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EP 83: Japanese Lore & Legends
21 Plays2 years ago
This week we revisit one of our most popular international true crime ep countries, Japan. Focusing on folklore and urban legends this time, we explore just a tiny amount of Japan's rich and very long history. Kelsey reads a small collection of popular folktales, with some of the variations slowly becoming more and more bizarre (be warned that a clam wife may pee clam juice in your bean soup).
Then, Alanna shares a variety of urban legends popular with the more superstitious Japanese residents. From tunnels to computer pop-ups, to cursed poems and bathrooms, we've got you covered. Tune in for the lore, stay for the laughs (there are plenty this week). Thanks for listening and keep it cryptic!
Tags: Car Henge, Japanese Folklore, Japanese Fairytales, Urashima Tarō, Tsuru no Ongaeshi, Tsuru Nyōbō, saru kani gassen, Japanese Urban Legends, Urban Legends, Inunaki Tunnel, The Red Room Curse, Tomino's Hell, Bathroom Legends
linktr.ee/castlesandcryptids Website: castlesandcryptidspod.squarespace.com
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Transcript
Introduction to Castles and Cryptids
00:00:22
Speaker
You are listening to Castles and Cryptids where the castles are haunted and the cryptids are cryptic as fuck.
00:00:29
Speaker
And I'm Alana. I'm Kelsey. And this is episode 83. Japanese folklore. Yeah. I'm just going to say it right out of the gate. So we don't forget. I feel like sometimes we'll be like, did we say what this episode is about? And then we're like, it doesn't matter. It's the episode title. Everybody knows.
00:00:56
Speaker
Yeah, and then we tangent for several minutes. Yep, it's been known to happen. I do have a fun fact for you that has a picture on the drive. Oh my god, okay. I know a fun fact picture.
Exploration of Carhenge and Nebraska
00:01:13
Speaker
Things I learned on the internet this week is that there's a place called Carhenge in the United States. Carhenge, okay. Yes, it is in
00:01:26
Speaker
Oh, it just headed up. Oh, I see it. It is in Nebraska, because why not? I love it. Oh my God, that's so cool. Completely painted gray cars, right? Yes. Just the shape of the circles of Stonehenge. I love it. I thought you might. I did. It's so great.
00:01:57
Speaker
Oh, it's awesome. Like, if you were kind of looking at it from, I guess, the outside perimeter, because it's the hoods and then the tops of the cars. Yeah. It kind of, what the fuck are you doing? Sorry. He's being very cute, but it's gonna be so disruptive. Oh, no.
00:02:28
Speaker
Um, no, so yeah, if you just look at the outside edge of it, because it's all like the hoods and the tops, and it's all painted, it almost does look like rock if you aren't really paying attention. Yeah. Yeah, the other side when you see like,
00:02:49
Speaker
the bottom of the car and you're like, okay, I can clearly tell that's a car. But it's so fun. I love this picture of it on the sunset. It looks great. Yeah, exactly. Just like the real one. Well, it's not lining up to like the solstice setting sun or anything. But I love how like one of them's half in like for the stones that are kind of the laid down ones. I forget.
00:03:16
Speaker
oh yes one of them was called the sacrificial stone or something yeah oh my god i love it it's a hinge and that is right near alliance nebraska okay fun
00:03:35
Speaker
Nebraska's having fun. Yeah. Yeah. Honestly, I forget what I was listening to, but I have several fun facts about Nebraska written down. So I was like, enjoying it, apparently. There's a place in Nebraska that just has one resident who's the bartender, I don't know, the mailman, whatever, and her name is Elsie. Which was my great aunt's name, but
00:04:04
Speaker
Oh, I did never I didn't ever look up the spelling of it. So my guess is as good as yours. That one's Mano. Mano. That was my that was my guesstimate of how you spelled it. So let me know people if you can find it. I've heard people mentioned that on a different podcast, I think before, just like a one woman town. You're like, does that even count as a town? Are they just on the outskirts of somewhere else? Like,
00:04:34
Speaker
How can this be? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Huh. Maybe it was like a town and everybody else abandoned it. I mean, she's got to go somewhere to buy her milk. There's got to be something nearby. That's all I know. No, she's got her own farm. She's fully self-sustaining and she is one person a year. No, I hope not.
Comparing Canadian TV Shows
00:05:03
Speaker
That'd be so sad.
00:05:05
Speaker
No, because I think they said she was the bartender, so I was like, wait, okay, there's a bar. Oh, it's like Modine's and Letter Kenny. She just like basically lives there, like Gail, and she knows everybody. Hopefully she's not as horny as Gail's character is. Single-minded. Between Gail and... Oh, fuck. What's the dude and his wife? The McMurray's. Yeah, but...
00:05:34
Speaker
How are you now? Good new. That's what my brother and I do. Oh, you know, good new. It's also impossible not to say, to be fair, whenever that comes up in conversation. Yeah. But to be fair, we're Canadian, so we should sound like that. It took me a little bit to get into that show, but
00:06:03
Speaker
I just like the absurdity of it. I like it way better than some other Canadian shows that have been quite popular like Corner Gas or Trailer Park Boys. I could relate a lot more to these characters. I never did Trailer Park Boys. My brother did. He loved it. I think it's funny. It's that redneck kind of humor, obviously. My dad and I watched Corner Gas. Almost all of it.
