This is related to the "weirdest thing ever" blogs but it's a bit long for the comments so I gave it a blog of it's own.

My friend once went to one of the weirdest places on Earth, Japan. Not for pleasure, but as part of a six-month business program for the company he was with. How weird was it? Well, there were the girls that every company had that were absolutely gorgeous. His adviser had to tell him to stay away from them because they are actually a ploy. Companies hire them so that when other companies send their best employees over for meetings or conferences they might see these gorgeous women, fall in love, then marry into the company. These girls have no other job other than to look beautiful all the time, and woe be to the man that is just an average Joe that flirts with one.

Anyway...on to the real weirdness. It seems that there are vending machines everywhere in Japan. Street corners and apartment buildings and train stations all have tons of them. While he was there my friend found one he liked a lot. It sold a vitamin drink, and every day on his way to work he would grab one on the train platform. He would be just waking up, but then he would have his vitamin drink and he'd be perky and ready to start his day.

The problem was that while he understood Japanese well enough for business he didn't understand it fluently. When he got back home, he brought a case of the drinks he liked so much with him. But, curious, he asked a friend to translate the ingredients for him.

The first four ingredients? Water. Sugar. Juice. Nicotine.

That's right. Nicotine. Tons of it. And the moment he finished off the case of “vitamin drink” he started going into withdrawal. He actually had to take up smoking to break himself of the habit of vitamin drinks.