Do people ever say you’re a selfish person? Do you find yourself eating cookies every time you desire them? Well guess what, you lucky duck? You’re on the short path towards getting yourself reborn as a “Hungry Ghost,” aka Jikininki, aka Shokujinki, aka Preta. You’re probably asking: “Oh no, I was hungry last night! Does [...]
Japan is home to many an urban legend, some of which end up being turned into popular horror films. The Slit-Mouthed Woman (Kuchisake-onna) is one such legend. Conveniently enough, it’s also one of the legends that’s had plenty of media released surrounding it, and this weekend, I finally got around to watching the 2007 horror [...]
When Halloween time rolls around, most people get excited about costumes, or candy, or even drinking heavily. Pretty much no one ever gets excited about Halloween food (candy doesn’t count). Luckily, the Japanese have got us covered. Japanese styled bento boxes are impressive enough as they are, but the Halloween themed bentos some manage to [...]
When I was a kid, I was over at a friend’s house and found a magazine with a bunch of comics in it. As I started looking through it, I found a horrifying comic. I’d never really seen a comic like it before, and was really freaked out by what I saw. Even today, a [...]
While Japan obviously has its own set of holidays and festivals (some weirder than others), it’s adopted a lot of foreign holidays too. Valentine’s Day is celebrated in Japan, and Christmas is widely celebrated, even though only a tiny percentage of the population is actually Christian. But what about Halloween? How Does Japan Celebrate Halloween? [...]
Japanese folklore has a rich and terrifying tradition of all sorts of zany ghosts, ghouls, monsters, and goblins. Japanese ghosts collectively known as yūrei (幽霊), and Japanese monsters collectively known as yōkai (妖怪) are arguably the most popular. But how many traditional Japanese spooks do you actually know anything about? Read on to see what [...]
No Koichi, don’t go! The Japanese are known for their manga; comics and animation are arguably a much bigger part of Japanese culture than other countries. Part of that means that there’s all types of manga; from manga made for kids to instructional manga and much more specialized manga. But this is Halloween Week, so [...]
