Japan's quirks, too many plums, and other #FridayFunFacts

In a place like New York City, pushing someone onto a train might earn you a slap in the face, but not in Japan! Over in the orient, getting to work on time is such a priority that professional people pushers help to pack as many people into a train car as possible to, er, streamline the commute.

Plum. Plum plum plum. Plum plum. Plum plum plum plum plum plum. Plum. No, I haven't gone mad, (not yet). I'm trying to demonstrate a phenomenon you're probably familiar with. Have you ever said a word so many times it loses all meaning and sounds weird? Plum. This is called semantic satiation and occurs because the brain takes less and less energy to react to a word each time it is immediately repeated.

Now, if you wanted to advertise your political party predominantly through use of colour, what tools would you use? A flag? Balloons? Uniforms? A beret, perhaps? Well, my friend, you ain't got nothing on the Dutch. They used the carrot. And not just a carrot, but all carrots. The House of Orange's political campaign in the 16th century was so successful at genetic modification, that you probably didn't even know that carrots originally came in purple, green, white, yellow, and even black. Hows that for propaganda?

Back to Japan, that mystical place... It takes longer to train as a plastic sushi chef than it does to train as an actual sushi chef. What's a plastic sushi chef? The people who create beautiful sushi window displays that don't perish.

And finally, staying in the East, 1 in 10 people in Central Asia are direct descendants of Genghis Khan. That sounds like a lot, until you consider the fact that he had more than 500 wives. Okay, it's still a lot. What's surprising is that more people aren't named Genghis.