Oddity Central |
- Mr. Kanso – Japan’s Weird Canned Food Restaurants
- Belgian Artist Creates Elaborate Dresses Out of Simple Sheets of Paper
- Bovine Boarding at Pakistan’s Traditional Bull Races
| Mr. Kanso – Japan’s Weird Canned Food Restaurants Posted: 28 Jun 2012 07:58 AM PDT
I bet you’d have never thought a restaurant that serves only canned food could ever become popular. Well, it can in Japan. Eating cold food from metal cans with plastic cutlery, is not everyone’s idea of a good eating out experience, but Osaka’s Kanso Restaurant has been offering this exact type of experience for a while now and has enjoyed great success. Things have been going so well that Clean Brothers, the restaurant and cafe company behind the bizarre diner, has begun franchising the idea throughout Japan, under the name Mr. Kanso. And I’m not talking disaster shelters or anything like that, but big cities like Tokyo and Nagoya. The original Kanso opened in 2002, and there are currently 17 branches, 14 of which are franchises, but the number of interested franchisees is growing steadily.
Photo: DeepKyoto.com There are no menus at Mr. Kanso restaurants, just shelves lined with about 300 different types of canned foods from all around the world that make the place look like a post-apocalypse shelter.. You can find anything from Hokkaido bear curry to French salad in a can, and that’s apparently very appealing to customers. According to some of the restaurant’s clients, the fun is in browsing all the different canned foods and trying out new flavors.
Photo: DeepKyoto.com But why would anyone want to invest in a restaurant that only sells canned foods? There are several great reasons, and they all have to do with money. Because there is no cooking involved, there is no need for a well-supplied kitchen, or a staff of skilled cooks. Operating costs for a Mr. Kanso restaurant are also very low, adding up to about 3 million yen ($38,000), about a third of the usual expenses of opening and running a usual restaurant. Let’s say these are compelling reasons to open a Mr. Kanso, but what would possibly make customers go inside. That one I don’t have any answers to.
Photo: DeepKyoto.com What about you, do you think the Mr. Kanso restaurant is a good idea? via RocketNews24 Mr. Kanso – Japan’s Weird Canned Food Restaurants was originally posted at OddityCentral.com |
| Belgian Artist Creates Elaborate Dresses Out of Simple Sheets of Paper Posted: 28 Jun 2012 06:57 AM PDT
Belgian artist Isabelle de Borchgrave can use sheets of paper to create incredible garments many designers can’t really make out of fabric. At first glance, Isabelle de Borchgrave’s creations seems made of expensive materials like silk, pleated cotton and damask, but in reality, her 18th century-inspired garments are made exclusively from paper. The Brussels-based artist painstakingly glues every “seam”, crumples, irons and fluffs paper to make it look like real lace and created buttons out of tiny rolls of paper, ultimately creating designer masterpieces you simply must see to believe they’re real. In her able hands, flimsy pieces of paper can become anything from ribbons to jewelry and feathers, a talent that makes de Borchgrave “unique”, according to French designer Hubert de Givenchy.
Isabelle de Borchgrave began her artistic career as a painter, but started making paper costumes for her children after discovering the versatility of paper. She could tear it, crumble it, paint it, glue it, so she found her transition to paper sculpting natural, while maintaining her identity as a painter. It’s actually her trompe l'oeil style of painting that gives paper clothes their appearance of velvet, silk or satin. In 1994, she met Canadian costume designer, Rita Browne, and they started creating wonderful garments spanning 300 years in fashion history.
But it’s not only her ability to turn paper into clothing items, but also her attention to details, Before starting work on a project, Isabelle does extensive research to avoid any mistakes in fashion history. She and her team turn to a collection of about 4,000 books to find every fashion style in history and make sure they get everything right. Then, with the help of three stylists, the artist tries to create a pattern, and sometimes has to interpret certain designs, such as the backs of dresses, caps, and shoes, which aren't visible on documents received from museums. After they create a prototype model of the certain dress they’re aiming for, Isabelle paints the paper and, along with her team, starts crumbling, tearing, and folding the paper. Making the dresses, along with accessories like wigs, shoes, bags, jewelry, takes between four and eight weeks.
Isabelle de Borchgrave’s paper garments are made of common pattern paper, but she sometimes uses much thinner paper for lace and other fine materials. Her paints of choice are usually acrylics, but she also uses ink and other types, depending on the desired effect.
Belgian Artist Creates Elaborate Dresses Out of Simple Sheets of Paper was originally posted at OddityCentral.com |
| Bovine Boarding at Pakistan’s Traditional Bull Races Posted: 28 Jun 2012 12:45 AM PDT
If you think surfing and snowboarding are extreme sports, then you’ve probably never seen what happens in Pakistan, during traditional bovine races. It involves bulls, a board and dirt. Tens of thousands of people gather whenever there is a bull race held in Pakistan. They are usually the highlight of festivals organized in rural areas of the Asian country, and attract lots of spectators due to their thrilling nature. Watching a bunch of oxen running alongside each other might not be your idea of a fun time, but add a man on riding a board on a dirty track trying to guide the animals, and things become pretty exciting. The traditional competition attracts landlords and farmers from all around the province where the race is held, and they all bring their fastest and strongest bulls in hopes of gaining a reputation.
Photo: Bay Ismoyo / AFP / Getty Images After watching a Pakistani bull race, you can honestly say Western jockeys have it good. While they’re comfortably riding the racing animals, Pakistanis get to hop on a wooden board and hang on for their lives as they’re dragged by the oxen. And if trying to keep their balance throughout the whole 350 meter course while shouting and beating the animals with sticks wasn’t enough, they also have to guide them through a couple of poles placed 10 meters apart, in order to officially finish the race. If the bulls don’t come through the poles or if the jockey falls off his board, the competitor is disqualified.
Photo: Jang.com.pk The 50-year-old event still manages to bring around 40-50 pairs of bulls to the starting line, and spectators love it, as well. The $1,000 prize given to the winner isn’t even enough to cover the cost of raising the cattle, so it’s fair to say most of them don’t do it for the money, but because bull racing is a part of their culture.
A while ago, we featured India’s own extreme bull racing, only Indian’s don’t bother using a board, they just try to keep up with the bulls using their legs. Bovine Boarding at Pakistan’s Traditional Bull Races was originally posted at OddityCentral.com |
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