Boiling marbles

This article may be one of the weirdest I've ever skimmed (I don't read things that are this useless to my life, I skim them). It is filled with statements like this:

But tourists do come — especially the Japanese.

It features medieval and erotic ice sculptures, popular with tourists, particularly the Japanese.

Like the Japanese are not the most famous tourists anyway (besides annoying American ones).

Then periodically it descends into weird pseudo-racist infantilization of said tourists, like here:

“We taught them how to make s'mores last year, over the campfire. They loved that. I saw them the next morning with chocolate and marshmallow dripped all down their jackets, because they were trying to eat them while looking up.”

But what is more intriguing is:

Debbie Eberhardt, the proprietor of A Taste of Alaska Lodge, a few miles north of town, called the rumors about Japanese fertility beliefs “a crock” and said, “The Japanese come to Fairbanks in the winter because they love the extreme cold, not to make babies.

“They do things like throw boiling water in the air and watch it freeze like marbles before it hits the ground. They blow soap bubbles, which freeze solid and roll around on the ground like Christmas ornaments. They put bananas outside to freeze and then use them as hammers to pound nails into two-by-fours.”

Ok, that sounds awesome. Seriously.

But overall the article rambles from tourist information to talking about Japanese beliefs about conceiving babies under Northern Lights to talking about random other crap. Still. Thought it was sort of worth posting.