Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, myths, ancient artifacts, religion, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.

Japan’s housing system is a bit different than the rest of the world’s. For instance, although Tokyo and the surrounding locality constitute the largest metropolitan area in the world, no doubt complete with houses, apartments, sky rises and lofts, sometimes they still make old ladies live in the closets of the seemingly wealthy.

Excuse us actually – it appears our wording there was a bit off. Old ladies secretly living in the closets of younger men has never been state sanctioned in Japan – but it recently happened anyway.

And for an entire year too.

There was a Japanese man content living in his apartment alone. About a year ago he left home but failed to lock the door, so a homeless old lady moved into his closet and lived there secretly for about a year.

CNN has the scoop:

“The resident of the home installed security cameras that transmitted images to his mobile phone after becoming puzzled by food disappearing from his kitchen over the past several months. One of the cameras captured someone moving inside his home Thursday after he had left, and he called police, believing it was a burglar. However, when they arrived, they found the door locked and all windows closed.”

Puzzling, right? Well it shouldn’t be. We already told you how it ended. Furthermore, we have a quote from the police spokesman:

“We searched the house … checking everywhere someone could possibly hide. When we slid open the shelf closet, there she was, nervously curled up on her side.”

The lady went as far as moving a mattress into his closet drawer or whatever it was she was living in. Also she had a coffee pot up there, a soup cooker, a small fridge and over 200 varieties of fruit roll-up. That sweet sticky goodness was always her weakness, she can be quoted as saying.

Or she can’t. Actually we made up everything past mattress – but still, the woman had an entire sleeping apparatus up there and the guy didn’t know for all that time. Strange.

We sympathise with him actually. We had a very similar experience, except instead of a homeless lady living in our closet we had one dismembered in our freezer. In our defence she came with the apartment, and we reported it to the proper authorities once we realised our landlord was charging us for two. We’re not paying for that.

Seriously, our budget won’t allow it.

Read More:

Homeless Woman Who Lived Undetected in Japanese Man’s Closet for a Year Caught – Fox News

Hear that? It’s the sound of no ropey funk-rock jam workouts. Lovely, isn’t it? And best of all, it’s a noise you’ll be hearing a lot from now on.

That’s because Red Hot Chili Peppers have announced that they’re splitting up. We know, we were distraught too – what were the Red Hot Chili Peppers if not The Beatles of bad funk-rock that all sounds identical?

But, hey, relax – it’s only a temporary split! According to Red Hot Chili Peppers singer Anthony Kiedis, the group is disbanding for ‘a minimum of one year’ so that they can focus on other things for a while. So, although there won’t be a new Red Hot Chili Peppers album any time soon, at least you’ll be able to console yourself with the upcoming Flea Makes A Directionless Bim-Bom-Bim-Bom Noise Up And Down The Neck Of His Bass For More Than A Day 32-CD solo boxset.

It’s been almost exactly two years since Red Hot Chili Peppers released their last album, entitled Stadium Lampshadium – and that means that if you’re a die-hard Red Hot Chili Peppers fan it’s been almost exactly one year, 11 months, two weeks and four days since you got about three tracks into it, realised that it contained nothing but shallow retreads of other stuff they’ve already done before and promptly forgot that it even existed.

But don’t you be expecting a new Red Hot Chili Peppers album any time soon – there won’t be one soon. There might not even be one ever. Red Hot Chili Peppers are on a trial separation, you see, because playing two hours of music a night to tens of thousands of adoring fans like you’ve dreamed of doing ever since you were a little boy can make you sooo tired. According to The Mirror:

California-referencing rock-funk veterans Red Hot Singer Chili Peppers have announced they are disbanding for the next 12 months after becoming exhausted with their hectic schedule. Frontman Anthony Kiedis told US rock mag Rolling Stone: “We didn’t really stop until the tour ended last year. We were all emotionally and mentally zapped at the end of that run. The discussion was, ‘Let’s not do anything Red Hot Chili Peppers-related for a minimum of one year, and just live and breathe and eat and learn new things.’”

Wow, yes, OK, we take it back – if you haven’t even had time to eat or even to perform your body’s basic automatic respiratory function since 1999 like you’re claiming, Red Hot Chili Peppers, then by all means take a break. Take as long as you need! You’ve earnt it! Heck, take forever off if you need to! No, really. Take forever off. We insist.

As Kiedis says, though, this will be an important year for the various members of the Red Hot Chili Peppers because they’re all going to try new things. Kiedis is going to raise a son, the drummer has joined a jazz band, John Frusciante is working on solo stuff and Flea is going to try not to burn any more houses down.

However, there’s always the chance that, after their year off, the various Red Hot Chili Peppers will have got used to living at home in comfort and they’ll decide to make the split permanent.

And you know what that means – it means that there’ll be a TV show called Californication but no band performing a song called Californication. In other words, it means that Duchovny has won! That’s terrible! We don’t know which scenario is worse – a world where the Red Hot Chili Peppers still exist or a world where Duchovny gets to ramp up his cloying smugness a couple of notches. We lose either way. It’s just like being a child with two abusive parents. Um, we’d imagine.

Read more:

Rockers Red Hot Chili Peppers split – for at least a year – Mirror

Anna Nicole Smith – or 'the American Princess Diana' as one person called her before they felt silly and left the room – has been dead for a while.

For a year, in fact – today is the first anniversary of Anna Nicole Smith's untimely death at the hands on all sorts of different drugs. And, although the anniversary has been marked by a moving tribute by Larry Birkhead, it's also being commemorated by the public as well.

