Good grief — at the moment I wish I could read Japanese!

The Japanese have a well-known penchant for the strange and unusual – so maybe it shouldn’t be too big of a surprise that they would be the first to create a website that describes smells and maps where they are found around the world with a Google-map mash-up.

Where's that smell?!?!?!

The site is called Nioibu, which translates to Smell Club. Unfortunately, at least for now, the site is only in Japanese. We English-speakers are out of luck!

According to an Associated Press article on Yahoo! News regarding this site, more that 200 “smellists” have joined and contributed to the site’s content.

Entries range from the mundane such as “steam coming out of a rice cooker,” to the very strange such as “cats with halitosis,” to the very pleasant such as fresh laundry and savory culinary dishes. All of these have corresponding points on the site’s Google-map and many are accompanied by photographs.

Though there is not yet any mechanism by which smells can be shared over the internet when one is created I’m sure the Japanese will be the first to have it! Now if they will just add a translator so that the rest of us might enjoy their written content!