Masafumi Nagasaki is seventy-six years old. He lives, naked, as a hermit on a hostile Japanese island. He also sounds like he used to be a total hipster.

Showing they know a thing or two about selling bacon burgers, Burger King Japan has begun offering paying customers the option of super-sizing just the bacon portion of their Whoppers.

In Japan, your average Domino's Pizza outlet has 50% higher sales than a U.S. outlet. Why? Because Japanese people are weird. From Ad Age:

The Atlantic has an amazing collection of exact before-and-after photos documenting the reconstruction of Japan in the wake of last year's quake that should, if we're calculating this right, occupy exactly enough time for you to make it to the end of the work day. [The Atlantic, image via Getty/AFP/Atlantic]

What kind of scroll is your favorite? is a question that I get asked constantly. And I always answer: Japanese fart scrolls. My favorite scrolls are Japanese fart scrolls.

An Osaka department store's Fuckin Sale was one of the classic Engrish gaffes of our time. But the funny signs were quickly taken down after the internet freaked out about them.

If only we could have sat in on the meeting where the marketing team for this Osaka department store came up with the idea for their "Fuckin' Sale," spotted early this month by a reader of Jake Adelstein's Japan Subculture blog.

Illicit photography is way up in Japan, and police blame smartphone silencers - apps that hush up the sound of taking a picture. Maybe this spy technology will be America's next big cultural import from Asia. God knows we have enough pervs.

It's the 70th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and across the internet, the right wing is commemorating this world-historical event the only way it knows how: by insinuating bizarre things about the Obamas.

Today's entry in the mesmerizing Asian infomercial arms race: Calorie Shaper, a special Japanese underwear built with a "honeycomb spring" that supposedly helps the wearer burn calories while performing everyday tasks, like walking to the bus stop and performing choreographed dance routines in the office.

For their project "Super Rat," the members of the Japanese performance art collective ChimPom ran around the streets of Tokyo catching gigantic, poison-immune rats, took the rats home, then stuffed them and painted them up to look like the Pokemon character Pikachu. Art! It's a living.

Japanese toilet maker Toto has invented the world's first Toilet Bike, which converts human poop "harvested directly from the driver" into biogas, Treehugger reports.* The seat is a toilet, so if you ride it with your pants down, you could theoretically defecate while you ride, thereby fueling it.

It's now time for a story that restores your faith in mankind, even if it means going all the way to Japan to find it: In the five months since that country's devastating quake and tsunami, almost $78 million in cash has been found amongst the wreckage and turned in.

Did Lady Gaga siphon off charity money that was supposed to go to victims of Japan's tsunami and earthquake? Who knows. But she certainly didn't let the controversy interfere with a trip to Japan last weekend to perform in a benefit concert and make a number of media appearances.

Is Lady Gaga stealing money designated for charity, from her website's sales of $5 "Pray for Japan" wristbands? A law firm called 1-800-LAW-FIRM says she is. According to its website, 1-800-LAW-FIRM is "America's most trusted legal network," so who am I to argue with their "Shady Gaga" campaign? [Image via Getty]

A bunch of fans of Aimi Eguchi, the newest member of the Japanese idol group AKB 48, were shocked to discover that she was actually a computer generated composite of the "best features" of other members of the group. This must happen every day in Japan.

Video of a mutant bunny born near Japan's quake-ravaged Fukushima power plant has gone viral. The bunny, which was born without ears, might be evidence of radioactive contamination, which may someday render the entire population of Japan microtic-anotic! Unless, of course, it's just a random birth defect. Every credible scientist in the world is leaning strongly toward the latter. Crazy people, however, are leaning toward the former, so the mutant bunny will probably be on the evening news tonight.

From the cybernetic labs of Japan come these moving cat ears, which purportedly adjust themselves in response to your thoughts or mood. In case you'd like to erase that last shred of privacy you retain inside your own brain.

Company execs appeared at a press conference to apologize for the April 19 hack attack, which might have compromised the credit card info of 10 million customers. It's a holiday weekend and everything, so they must be pretty serious.

Don't worry, folks! The crisis at Japan's Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant should be "over by the end of the year," according to a timeline from plant operator Tepco. "Over," in this case, means that the reactors will be cooled. (Radiation leaks will be "reduced" in three months.) Once "cold shutdown" is achieved, the reactors will be entombed in concrete and contaminated soil will be cleaned up; right now, Tepco is taking readings at the damaged plant through the use of remote-controlled robots. [BBC]