00:06:31
Speaker
yeah that was like yeah it wasn't ever really like my favorite but yeah i liked the show something when it was on you know i wasn't gonna change the channel well nowadays we got things like shits creek and letter kenny we could be proud of so we're starting really crack into it in the mainstream american tv world and it's good because it's stuff that's
00:07:01
Speaker
Like, by Canadians, or you're like a part of it, so they're doing it in a non-derogatory way kind of thing. Yeah, it's good. Because I mean, Canadians aren't that much different than Americans.
00:07:24
Speaker
No, no, but we're just usually just the butt of their jokes on TV, like that Adam Sandler movie where they're looking at the hot guy at the pool and then he opens his mouth and he's like, Hey, I'm from Saskatchewan, eh? Yes. And I laughed because it was funny, but there is no place called Saskatchewan. I do that to my dad because he's from Saskatoon. So I say Saskatchewan. Yeah. Yes, it's that support Montau of Saskatchewan.
00:07:55
Speaker
Saskatoon and Saskatchewan. Right? I'd love me some Saskatoon berries. Okay, we have some in our freezer that I got from my friend at work that I hope to make some of that Saskatoon berry meat out of like that we bought at the store. That was so good. Oh, fun. Yeah, I think I had it in something maybe it was just jam or like a Saskatoon pie or something. I think I've had it once before.
00:08:22
Speaker
Yeah I think I was visiting my aunt and uncle in when they lived in Manitoba still and they had it in like a like a syrup like a pancake syrup. Anyway enough about Saskatoon berries. Yeah in this episode not even about Canada. Hey we've had 10 minutes of good solid banter and none of it was about television or movies for once.
00:08:51
Speaker
It was! We just talked about Leonard, Kenny and Corner Gas and Schitt's Creek. Well, it wasn't Outlander and I don't know, what else do we talk about a lot? Fringe? Parks and Rec. Specifically why last time when you told me you'd been watching Outlander, I was like, I shouldn't ask her about it now because we need to record. Well,
00:09:22
Speaker
Oh, yeah. And you were, I was going to say to you, did I say that? I heard other people saying, this, as you might notice, isn't my co-host today because Diana still has her throat ripped out by a demon. And I was like, other people, like, homespin Haynes. This was, who else did we do this time? And her co-host was still out. And I thought, oh, geez. Yeah, same, same with Kelsey. Yeah, it's still hanging on there. I can feel it, but talking,
00:09:53
Speaker
doesn't really make me cough too much. It's calmed down in the last week for sure. Like it's gotten a lot better. Yeah, it does sound like it. Do you want to go first this time? Yeah, I thought maybe I could because I know what you're doing and I feel like that's a better way to end the episode.
Introduction to Japanese Folklore
00:10:19
Speaker
Okay.
00:10:21
Speaker
I hope so. I think it's going to be a little creepy. We all love a good... Japan has made some of the best horror movies that can adapt it here. Yeah, I ended up looking up, just tried to find some folklore, fairy tales. I didn't actually...
00:10:48
Speaker
find any of the actual stories. I basically ran across just summaries that people did of the story. So that's mostly what I have. Oh, totally. It's usually like someone's version because it's all passed down orally sometimes. Yeah. So most of the stuff I found was on Wikipedia and then there was a really
00:11:19
Speaker
A good article that I found that had seven Japanese folklore stories that I got. I love those kind of articles. I'm like, give it to me. One of the seven. I got one of the seven off of there because what they did is the other ones weren't really like folklore stories. Okay.
00:11:45
Speaker
But it was actually the wanderwisdom.com. It was travel destinations. And it told you the folklore story around a place and that had little bullet points about places you could visit that were related to that. So one of the stories actually has a couple places that you can visit that there's statues and stuff about it, which was kind of cool. Yeah. Can you hear the dog?
00:12:13
Speaker
Oh, I can now. Cute dog scratching at door or carpet. Now that sounds fun though, the statues. Yeah, I should have looked up pictures of the statues. I forgot to do that. I was going to do that ran out of time. We both finished our notes for this today. That's true. Good on us. Pat on the back.
00:12:39
Speaker
real podcasters who are like, hey man, no. That's a very Amanda thing to do from wine and crime. There's a lot of them that are like, I finished my assignment just at the end of the day professor. But sometimes it's just how shit goes. And this was what we could record. So it was good. Yeah. I also didn't really look up how to pronounce anything. But I'll give it a whirl.
00:13:06
Speaker
Oh, yeah, those are those things where I'm like, I will do that after. Yeah, normally it's I'll do that like two hours before we record. And that was like, when I was making two hours before you record, you're doing notes. Exactly. Yeah. So just in summary, in Japanese, there's a term called Minkan Genshu, and which means transmissions among the folk.
00:13:36
Speaker
So I think that's just basically like you said, oral storytelling. And yeah, it's used to describe folklore. And there's many Japanese fairy tales through the ages or different periods. A lot of stuff, if I remember correctly, said that during like the Edo period, a lot of stories came out or there was a lot more variations during the Edo period of a lot of the stories than in other periods.
