We talk Japanese superstitions & urban legends, take a look at the Aokigahara suicide forest, and ask ‘Why would anyone eat fugu?’
Listen on Acast, iTunes, and most other podcast services.
Superstitions
Some of the Superstitions were taken from this article –
10 Spooky Japanese Superstitions That Will Totally Freak You Out from fluentu.com
also from the Japanese Superstitions Wikipedia page.
Aokigahara Suicide Forest
The VICE documentary – seriously recommend watching this one –
Suicide Forest in Japan
The French news report we played a section of –
JAPAN – Aokigahara, the forest of suicides
Video of someone walking through the forest, (mentioned on the show, with the woman sitting alone) –
The Woman in the Suicide Forest – Kuroi Jukai, Aokigahara
Trailer for the 2016 horror film ‘The Forest’ –
The Forest Official Trailer #1 (2016)
Trailer for the 2016 film ‘The Sea Of Trees’ –
The Sea of Trees Official Trailer 1 (2016)
For images search Aokigahara in Google (or follow this link – Aokigahara images)
BE AWARE, UPSETTING IMAGAERY.
The books mentioned that are believed to have added to the popularity of Aokigahara as a suicide location were-
Kuroi Jukai by Seichō Matsumoto
and
The Complete Manual Of Suicide
(The information for the books was taken from this article –
15 Eerie Things About Japan’s Suicide Forest from mentalfloss.com)
Fugu
The Fugu news report we played on the show –
Preparing fugu, Japan’s poisonous fish dish
The Simpsons episode mentioned was S02E11 ‘One Fish, Two Fish, Blowfish, Blue Fish’
Urban Legends
Kasa Obake –
Most of the urban legends came from this article –
17 Japanese Urban Legends That’ll Scare The Shit Out Of You from buzzfeed.com
The pictures Bob showed Beef and Tiss on the show –
The Girl From The Gap –
The Red Room –
The Slit Mouthed Woman –
Onryō (inspiration for Kayako from The Grudge)
Tomino’s Hell
Here is the video we played the reading from on the show –
“Tomino’s Hell” | トミノの地獄
Shirime
The description of Shirime we used on the show was from this video –
5 WEIRDEST Japanese Urban Legends
Recommendations
Pom Poko – crazy Studio Ghibli film with lots of Japanese folklore creatures (and raccoon ball-sacks)
Uzumaki, by Junjo Ito – forgot to mention on the show, but a GREAT Japanese horror manga.
(otherwise known as Spiral Into Horror)
Outro music this week was Japanese Boy, by Aneka.