So if you see any confused, slurring women stumbling around tonight, with their faces proudly daubed to make them look like the kind of clown that children see in horror movies, know that it's all in remembrance of Anna Nicole Smith.

It doesn't seem like a year since Anna Nicole Smith died, does it? That's because, what with all the squabbles about her burial site and who fathered her daughter and who got all her money, people only actually shut up about Anna Nicole Smith about a couple of weeks ago, and even then Heath Ledger's death made everyone remember her anyway. 

But anyway, although it's easy to laugh at Anna Nicole Smith for being a hopelessly bewildering clown-faced drug-addled soft-porn star who went to the trouble of fake-marrying her own lawyer just to pass off her baby as his and had a creepy habit of treating dolls as if they were real, it's important to remember that she was a real person. And, as such, individuals are marking her death by doing something a little more heartfelt than just reminding everyone that Anna Nicole Smith used to paint her face like the world's most nightmarish clown like we're doing.

For example, Larry Birkhead – the father of Anna Nicole Smith's daughter Dannielynne Hope briefly stopped trying to hit on Paris Hilton to deliver his own, actually rather heartfelt, message on his website today:

"Anna Nicole Smith I LOVE YOU AND HOPE YOU ARE PROUD OF OUR BEAUTIFUL BABY GIRL. PLEASE WATCH OVER US AND GUIDE US ON OUR JOURNEY THROUGH LIFE. WE MISS YOU.

2-8-07

LOVE,

LARRY AND DANNIELYNN"  

Which is quite sad, at least until you remember that the love probably isn't reciprocated if the endless ways that Anna Nicole Smith attempted to wriggle out of all those DNA paternity tests when she was still alive are anything to go by, and that those rumours about Larry Birkhead and Howard K Stern being gay lovers are still floating about.

Still, let's not get dragged down by too much mawkishness. Let's use today to remember the way that Anna Nicole Smith really was…

OK, scrub that. Let's remember Anna Nicole Smith in a way that's more flattering and a bit less truthful.

Read more: 

Larry Birkhead Leaves Tribute to Anna Nicole Smith – People 

If any of you want to appear fascinating to Barbara Walters, here's a tip – why not try splitting your time between humourless self-absorption and badly-tuned mewing with a touring nostalgic pop act?

Because that's what Victoria Beckham has done, and it's got her into Barbara Walters' prestigious 10 Most Fascinating People Of The Year list. Although her complete failure to establish herself as an actress or presenter on American TV might make it look as if Victoria Beckham has had a massively depressing year, at least the inclusion on Barbara Walters' fascinating list means it hasn't been a total disaster. And we're so happy for her that we're willing to overlook the fact that Barbara Walters calling Victoria Beckham fascinating is basically an admission that 2007 was so drearily unfascinating that everyone might as just suffocate themselves to death in their sleep tonight.

You know who one of the most fascinating people of the year was? Rosie O'Donnell, that's who. Lovely old angry Rosie O'Donnell with her Donald Trump fights and her Elisabeth Hasselbeck fights and her leaving The View and her subsequently not getting any other television jobs because everyone mostly thinks she's an overdemanding, unstable firebrand. That behaviour is almost the dictionary definition of fascinating.

However, you won't find Rosie O'Donnell on Barbara Walters' list of the 10 Most Fascinating People Of The Year. That could be because Barbara Walters used to be Rosie's boss on The View and their interview would be uncomfortable and awkward, or it could be that Barbara Walters really believes that a wooden, past-his-best footballer and a washed-up singer with a speaking voice that's part dentist drill and part hairdresser falling down a lift-shaft are actually more fascinating.

Barbara Walters has unveiled her list of the 10 Most Fascinating People Of The Year and, for some reason that we still can't understand, David and Victoria Beckham have come out on top.

That's not to say that David and Victoria Beckham aren't fascinating – although by going to live in America in a blaze of moviestar-endorsed publicity then singularly failing to either a) justify David's multi-million dollar salary by not even getting his team into the top half of its league or b) do anything more interesting that get followed around by some pigs at speed, it technically means that the Beckhams are fascinating in the same way that your cat finds dead frogs fascinating.

But this is Barbara Walters' list, not ours, so we'll just relay why Victoria Beckham thinks her marriage to David is so fascinating:

"I think it's where sports meets fashion meets music, and I think that's probably what people find interesting."

Yes, on reflection this whole 'sports meets fashion meets music' idea of Victoria Beckham's probably is what makes them fascinating. We were wrong to think it was because all the thundering vapidity that surrounds the Beckhams is sort of funny. Apologies all round.

But this is Barbara Walters' 10 Most Fascinating People Of The Year list, not Barbara Walters' Two People Who Barely Count As One Normal Person's Idea Of Fascinating list, so who else did Walters pick this year? In no particular order, they are:

Justin Timberlake – Fascinating because: he brought sexy back. Single-handedly. Even though he's got a girl's voice.

The MySpace Founders – Fascinating because: of the way they're crapping it about Facebook.

Katherine Heigl – Fascinating because: she was a doctor on the telly and then a woman in a film.

Jennifer Hudson – Fascinating because: she was the only person to win an Oscar this year.

Don Imus – Fascinating because: scientists managed to genetically clone his facial skin to use as a material that can stretch across the top of space shuttles to stop them burning up on re-entry.

Bill Clinton – Fascinating because: he's the least-convincing Carmela Soprano ever.

Hugo Chavez – Fascinating because: his CD, Hugo Chavez Sings The Soundtrack To Cannonball Run 2, has been top of every single music chart in the world since January 1.

Read more:

The 10 Most Fascinating People Of 2007 – ABC