00:14:05
Speaker
Oh, that's the most delicious period. I'm just kidding. Ito Japan. Yeah. The name Mukashi Banashi translates to long ago or from bygone times. And this has been applied to most common folk tales since they typically open with the formula Mukashi, which is akin to our once upon a time.
00:14:35
Speaker
Oh, that's cool. And these stories or fairy tales often also close with the phrase like Dotto Harai, which I tried, like I Googled it and I couldn't find anything. And what I was reading said that Dotto Harai is a variant form of Dondo hair. So then I Googled Dondo hair and I found a TV show.
00:15:06
Speaker
that said that hair, I don't know if it's just in the TV show or like in Japanese like translates to something about the sunrise. So I think that's supposed to be kind of like riding off into the sunset, maybe like happily ever after the end kind of thing, but I couldn't translate either of those.
00:15:32
Speaker
Like when I googled them, nothing came up saying what it means. I think that would be a fair bet anyway. It's like a positive closing line. I mean, you hope that they all end that way and that they're not the the Grimm's fairy tale versions, which are quite unhappy endings. They're quite grim. As we kind of said, folk tales are
00:16:02
Speaker
basically come from like oral traditions and are told in pretty specific local dialects. This has kind of resulted in many variations or versions of each story depending on where or even when it was recorded or like written down. And these can also make it sometimes difficult for outsiders to understand because of different pronunciation or grammar differences. Oh, yeah.
00:16:31
Speaker
Yeah, so many folk tales collected are actually translations into standard Japanese. And from like, I assume what they meant was like these local dialects. And they may be adaptations or emerging of several different versions that were collected when this was, quote unquote, translated.
00:16:55
Speaker
even just from like Japanese different variation like dialects to standard Japanese so I could see that and just with different dialects they're from different regions so yeah people from different places are like oh we used to play that game but we called it this or whatever exactly that's cool so the first story I think is the first
00:17:20
Speaker
Should be the first three pictures on the drive. They're pretty cool. They're like really old pictures. Some of them from like 1890s and stuff. Some of them are from scrolls. Yeah, so they depict like some of the stories and like parts of it. So. Scrolling over to the scrolls. Yeah.
Tales from Japanese Folklore
00:17:44
Speaker
The first one is called Yurashima Taro. And the story goes that one day a young fisherman named Yurashima Taro was fishing when he notices a group of children torturing a small turtle. Oh my god.
00:18:07
Speaker
What the hell? What did that turtle do to you? All these summaries are just what it had on Wikipedia, but most of the sites I looked at, they were pretty much the same except for maybe one or two different words. All the summaries are basically the same.
00:18:27
Speaker
So Taro saves it and lets it go back into the sea. The next day a huge turtle approaches him and tells him that the small turtle he had saved is the daughter of the Emperor of the Sea, Ryujin, who wants to see him to thank him. So
00:18:52
Speaker
The turtle magically gives Taro gills and brings him to the bottom of the sea, to the palace of the dragon god, Ryugujo. There he meets the emperor and the small turtle, who is now a lovely princess, O Tohimi. And the palace had a view to the Four Seasons, a different one on each side.
00:19:23
Speaker
Oh but not the hotel. No, not the hotel.
00:19:27
Speaker
I thought that too. Yeah, split second, split second. We have a view of the four seasons, but we're not in it. Yeah. Okay, that's interesting. Taro stays with Otohime for three days, but soon wants to go back to his village and see his aging mother, so he requests permission to leave. The princess says that she is sorry to see him go, but wishes him well and gives him a mysterious box.
00:19:56
Speaker
called Tamate Beiko, which will protect him from harm, but which she tells him never to open. I feel very Pandora's box about it. Yes, or the Dybbuk box. So Taro grabs the box, jumps on the back of the same turtle that had brought him there, and soon is at the seashore.
00:20:25
Speaker
So when he gets home, everything has changed. His home is gone, his mother is banished, and the people he knew are nowhere to be seen. He asks if anybody knows a man named Urashima Taro. The answer that they had heard someone of that name had vanished at sea long ago.
00:20:44
Speaker
And that was him. So he, uh, now he gets word that like he disappeared. So, oh, sorry. You're like, no, you're not getting it. It's like, whoa, what? That's like, that's like the, the, the classic urban legend where, you know, someone's picked up a car or whatever. Oh, she's left her sweater in my car. But she's been dead for five years. Yeah.
00:21:13
Speaker
That's really, really unsettling. Yeah. So Taro discovers that 300 years have passed since the day he left for the bottom of the sea. Oh my god. Yeah. And it felt like three days to him. Struck by grief, he absentmindedly opens the box the princess had given him, from which bursts forth a cloud of white smoke.
00:21:41
Speaker
He is suddenly aged, his beard long and white and his back bent. And from the sea comes the sad, sweet voice of the princess. I told you not to open that box. In it was your old age." Oh, he doesn't 300 years catch up with him? Yeah, that's the story, or the summary of the story, I guess.
00:22:06
Speaker
One source I read said that the tragic tale of Urashima Taro is one of the oldest Japanese folklore stories and has circulated as early as the fifth century and has many, many different versions. It does sound like a classic, like a grink. It definitely has a very
00:22:30
Speaker
easy to spot um lesson this is what you did wrong this is what you should have done yeah like you're all right oh no well he like opened it he definitely wasn't supposed to and he probably could have still lived there and been happy right but
00:22:50
Speaker
Yeah, it's very tragic anyway, you slice it, I guess. Yeah. So some of the versions include ones where only a few decades have passed instead of the total of 300 years, but still his family is basically gone. And other versions say that once Taro opened the box, he aged dramatically and then just basically dropped dead. Just boom, died. Oh no, he dust. Because it's 300 years.
00:23:21
Speaker
And then opinions about what the possible moral, because typically in like Western fairy tales, everything has like a moral to the story. There's differing opinions about what a possible moral of the tale may be. And some just simply believe it doesn't really have one. Just because it's like don't open the box, but that's about the only thing.
00:23:50
Speaker
I suppose it is a bit, you're damned if you're due, you're damned if you don't, because it doesn't sound like he could have avoided being brought to the future. Kind of like a rumble still skin sort of situation. Yeah. No, that's not the one. What's the one where he's asleep for a long time? Van Winkle? I don't know. Yes, Rip Van Winkle.
00:24:16
Speaker
He like falls asleep forever, nevermind. That one's pretty well known too, but I can't remember the details, so I'll shut up. So this was the one that I found on that travel website. So it said that the Dragon Palace and Princess Otohime are occasionally used as design motifs on souvenir packaging.
00:24:46
Speaker
So their likeness has been used. Well, Taro himself has appeared in video games and different anime. And the supposed spirit of Hiroshima Taro is enshrined at a rather remote Hiroshima shrine in northern Kyoto province. That's famous for the Kyoto Accords.
00:25:14
Speaker
Yeah, so there's supposed to be a shrine there that holds his supposed spirit, and at this shrine there's a statue of him as well as Odohemi. They each have their own statue there. There's also a bunch of stuff talking about where it says that Tarob says he's from and stuff. There's also supposed to be things. Didn't really get into it because there was a lot going on.
00:25:46
Speaker
Yeah, it said that the... Oh, listen, the Kagoshima prefecture at the southern tip of Japan is said to be Taro's birthplace.
00:26:02
Speaker
The Ryuugu shrine at Ibutsuki, just outside of Kegoshima City, contains beautifully lacquered structures inspired by descriptions of the Dragon Palace. Sounds pretty cool. I'm like, another thing I could have looked up pictures for. I'll try and find stuff for the website. Oh, yes.
00:26:30
Speaker
But yeah, that's like the first three are kind of the first three pictures in the driver like to do with the story. It's kind of cool. Yeah. The like traditional Japanese drawings or art. Oh yeah. Totally. It was kind of cool. And the next one I'd say probably has the most variations of it.
00:27:00
Speaker
And that is, well, the first variation, or I guess main one, is called Tsuru no Onigishi, which translates to Crane's Return of a Favor. And... Yeah, which as you could kind of
00:27:27
Speaker
assume it's the story of a crane who returns a favour to a man. I mean, as one does. Yeah, lend favours to cranes and other birds. Yeah. So according to Japanese scholar Saki Kyugo, the tale is one of the best known tales in Japan about supernatural and enchanted spouses.
00:27:53
Speaker
There's many versions of it, and each is basically about a guy marrying something that turns out to not be human. Sounds like Greek stories. Yeah. The first variation, or I guess version, is just called the Crane Wife.
00:28:18
Speaker
And its version says that there was a man who marries the crane that returns the favor is known as Tesoro Nyobo or Crane Wife. And in the Crane Wife story, the man marries a woman who is in fact a crane disguised as a woman, as a human.
00:28:43
Speaker
These are all just little synopses of the different versions. To make money, the crane wife plucks her own feathers to weave silk brocade, which the man sells. But she becomes increasingly ill as she does so.
00:29:04
Speaker
And when the man discovers his wife's true identity and the nature of her illness, he is devastated by the truth and he demands her to stop. And as her response is that she has been doing it for love for them together. And the man says that love exists without sacrifice, but he is wrong.
00:29:31
Speaker
And it just said that he who lives without sacrifices for someone else doesn't deserve to be with a crane. And that's the end of that version, I guess. Oh, damn. That was pretty savage. Yeah. That was like, I was listening to a list about famous quotes the other day. And there's the one that's, I think it was,
00:30:02
Speaker
May West. Because there was one quote on the list that was also Marilyn Monroe. So now I'm trying to remember, but it was like, it goes kind of like, if you can't stand me at my worst, then you don't deserve me at my best. It's kind of like, oh, yeah, you know, it's kind of sassy. Yeah, very much.
00:30:27
Speaker
So at first I wasn't going to get into all the versions of this story, but they're all kind of just weird enough that you kind of have to talk about them. Or this, or it could have been this, or this. There's one version that's called the Copper Pheasant Wife.
