It’s like a cross between Halloween, and a riot.

In Japan, the mochi nage is performed to bless a new home. After the frame has been completed, a Shinto temple is erected on top of the house. Here, the carpenters and home owner give thanks to the house’s spirit, and wish for luck in the coming years - usually with a toast. Meanwhile, someone pours sake around the house’s foundations. House spirits love sake.

Throughout the ceremony, a crowd gathers on the ground below. Each person - from young children to the very elderly - carries a plastic bag. These bags are - for the moment - empty.

After the ceremony is complete, rice cakes (mochi) are thrown to the people below - and they fight. The crowd rushes to stuff their bags with rice cakes, which in ancient times was a symbol of happiness. In more modern times, the gleeful mob also elbows each other for other symbols of happiness - which, in Japan, can sometimes include packages of instant ramen.

Foreigners are often shocked at the violence - which is all, of course, in good fun.

It’s where Ferraris meet dance tracks meet the Serbian flag.

It was called ‘turbo-folk’ - but others called it ‘porno-nationalism.’ Fast cars and scantily-clad women provided the visuals, and the lyrics ran the Serbian gamut of adultery, love, revenge - and ‘mythomaniac kitsch.’ Said one popular song: “Days of freedom are coming straight/For our dear leader is great/Our song is loud and true/Radovan, we’re all with you.”

Svetlana Ražnatovic certainly helped. Already a popular singer, her relationship with Željko Ražnatovic Arkan was national news, and their 1995 marriage televised. Arkan was a celebrity in his own right - for different reasons. He was one of Serbia’s foremost paramilitary leaders: the UK’s Guardian called him ‘the underworld boss of Milosevic’s murder squat.’ He would be indicted for war crimes in 1997 - and gunned down in 2000. Concerts were dedicated to him.

International politicians hated it. It was decried on the left wing as emblematic of the region’s moral decline, an anthem of criminality - and sometimes even on the right, as being “too Turkish.” But the people loved it. One of Ražnatovic’s most popular songs included the line, ‘If you were wounded, I’d give you my blood‘ - it was a hit on both sides of the trenches.

Ten years later, Serbian turbo-folk clubs are still up and running. In Croatia.

It is the world`s only parasite museum.

Its centerpiece is a 8.8 meter tapeworm. Selected from a collection of thousands, three hundred or so specimens dot the two stories of Meguro`s Parasite Museum - in Tokyo, next to the Otori-Jinga shrine. The second story includes an interactive world map: press a button for a specific disease, and it will light up wherever the disease is present. There are many, many lights.

The museum was founded in 1953 from the private funds of general practitioner, Satoru Kamegai - and with parasites from his private collection. Born in 1909, the doctor was still finding parsites up until his death in 2002. He found, and exhibited, some rare parasites he found in the body of a coelacanth - when he was 92.

The museum is free - and they`ve had some financial trouble - but they do have a gift shop. T-shirts are availale, as well as some keyrings with tiny, encased parasites.

In Japan, square footage is worth its weight in gold.

They are the province of travelers, and Japanese businessmen who miss their last train. These hotels are available all over major Japanese cities - especially Tokyo, where even cemeteries are housed in skyscrapers. These hotels closely resemble youth hostels - the sleeping berths are two meters long at the most, and maybe a meter wide. You can roll down a screen for privacy. But this is Japan, so the entire operation is often sleek, and spotless.

They are actually quite cozy. For anywhere from 3-5000 yen (~$30-50), you get a bathrobe, free showers, and often wireless internet. The capsules themselves come with radio, alarms, and a television. Toiletries like razors, shaving cream, and so forth are also available - allowing hungover Japanese to show up at the office the next morning, looking fresh as a rose.

The only thing they can’t guarantee is that your bunkmate won’t snore.

It’s been called ‘disturbingly informative.’

The Mutter Museum of Philadelphia houses medical oddities. Within this museum’s walls sits the cast of the world-famous Siamese Twins, Chang and Eng, Grover Cleveland’s cancerous growth, and Joseph Hyrtl’s precious collection of skulls. The museum has 20,000 such items.

The Mutter hopes to remind people of medicine’s recent past, and maybe, what it means to be human. The medicine of the past was not the sterilized hospital we know today: surgery evolved in tandem with gunpowder and warfare; accidents and serendipity reigned. The Museum also includes Marie-Curie’s electrometer, and Florence Nightingale’s sewing kit.

In developed nations, widespread modern medicine now cuts off many deformities at the pass (sometimes literally). Abortions, cosmetic surgery, and even gene therapy have all but eliminated some of the more accidental manifestations of human existence. These days, severe mutations receive extensive press coverage, and often treatment.

