Science and Nature

We've heard of square watermelons from Japan, but you've probably never heard of pentagon-shaped citrus fruits.

These citrus fruits, which are like a cross between a mandarin and an orange, were created to say, "Good luck on your school exams." You're probably wondering how that makes any sense. It's actually quite clever.

(image via Kotaku)

According to Kotaku, the fruit is called "iyokan," which means a "Japanese Summer Orange." In Japanese, "gokakukei" means "pentagon." If you're familiar with the Japanese language, the pentagon citrus fruits are actually a pun!

The word "Goukaku" means "successfully passing an exam" and "ii yokan" means a "good premonition." So if it is written out like "goukaku ii yokan," the meaning is "to have a good premonition of exam success." Clever!

Since Japan is entering a big exam period for high school students, farmers are offering encouragement by handing out these cleverly shaped fruits. It's said that these oranges are a symbol of good luck, which will go a long way in a heavy exam season.

(image via foodbeast)

If you're still wondering how the pentagonal fruits were made, here's how: when the fruit is young, molds are placed around the growing fruit. As the fruit keeps growing, it will take the form of the pentagon. Very cool.

Source: Kotaku
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Collage sources: 1) McGeeks 2) foodbeast 3) Kotaku

TOKYO—A man arrested for stealing high-heel shoes from a Tokyo hostess club was found to have a total of 450 stolen pairs when his room was searched, Japanese police said Wednesday.

“I’ve felt pleasure in stealing high heels. I was not interested in brand-new products,” Sho Sato, 28, told investigators after he was arrested Tuesday, according to Tokyo police.

Sato, who is jobless and has no fixed residence, broke into the changing room of the hostess club in Tokyo’s glitzy Ginza district last November and stole 14 pairs of high heels and cosmetics, police said.

They later confiscated some 450 pairs of high heels from a room he rented but the owners have yet to be identified.

“The lockers at the club’s changing room were a treasure chest,” Sato was quoted as telling police.

Every once in a while you see cases of why you really should delete your cookies or switch internet browsers when booking travel online. Last night, I was pricing out a ticket from Los Angeles to Las Vegas on February 27 on American Airlines’ website using Safari. I put the $159 round-trip ticket on hold since American Airlines let’s you do it for free for 24 hours.

Here’s where it gets interesting…  I went back again today to buy some more time but that same round-trip ticket jumped $189. See below.

I decided to see if the price would be different if I used another web browser (Internet Explorer) since there would be no history of me ever being on the site. Sure enough the price went back to the original.

As you can see, just by switching browsers I saved almost $200! But don’t worry if you don’t have multiple browsers, you can just clear your cookies on your computer. Here’s a link that explains how you can do it on your type of computer.