00:30:52
Speaker
And in this one, the wife doesn't weave cloth, but instead provides her husband a plume to feather an arrow shaft the husband is rewarded for. Don't really know what that means. The wife is not... Yeah. Oh, I like missed the... Oh, I missed the original story. Gordo. Hi.
00:31:22
Speaker
Oh, did you? Yeah, the Crane Wife was like one version. That's why it probably didn't make sense. Okay, sorry. I have to tell the original version. It has the most information.
00:31:36
Speaker
Okay, so that was most of the variables. Yeah. Okay. The crane wife, that was a variation. That's why I didn't have a lot of information because it was only telling the differences between the two. I was like, why does this seem so short? Okay.
00:31:53
Speaker
So the crane's return of a favor, the Tesoro no Onagoshi, is a man saves a crane that had been shot down by hunters. And that night, a beautiful girl appears at the man's door and tells him that she is his wife. Like every guy's dream. Okay. A woman shows up at the door, I'm your wife. And he didn't even mail order her that bride. Yeah.
00:32:22
Speaker
The man tells her that he is not wealthy enough to support them, but she tells him that she has a bag of rice that will fill their stomachs. And every day the rice bag never goes down in the sack and it always stays full. The next day she tells the man that she's going in a room to make something and that he is not to come in until she is finished.
00:32:46
Speaker
So seven days have passed by and she finally comes out with a beautiful piece of clothing but she is very skinny. She tells the man to go to the markets the next morning and to sell this for a very large price. So yeah, he comes back home and tells her that he sold it for a very good price. After that they are now wealthy. And the woman then goes back into the room telling him once again not to come in until she's finished.
00:33:16
Speaker
But the man's curiosity takes over and he peeks in, realizing that the woman is the crane whom he had saved. And when the crane sees that the man has found out her true identity, she says that she cannot stay there anymore and flies away to never come back. No, you're not supposed to look. Everything was fine. If it's not a bad dirty secret, then I don't need to know.
00:33:48
Speaker
in a room like making clothing. Yeah, but she was better at as a crane, I take it. Yeah, so the crane wife variation is instead of her actually being a crane. Yeah, that part's the same, but she's plucking out her own feathers to make that. She becomes ill.
00:34:18
Speaker
Um, he demands her to stop. So instead of the one where she says, like the original one where she says she just can't stay this one, he's demanding her to stop and she says that she can't. Um, yeah, cause that's her livelihood. Um, so the other variations, the copper pheasant wife, the wife doesn't weave cloth, but instead provides her husband a plume to feather an arrow shaft. The husband is rewarded for him.
00:34:49
Speaker
And the wife is not looked in on by the husband in the room where she's working. She is in the crane wife. Instead, in crane's return of a favor, the pheasant wife leaves as soon as the favor is returned.
00:35:03
Speaker
So that one, it's like to do with arrows. There's a bird wife version that's an injured wild goose that the man ends up saving. And in this story, the wife weaves without prompting from the husband. And one day she disappears, but he finds her in a local pond.
00:35:24
Speaker
And this is where she explains that she's trying to repay his kindness and asks him to use the money from selling the cloth to take care of their children before she flies away. Is that when they had kids? Yeah. There's one called Gostlings. Yeah, exactly. An injured wild goose.
00:35:52
Speaker
My mom's married name now is the like the French word for gosling. Also I heard a thing the other day where a translation of penguin was business goose. Business goose. I love it. Well they do look like they were in like a little suit or something.
00:36:21
Speaker
I love it. Business. It's so cute. Stuck in my head. That's so great. I love languages. I know. I love the weird little things, nuggets I learned from podcasts and other weird stuff.
00:36:40
Speaker
uh just a few more few more variations on this one there's a fox wife they get increasingly weird you'll thank me after um the fox wife where it's a fox that the man helps and the fox shows up on the man's doorstep to become his bride um in this tale the fox does not weave but instead uses her tail to sweep the floors and um
00:37:09
Speaker
A little bit of a difference again with this one is upon discovering his wife's identity, her being a fox, the husband drives her away instead of her leaving. He makes her leave. She kept the floors clean with her tail. Why would you drive away a wife like that? Yeah. Honestly. And she's a foxy lady. A Kitsuni. Yes.
00:37:38
Speaker
Yeah, that came up a lot. Yes, which is a nine-tailed fox, because don't know. Yeah. I don't think we've talked about them on here. I think I have talked about them with my daughter. Yeah. There's no Sonic or whatever. Okay. Tails or I don't know, never mind. I know, I used to play Sonic. Oh. Yeah.
00:38:05
Speaker
in one version called The Clam Wife. Because he marries Clam. Clam Wife. Oh my god. A man finds a beautiful woman mysteriously appear on his doorway. They become married and the wife cooks the husband a delicious bean soup every day. Oh my god, every day. Every day bean soup. He peeks in. He must be the most regular.
00:38:35
Speaker
So farty. So instead of him peeking on her weaving, he peeks in on her cooking and discovers that she's urinating clam juice into the soup. So he chases her away. Because she's a clam, but she's peeing into the soup. I don't know where to go with that.
