Spring fever

The Aruka Shrine in Japanrsquos Ebina City is the oldest shrine in all of Sagami Province but to the general public itrsquos known for a unique ceremony that involves a priest wearing a twometrelong headgear in the shape of a green onionNegisan the head priest at Aruka Shrine has been performing the green onion ceremony for about four years but it only went viral recently when photos of the priest wearing the bizarre headgear surfaced on Japanese social media It was a pretty weird thing to see even by Japanese standards The pictures showed a masked priest wearing a green skirt and white shirt matching the spring onion on his head bending over to pass through a small circle wrapped in rope The ritual was inspired by the head priestrsquos desire to soften the formal and stiff perception of religion and clergyA few years ago 49yearold Miwako Kojima put on a fake panda head and became Panda Myiaji a lovable character designed to attract more people to Aruka Shrine Then in 2017 Kojima got a new idea The name of the head priest Negi had the same pronunciation as the word ldquoonionrdquo in Japanese so she decided to create a new character and ritual around that similarity And thatrsquos how the Negi head was bornThe headgear shaped like a green onion is made of white cardboard wrapped with imitation paper over which paraffin paper is layered and fixed with masking tape The most iconic part of the ritual is the passing of the head priest through a small ldquoonion circlerdquo as a way to pray for peace and disaster relief The popularity of the Negi head has inspired other priests at the shrine to make their own onionshaped headgearsTwitter to the rescuePhotographer Valerie Contreras who was visiting the San Franciscorsquos Sutro Baths Bay Area with friends was taking pictures of the sunset and the ocean when she noticed a couple walking around all dressed up Contreras suspected an engagement was going to happen as she watched the man walking continuously touching his pocketThatrsquos when the Texasbased photographer decided to set up her gear ldquoand sure enough the beautiful moment happenedrdquo While the pair had clearly found love Contreras who was far away using her zoom lens was on a mission to find the lovebirds to give them the sweet snaps And since she didnrsquot know the happy couple she took to Twitter Contreras was linked to Ricky Johnson Jr and Jazmine Winn shortly after the photos were posted on Twitter and they quickly went viral with 691000 likes and 94000 retweetsFast and FuriousA 10storey apartment building in China came up in just over a dayChinarsquos Broad Group recently showcased its innovative Living Building a new type of modular building system by erecting a 10storey apartment building in Changsha City in only 28 hours and 45 minutes The Living Building concept developed by Broad Group was technically assembled on a site in Changsha by three cranes and a large workforce as all the components were built in a local Broad Group factory and transported by truck But thatrsquos one of the features of the Living Building system it consists of premade containersize modules that only need to be bolted together at the ldquobuildrdquo site and have their electricity and plumbing connected According to the Chinese company the stainless steel structure is ten times lighter and 100 times stronger than conventional buildings and is resistant to ldquomega earthquakes and typhoonsrdquo Itrsquos also considerably cheaper to make than traditional structures and carbon steel buildings because of its streamlined production process Broad Group claims that the new system is called Living Building because of its versatilityMan builds empire with 700000 tiny bricksGuangzhoubased Lego fan named Li Zhining recently unveiled his most impressive project yetmdasha scale model of the Forbidden City in Beijing made out of 700000 Even more impressive is the fact that the Lego artist didnrsquot use any custom made bricks instead relying only on his huge collection of standard piecesToo busy with work to notice her shirtA resident of Washington DC identified only as ldquoJackierdquo claims she wore the same Hawaiian shirt to 264 remote meetings between April 2 2020 and June 16 2021 She thought it would be a funny joke if everyone noticed Sadly no one said anything ldquoAnd then I thought well Irsquom going to keep doing this until someone notices and no one ever noticedrdquo she saidLucky restaurant staff gets tipped 16000A 16000 tip was left by a customer who ordered food worth 3793 only at a New Hampshire restaurant Mike Zarella owner of the Stumble Inn Bar and Grill in Londonderry says the staff didnrsquot notice at first ldquoIt was on the credit card statement they put it down next to the register and he said three times lsquoDonrsquot spend it all in one placersquordquo Zarella said one staffer then flipped it over and looked ldquoAnd shersquos like lsquoOh my god are you seriousrsquo And he said lsquoI want you to have it you guys work hardrdquoTruth be toldPichayleymadiganfitness InstagramItrsquos no secret that social media is a distorted view of reality with most people choosing to only share the most exciting and glamorous parts of their lives One Instagram influencer is on a mission to expose just how easy it is for people with a large following to distort and manipulate the content theyrsquore putting out into the world Hayley Madigan who works as a fitness trainer regularly shows her followers how using lighting angles and editing can make picturesmdashparticularly bikini photosmdashlook entirely different ldquoOur younger generation is growing up with such a big emphasis around social media and these teenagers deserve to know the reality behind peoplersquos contentrdquo the 31yearold from Portsmouth saidDonrsquot worry to avoid grey hairA new study published in the journal eLife found that stress can turn your hair grey but chilling out can reverse the trend Researchers from Columbia Universityrsquos Vagelos College arrived at this conclusion by analysing the hair of 14 volunteers By looking at a tiny portion of each human hair reflecting approximately an hour of hair growth the scientists were able to find a correlation between times of stress and times of greying in the hair They also found that periods of relaxation correlated with oncegrey hair turning darkThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever