The NT$10,000 beef noodle (Image via Xinhuanet)

The restaurant is named “688 Beef Bowl”, and is located at Taipei’s busy Zhongxiao Road. The restaurant has been operating for 18 years and most of their beef noodles are priced around NT$150-300… the expensive noodles are only sold on limited basis and need to be pre-ordered.

I am not sure why the beef noodle cost so much; it seems like it’s not using special ingredients… the high cost was probably attributed by the quality of the beef. The restaurant owner has spent 5 years to search for the high quality beef to make this beef noodle… and a nice piece of beef could be really costly, obviously.

Japanese pianist Yosuke Yamashita playing the fiery piano (Image via Xinhuanet)

Yamashita performed the stunt in Shika town, Ishikawa prefecture, Japan. His performance lasted for 10 minutes before the piano became unplayable.

Artistic or whatever… I can’t see anything remarkable about this stunt beside a waste (piano).

Wang Weiqing, 58, of Beicheng village, China’s Guangzhou Province, was walking along the pool with his own grandson when he spotted a boy struggling in the water and saved him.

Mr Wang telling his heroic stories (the kid is his grandson, not the rescued boy)

When the grandfather of the rescued boy arrived, he was amazed to see the rescuer was the same man who saved his son, the boy’s father, from the same pool 20 years ago.

Like father like son… thank goodness the saviour was around for both occasions.

The 999m long wedding dress on display [Hat tip to Cri]

The red dress was purely hand made and took three months to be completed, with dozens of decorative phoenix figures knitted using golden yarn and jades.

Zookeepers in Japan have only had to deal with three escapees in the last 40 years. Well, I guess it’s better be safe than sorry. [Hat tip to Neatorama]

In April 2006, Xu Ting found out that an ATM of Guangzhou Commercial Bank was deducting only 1 yuan from his account for every 1,000 yuan withdrawn. Xu subsequently withdrew 175,000 yuan (US$24,000) in 171 transactions while his friend Guo withdrew 18,000 yuan.

Guo was jailed for a year after turning himself in while Xu remained on the run for a year before being caught in May 2007. He was sentenced to life for theft in the first trial in November 2007.

The sentence sparked an outcry from local media and legal experts. Many people said Xu did not deserve the life sentence, and I agree. [Xinhuanet, via Asianoffbeat]

What he did was wrong… but life sentence? You got to be kidding me. Hope that Xu will get a fair punishment at the end of the retrial… I guess with so many media attention, the court would make a more reasonable judgement this time.

The burglar helped himself to some homemade cookies and promptly dozed off on a bed, scaring the occupants when they returned home from weekend shopping.

V. Sathya, 39, and his family had gone shopping for Chinese New Year goods. His 9-year-old son was shocked when he entered his room to see a man sleeping in his bed.

“He shouted and ran out of his room. Even then the burglar did not wake up and carried on sleeping while holding on to one of my wife’s purses,” said Sathya. [Thestar]

The family then called the police, who shook the burglar from his slumber and took him away.

Seriously, how tired (or stupid) could he be?

Image courtesy of Pierangelo

“Not everyone needs to take maternity leave but with heartbreak, everyone needs time off, just like when you get sick,” CEO Miki Hiradate said.

Staff aged 24 years or younger can take one day off per year, while those between 25 and 29 can take two days off and those older can take three days off…

“Women in their 20s can find their next love quickly, but it’s tougher for women in their 30s, and their break-ups tend to be more serious,” Hiradate said. [Reuters]

Besides this unusual ‘heartbreak leave’, the company also offers its employees ‘sales shopping leaves’ for two mornings off twice a year so they can race to stores to hunt for bargains.

Not too many lucky ladies are enjoying the benefit though; the company has only 6 employees at the moment… I bet they are a bunch of happy 6 fellas.

A man in Lanzhou, China, has planted some football shaped calabashes to pay his tribute to the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.