00:39:03
Speaker
right things to say that's why i'm like uh every one of these needs to be talked about peeing clam super was she a clam at the time yeah i think so oh god i hope not her just popping a squat over the stove yeah that's a different kind of clam juice just i don't know what to say
00:39:28
Speaker
This is no Hansel and Gretel, this is not safe for work. There is a version called The Fish Wife, where a fisherman... Okay, well those I've heard of, they sound more normal. The fisherman, or a fisherman, releases a fish that he does not need to eat back into the water because he does not have a greedy nature.
00:39:54
Speaker
As a result, a beautiful woman appears at the fisherman's door and begs to be his wife. The wife cooks the husband a bean soup, and it is so good that he is suspicious of how she makes it. So he spies on her while she's cooking and discovers she urinates in the soup. So much. Did they just not have no salt? And this was the Oh, I don't even know.
00:40:21
Speaker
Later at dinner, he alludes to her cooking method. When the wife realizes he knows, she says she must return to her former home and bids her husband visit her at the pond the following day. When he does, she explains how she was a fit, how she was a fish he saved and had wanted to repay the favor. She disappears into the water, leaving him a box of gold and silver. Hey!
00:40:49
Speaker
I mean, you ate pea soup? Literal pea soup? Fish pea, clam pea, who knows? That one was surprising. I was ready to like facepalm again and then you're like, well then at least you got gold and silver out of it. Yeah. There's your divorce settlement.
00:41:14
Speaker
Yeah, there's your compensation. The last one is the snake wife in which a beautiful woman appears in a widower's doorway asking to stay the night.
00:41:31
Speaker
they become married and the wife becomes pregnant yada yada yada well there's no other information on this one so i'm like what is like it's what she has to say the night and then it's just the next sentence says they become married and now the wife is pregnant and i can tell you've still been watching a lot of Seinfeld yada yada yada never heard from again
00:41:58
Speaker
So the wife warns the husband not to look in on the hut where she intends to have their child. So that one's a bit different. He looks and discovers a snake. The wife says that the husband has seen her true form and she must leave. She ends up giving her child her two eyeballs for nourishment as she cannot be there to feed it.
00:42:21
Speaker
Oh my god. And when the sun grows of age, he takes care of his blind mother. That's all I have. So those are a bunch of different versions about the Crane Wipe. Where the Crane who returns a favor. And most of them have nothing to do with the Crane. But they're like half the time normal people, like a Princess Fiona sort of situation where she's like only an ogre at night.
00:42:52
Speaker
It seems weird that they couldn't get past this. I'm only a clam when I'm making soup. I told you not to look at me because... Don't look at me without makeup on! I'm a clam!
00:43:09
Speaker
You can just not want your spouse to watch you giving birth because you just don't want them to see that. It had nothing to do with me being a snake or not. I just asked Pat to stay away but he didn't listen. Oh god. I do have one more story. Do you? Nice. That was so fun.
00:43:37
Speaker
I know. I should have ended with that one. Oh. This one's pretty good too. George Costanza, where he ends on a high note and leaves the meeting after. Yeah. I don't know. You haven't got that one. He's like, he tells a good joke and then that's when he wants to leave the meeting because he wants to go out on a high note. Oh, yes. He doesn't want to be like saying something stupid after that. So he just leaves.
00:44:06
Speaker
This one also has a bunch of variations. And this is called the crab and the monkey. And it has an original version that we know of that's called the monkey crab battle. It sounds like a rat battle. Dance battle. Dance off between a monkey and a crab.
00:44:33
Speaker
Um, there's sometimes crabs are your bosses in that. You have to fucking anyway. Uh, so the, I think it's the monkey crab battle is translated to Saru Kanigasen. Um, there's other versions. So that's like the first one, the monkey crab battle is the original one. And then the one's called like the crab and the monkey and everything, as well as the coral of the monkey and the crab.
00:45:03
Speaker
Um, yeah, there's like different versions of it is the story of a slime monkey who kills a crab and later is killed by the crabs offspring in revenge. King Krabby. Junior. Um, so the synopsis of this one was while out walking,
00:45:23
Speaker
A crab finds a rice ball, and a sly monkey persuades the crab to trade the rice ball for a persimmon seed. The crab is upset at first.
00:45:42
Speaker
But when she plants and tends to the seed, a tree grows that supplies abundant fruit. The monkey then agrees to climb the tree and pick the fruit for the crab. But the monkey decides to gorge himself on the fruit instead of sharing it with the crab.
00:46:02
Speaker
Because he a dick. That was your first mistake. When the crab protests, the monkey ends up hurling hard, unripe fruit at her. The shock of being attacked like this causes the crab to end up giving birth just before she ends up dying. Oh no! That's dramatic. Yeah, that was brutal.
00:46:27
Speaker
So the crab's offspring seek revenge on the monkey with the help of several allies, which are what rotates in the story basically. The allies in the original story are a chestnut, a cow dung, so like a poop.
00:46:47
Speaker
I'm picturing these all in emoji form with smiling little eyes. That's a great way to do it. Yeah. So. Well, everything in Japan is like sometimes stylized so cute. Yeah. It's a great way to look at it because we have a chestnut, a piece of poo, a bee and an uzu, which is a large heavy mortar. So these alleys along with the crab's offspring go to the monkey's house.
