughter and how through “more LINE, Much closer” they become able to communicate their feelings more effectively. Clever marketing or not, this is a real tear-jerker.

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Evil Villain “Colonel Muska” Leaves Japanese Orphanage Stacks of Goodies

 

Here’s a news story that managed to warm even our cynical, Internet-jaded hearts to the core.

A man going by the name of Colonel Muska, the nefarious villain from Studio Ghibli’s Castle in the Sky, has made a surprise donation to an orphanage in Tokushima city on the island of Shikoku, Japan.

The mysterious stranger left a pile of expensive leather school backpacks as well as a copy of the Ghibli feature film on DVD outside the orphanage, along with a letter simply saying “Please think of this as an early Christmas present. Yours, Colonel Muska”

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It’s stories like this that restore my faith in humankind.

Staff at a hospital in Tokyo went the extra mile this week by organising a second wedding ceremony especially for a patient who was unable to attend his daughter’s wedding in October.

The patient, 57-year-old Masaru Tanaka, was admitted to the hospital in December last year after the driver of a truck knocked him off his motorbike, confining him to a hospital bed after suffering a severe cerebral hemmorhage. Hearing the sad news that Masaharu was unable to attend his own daughter’s wedding, staff at Akirudai Hospital in west Tokyo put their heads together to bring the celebrations to him instead.

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