Dateline: JapanAn elderly man was arrested for stealing 159 bicycle seats in a bizarre act of revenge. Sora News 24 reports that Tokyo police arrested Akio Hatori for stealing the seats in 2018. Last week, authorities arrested Hatori after security camera footage allegedly showed him removing a bicycle’s seat and placing it in his own bicycle’s basket. Further footage showed Hatori riding with a number of seats stored in his basket. When police searched his home, they found 159 seats in total. When investigators asked why he stole the seats, he admitted that he’d wanted people to experience what he’d been through. “I stole the seats as a form of revenge,” he said. Hatori told authorities that he’d been the victim of a bicycle seat theft in 2018. He claimed he was very upset about the incident and decided to begin stealing strangers’ seats to somehow even the scales. Tokyo police held a press conference following the arrest last week and displayed all the stolen seats for reporters and residents. It is unclear if any of the seats’ owners have come forward to claim their missing equipment.Dateline: TurkeyA beekeeper who was fed up with honey-stealing bears decided to make them taste testers. According to Daily Mail, agronomist and beekeeper Ibrahim Sedef, owner of Zedef Apiary in the northeastern Turkish province of Trabzon, has spent years trying to deter brown bears from eating his expensive stock of honey. The bears reportedly damaged his hives on a number of occasions and outsmarted every attempt Sedef made to keep them out. Finally, the beekeeper decided to compromise with the large predators by running an experiment to determine their preferences in the hope of controlling their behavior. He laid four bowls of different honey samples and one bowl of cherry jam on a table and set up a CCTV camera to capture footage of the bears’ reactions. According to Sedef, the bears vastly prefer Anzer honey, a rare honey that can only be collected in small amounts and costs nearly $500 for two pounds—the most expensive honey the beekeeper produces. This particular honey is special because it is cultivated on the Anzer plateau, home to up to 90 unique species of flowers that don’t grow anywhere else. Anzer honey is known not only for its special taste, but also for its curative properties. Sedef has decided to offer up bowls of honey to the bears to avoid more property damage but says he isn’t angry about what’s already done. “When I look at the bears’ funny behavior filmed by my hidden camera, I forget about all the damage they cause,” he told reporters.Dateline: CaliforniaAn anti-vaccine protester was arrested after she hurled a menstrual cup full of what was found to be blood at lawmakers during a meeting of the California Senate last month. The Sacramento Bee reports that last week, the red substance that was thrown at the senators was positively identified as human blood. Authorities say the sample did not test positive for any blood-borne pathogens or infections. The incident in question occurred last month as California lawmakers met for the final day of the 2019 legislative year. Anti-vaccine protesters had reportedly been gathering at the capitol for most of the year to speak out against two new laws that further restrict vaccine exemptions. Anti-vaxxers say the laws are an example of government overreach. Several protesters were gathered at the state Senate on the final evening of the legislative year, including Rebecca Lee Dalelio. According to police, Dalelio stood in the balcony of the Senate and threw “a feminine hygiene device containing what appeared to be blood” onto the senators’ desk. She then shouted, “That’s for the dead babies.” The chamber was immediately evacuated and the session resumed three hours later in another chamber. Officers reportedly took Dalelio into custody without incident. She was charged with felony vandalism, misdemeanor battery and four other counts related to disruption of official state business.Dateline: JapanA ninja student received top honors for handing in a seemingly blank sheet of paper. According to BBC News, Japanese student Eimi Haga took a course in ninja history at Mie University and was tasked by her professor to write an essay about her visit to the Ninja Museum of Igaryu. The instructor told the class he would give high marks for creativity, so Haga came up with a plan to make her essay more noticeable. Using the ninja technique of “aburidashi,” the young woman soaked soybeans overnight before crushing them into a paste and squeezing them in a cloth. The resulting extract was mixed with water and used as an ink to write the essay. When the ink dried, the words became invisible. Haga wrote a note on the apparently blank sheet: “heat the paper.” Professor Yuji Yamada told reporters that he was surprised when Haga turned in the essay. “To tell the truth, I had a little doubt that the words would come out clearly. But when I actually heated the paper over the gas stove in my house, the words appeared very clearly and I thought ‘Well done!’” Yamada gave the essay full marks, “even though I didn’t read it to the very end because I thought I should leave some part of the paper unheated,” he said. Haga said the content of the essay was “nothing special.”
Compiled by Joshua Lee. Email your weird news to josh@alibi.com.