00:47:19
Speaker
The chestnut hides himself on the monkey's hearth, and the bee in the water pail, the cow dung on the floor, and the uzi on the roof. When the monkey returns home, he tries to warm himself on the hearth, but the chestnut strikes the monkey so that he burns himself. And when the monkey... Okay, good, because I thought he was going to get roasted over the open fire. Not quite.
00:47:46
Speaker
It is Christmas, dad. Yeah, so the chestnut hits the monkey, so he burns himself. Then the monkey tries to cool himself from the burn at the water bucket, but the bee stings him. He tries to run out of the house, but the cow dung makes him slip.
00:48:09
Speaker
And then the Uzu falls down from the roof, killing the monkey by crushing his heart, causing him to bleed out and die. So that's the original one. As I said, there's multiple versions that switch out what things or what allies, I guess you call them, help out the crab.
00:48:32
Speaker
I want to see cartoon versions of all of it. Just like... Oh, it's gonna get great. There's like a picture. I think it's the last picture that's one of the... Oh, I don't have the year on it. Oh, it also depicts like one of the versions. Don't see it yet. So, yeah. So there's versions about whether or not the crab or the monkey ever even die.
00:48:59
Speaker
One version of the story published by Andrew Lang says that the crab gathers the unripe fruit that is thrown down by the monkey, like trying to kill it. The crab gathers it up and isn't killed. Instead, the monkey leaves after this and leaves the crab for dead because she'd be unable to go up to get more of the fruit. So all she's left with is the unripe fruit.
00:49:26
Speaker
Not ripe yet, Guardians of the Galaxy. One version has the crab's children being helped by the Uzu, a snake, a bee, and a Rami, which is Kelp, along with a kitchen knife. Because almost everyone has like an animated
00:49:52
Speaker
Where's the little sushi guy? So this one it's they're helped by a knife like a kitchen knife which is the last picture it's like drawn I don't have a year for the picture but it's like the classic Japanese like drawing but there's just like a kitchen knife like laying on the ground and I love it but no no cartoon eyes unfortunately
00:50:21
Speaker
Yeah, it's kind of great. So there's another version yet that has the allies said to be an amount of oil. Just an amount. Another one that has an egg instead of a chestnut. And then the kelp instead of a cow dung. In that one, the egg attacks the monkey by exploding.
00:50:48
Speaker
And then the kelp then causes the monkey to slip instead of the dung. Did they put the egg in the microwave? Because that can... That's what I thought, yeah. You want to make sure the robe is closed. We used to have one of those microwave egg things. It was like a little thing into the water and then you could put like salt and pepper and it makes like a little... It poaches it?
00:51:17
Speaker
Basically, but it's not, it was like a little thing. It was basically like just bigger than a hard boiled egg. Yeah. And you would just crack the egg into it and add a bit of water. It's not the nice ones from like Tupperware that you do that make it. So you could put it on like a sandwich or like a bagel or something. This, it was basically like a ball. Okay. Just a quick way to like, yeah, hard or soft boil it. Nice. Yeah.
00:51:45
Speaker
Yeah, so another version. Oh, that sentence meant to be deleted. It was like in one version of the story published by Andrew Lang. We already talked about you. Bluebirds. Bluebirds. So there's a 20th century novelist. Oh, God. I should have looked at Patti Burnett's thing because I'm sorry.
00:52:13
Speaker
Oh, I know that's hard. It's really hard. He wrote a short story. He wrote a short story based on the folktale in which after avenging their mother's death by attacking the monkey, the crab children are all arrested and face the death penalty. Oh my god, the children.
00:52:46
Speaker
And then, okay, this is why I didn't put the other one. This is a good way to end it too. Okay. I don't feel so bad. I can't believe I did all of these notes today and then totally forgot. Wow. It's all a blur. It's all a blur.
00:53:03
Speaker
The last version of the story that's completely different is when the monkey climbs the tree and takes all the persimmons, the crab advises him to hang his basket of fruit from a branch.
00:53:21
Speaker
And when the monkey hangs his basket on a thin branch, the branch breaks and the basket of fruit falls. The crab quickly carries the fruit off and crawls down the hole. Are you ready? The monkey decides to defecate on the crab and sticks his buttocks down the hole. All right over it, yeah.
00:53:49
Speaker
Uh, the crab quickly shaves the monkey's bottom, which it said literally, this is what the thing said word for word. The crab quickly shaves the monkey's bottom, which is why to this day, monkeys have hairless bottoms and hair grows on crab's claws. Because baboons or whatever. I think that's what they mean.
00:54:15
Speaker
the barefoot spoons. Rafiki. I was like, okay. Donkey Kong really bad. And the ones where you have to hit, there's crabs and they're hard to hit because they got their, you have to hit them once to get their stupid little claws to go in. Otherwise you can't, you can't get rid of them. Damn. That was very much. I, I know why that, like,
00:54:42
Speaker
I play all the Japanese video games. We bought Rain's Super Mario Galaxy. Yeah. And she loves Donkey Kong and it's...