They stuff dead bodies in suitcases. For science.

Tennessee’s Body Farm consists of bodies in varied, and educational, states of decay. In the initial years of forensic science, estimating a time of death was done as much by intuition as it was by data. The data, unfortunately, was hard to come by, because no one had ever bothered to time post-mortem body temp, let alone maggots, with a stopwatch. Until 1981, in Knoxville.

The Body Farm will stuff donated corpses in lie, bury them in shallow graves, and every other morbid permutation imaginable. They then study each body, scrutinizing how quickly it decays, and in what fashion. The information they’ve gathered from countless cases of faux cold-blooded killing helped turned forensics into a true science, and series like CSI into a hit.

This 3-acre farm in Tennessee was the first. But body farms also exist in North Carolina, and Texas. Iowa wanted one of their own. And Las Vegas, the site of the original CSI, tried to secure one in 2003: they couldn’t obtain the funding.

Pigeon racing is not a sport played for glamour, but for love.

Pigeon racers - a rank of characters almost exclusively made up of elderly, aging men - often wait for days on rooftops, straining their eyes against the horizon. They’re on the lookout, stopwatch in hand, for the precious pets that they have often bred, raised, tended, and trained. In order to start a race, the pigeons are trucked out en masse to some far-flung point, and released. With luck, they come home.

Homing pigeons are considered the Lamborghinis of the pigeon world. Common pigeons - the ones that snack on trash on city streets, that mob unwary children with a loaf of bread - are derided by breeders as ’street rats.’ During both world wars, pigeons were decorated with medals for heroism and gallantry: the French had their Cher Ami, the Americans their GI Joe.

Pigeon racing is an echo of New York City’s past, and it’s fading. Pigeon coops are being written out of local zoning laws. At the local racing clubs, few members are younger than seventy years old: there are no young racers waiting to take their place. Says one old-timer: “‘Nobody comes in off the street and says, ‘I’m interested in pigeons; how do I get started?’ Now, when youngsters do keep birds, as soon as they discover girls, it’s over.’”

There is a house in South Korea shaped like a toilet.

It is the work of no mere waste-obsessed eccentric. This house was built by none other than Sim Jae-duck, the chairman of the organizing committee of the Inaugural General Assembly of the World Toilet Association. Jae-Duck’s organization exists to draw attention to one thing: the criminal lack of sanitary toilets the world over.

For almost half of the world’s population, toilets don’t exist. Without the miracle of indoor plumbing, diseases like cholera can run rampant. In Africa, a movement to ban plastic bags has a sanitary basis: no latrines in sight, residents of Nairobi’s slums would defecate in the bags and throw them out the door.

Back in South Korea, this house has a name: Haewoojae, or “a place of sanctuary where one can solve one’s worries.” The house contains two bedrooms, a few guestrooms, and four deluxe toilets outfitted with elegant fitting and top-of-the-line water conservation. Its center houses a toilet showroom.

It’s a weapon of war that’s turned over a new leaf.

Tankballing is paintball, but with tanks. The paint pellets: 40mm. The site: a former WWII bombing range in Leicestershire, England. The weapon of choice: a retrofitted 17-ton war machine. Two hours will cost you as much as a few tanks of gas. Spectators are welcome.

The Brits invented the tank: it was called a landship, a ‘behemoth.’ Tanks helped defeat Germany in World War I, and German embarrassment about that defeat spawned the panzers, and the tank graveyard that became the Battle of Kursk. Tanks are iconic, mechanical beasts that long served as a symbol of liberation - just as often as they crushed dissent.

But sometimes, war can take a backseat to shooting brightly-colored balls of paint at your mates.

They may be the most stylish carpenters in the world.

They are Journeymen - Gesellen. Since the 13th century, these young German tradesmen have gone ‘auf der Walz,‘ or taken to the road with little more than a walking stick and their tools. Then, as now, they always were their trademark, tailored Kluft: bellbottom pants, double-breasted vests with gigantic buttons, and a black slouch hat. In modern times, fedoras are very popular.

They wander the earth, for at least three years, doing their job. Stonemasons ogle the technique of Angkor Wat in Cambodia, and carpenters survey the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. They take odd jobs, and are often put up and supported by strangers, cafe owners and farmers who are inevitably impressed with their skills. They’re almost always the most interesting people at parties.

There are rules. No Journeyman can come home: not within fifty kilometers of their hometown. No cell phones. Always wear the Kluft - of which they have a second, less expensive pair, for work. And it may or may not be a rule to look fantastically snazzy at all times.

In the whole world, there are only hundreds left: estimates range from 250 to 600. And yet, if you ask, many of them have tales of running into each other - from Morocco to New Zealand.