Football shaped calabash (Image courtesy of Lanzhou Daily) vs a normal calabash

Known as Mr Cha, the Lanzhou citizen wants to present the special shaped calabashes to the organising committee of the Beijing Olympic as a show of appreciation.

Cha took six years of experiments to find a method to grow these calabashes, and has obtained six national patents for his research.

The method of growing these calabashes is simple though… by putting young calabashes into moulds. The difficult part is the extra care needed to prevent the fruits from dying off while inside the mould.

The 60-year-old crooner was at a news conference to deny rumour that his private part was cut off by a Yakuza (Japanese gangster), whom the media reported to be unhappy with Hoon-a for having a relationship with his mistress.

Na Hoon-a ‘dropping his trousers’ (Image courtesy of Chosun)

Hoon-a stunned the audiences when he jumped on the table and began lowering his pants, revealing his underwear (partially) before the live TV broadcast was cut. Later reports (video below) showed that he decided to pull his pants back up instead of revealing anything further.

The ‘castration’ rumour was spreading like wildfire online last week, that Hoon-a was in relationship with a Korean actress with ‘Kim’ as surname, who is actually a mistress of a Yakuza boss in Korea… thus resulting in the gangster’s revenge on the singer.

Hoon-a was not the only person affected by this saga; actress Kim Hye-soo, who was alleged to be the rumoured mistress, has to publicly deny the rumour as well.

An amphibious sightseeing taxi made a debut in Osaka City on Jan 9, making Osaka the first city in Japan with amphibious taxi service.

The taxi is operated by Osaka Mizukaido 808, and could carry up to 3 passengers. A tour will cost 19,560 yen (~ USD180) for the first hour, and 8,700 yen per 30 minutes after that. [Hat tip to Japundit]

It looks cool, but the price seems a bit scary. We have other options for similar experience though… it seems that there is an amphibious bus sightseeing service in Osaka as well, called the Osaka Duck Tour, which cost around 3,000 yen for a trip.

F-cup pudding! (Image courtesy of Kilian-nakamura)

Just like the cookies and tea, the F-cup puddings have a breast enlarging herb pueraria mirifica (a plant found in Southeast Asia) that MIGHT enhance boob size.

An undercover police officer posed as a 15-year-old schoolboy for four months to trap dozens in a Triad gang.

Stephen Chow in Fight Back to School

The officer, whose real age and identity have been kept secret, posed as a student from October 2005 to January 2006 using a tactic from a 1991 movie “Fight Back to School”, featuring Hong Kong superstar Stephen Chow.

The officer made friends with the gangsters operating in and around the school and watched them deal drugs, recruit students and beat up other students, according to testimony at the trial of one suspect.

A ringleader of the gang was jailed for 14 months after being convicted of drug trafficking, assault and engaging in triad-related activities at Thursday’s hearing. [Metro]

Hong Kong’s Triad gangs (三合會) are secret societies that operate drug trafficking syndicates and protection rackets. Hong Kong police estimate that they are responsible for 3 per cent of all crime in the city.

In Fight Back to School, Stephen Chow goes undercover as a student at a Hong Kong high school to recover a senior officer’s missing revolver, and accidentally exposed a triad gang. It was a comedic movie… but it doesn’t sound fun at all when the undercover happens in real life.

These pictures have been circulated online for a while… on how Beijing Olympic got its logo…

The ‘dark side’ of Beijing Olympic logo…

Beijing Olympic emblem

Set the humour aside, the Beijing Olympic 2008 logo (or emblem) has some deeper meanings…

“Chinese Seal, Dancing Beijing” is the name of this logo; it symbolises Beijing’s hospitality and hopes for the event, and carries the city’s commitment to the world.

As titled, the image is mimicking a dancer, and it’s drawn like a sculpture on a traditional Chinese seal. The red colour is used as it’s seen as luck and happiness among the Chinese.

[Details on Beijing Olympic official website]