00:54:51
Speaker
It's like, okay, this is where they came up with all of these ideas of monkeys fighting crabs. Yeah, apparently, there is a big like history in Japan of like crabs and monkeys or monkeys versus like other animals and crabs versus other animals. So interesting. Yeah, kind of represent us because you know, they're close.
00:55:16
Speaker
relatives yeah that's interesting i i wish i could have found like actual versions of the story instead of the summaries but i think the summaries worked out okay pardon me i mean yeah i think usually original versions are quite long too most people have to give the summed up version if you're gonna do like this is the real grandma's fairy tales which we could do those too because
00:55:47
Speaker
We have at my book, we have at my book, at my work, we have a book. I didn't even catch that. And it because they're redoing like, basically almost like velvety printed covers of all these books at my work. So they have like Frankenstein and like Sherlock Holmes and like all these ones. Oh, kind of a classic.
00:56:13
Speaker
Yeah, but it's kind of like felty, like it has kind of like a texture to it. And there is one that was the Grimm's fairy tales and I keep wanting to buy it. Yeah. Yeah. That'd be a cool version to have for sure. And yeah, they're pretty interesting. Yeah. Episode idea. I do know Cinderella, her glass slipper is supposed to catch on the stairs because the prince
00:56:41
Speaker
like wants to trap her from leaving the party because he likes her. So he has the servants pour tar down the stairs. And then when she's running down the stairs, instead of her slipper falling off, her feet get stuck in the tar. It was like, oh, shit. Yeah. How they did it and wasn't that how they did it and
00:57:09
Speaker
Anna Kendrick's in the movie, Into the Woods. Yeah, I haven't seen it but she talked about it in her book, how she had to film it and act like she couldn't pick her feet up off the stairs. Yeah, I love Into the Woods, it's great. I should watch it. I just saw her talk about it and I was like, oh, that sounds like a pretty good, you know, kind of. Yeah, it's amalgamation of a bunch of fairy tales or something. Yeah, so like, Cinderella
00:57:39
Speaker
Yeah, she's Cinderella, and then somebody's Little Red Riding Hood, and there's the one boy that's doing... Is it Jack the Beanstalk or something? And then somebody's doing like Rumpelstiltskin. There's like five of them going on at the same time.
00:58:07
Speaker
Oh, that's cool. Yeah. See, I like that. I like that. And they all like and all of them are going into the woods and they're like crossing paths with each other and like all this stuff is going on. And then Meryl Streep is the evil witch, like behind it all. Oh, yeah. That makes sense. Yeah, it's pretty fun. I could see that. It's like Angelina Jolie is Maleficent. That's pretty good. Yeah, I like those.
00:58:41
Speaker
That was really fun. I laughed more than I thought I would. I was typing these up and I was like, oh my god, this is just getting weirder. And then it was like, there's a lot of variations. And then I was like, ah, clams peeing. Now it's fish peeing. Hairless monkey butt. Yeah, hairless monkey butt. I'm like, I don't know.
00:59:06
Speaker
the obsession with the butts and the toilets will get to it a little bit it's weird i don't know i get it it's a vulnerable place like yeah i'd get scared i'd be watching x-files with with my sister and then i'd be like going to the bathroom and whatever's on the tv it's like they had
00:59:30
Speaker
needles going on in their latest case. Well, needles are going to come up through the toilet. Get me in the butt. Like I just like think these stupid thoughts that made no sense. I'm more afraid of like being in Australia and like you'd have a snake or like a giant bug or spider in the toilet. That's more likely to actually happen than now. So that is that's a more rational fear. Yeah. Well, we'll come back and you can tell me all about it.
01:00:00
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, go pee guys before we get to this next section. Get a top up. Yeah, get it now. We are back. Yay. We are so back. We hope you went to the bathroom and it was mostly uneventful in a good way.
01:00:29
Speaker
Yeah. We're going to start by going to the Howling Inunaki Tunnel. That's probably it. Sure. The only thing I had pictures for other than the car. This tunnel is supposed to be one of the most haunted places in Japan. Oh, it looks creepy.
01:01:00
Speaker
Yeah, this is what it looks like nowadays. It's in the Inunaki Mountain Pass, Puyama-cho, Miyawakashi, Fukoku Prefecture. Why do they have so many town names in regions? All right.
01:01:27
Speaker
And according to Dangerous Roads website, the tunnel is located in the Mayawaka town of Fukuoka Prefecture through a mountain into remote areas. The actual scenery is scary. The tunnel is curvy and less than 100 meters long. Okay. A windy, dark, creepy tunnel. Yeah. I guess it used to lead to a village, but
01:01:57
Speaker
a little bit. Yeah, I have a little bit of a history on it. But part of the history that makes it haunted is from a story that happened in good old 1988, the year of my birth. It's not a happy story though. In December, actually, when does this come out? The ninth? Yeah.
01:02:25
Speaker
So this happened on December 7th, which is my friend Jill's birthday. Hi Jill, you sometimes listen. When they found the burned body of a factory worker named Umayama Koichi, sorry, who was only age 20,
01:02:49
Speaker
Found at the mountain pass. Yeah. And yeah, that was basically the short version of the story was that he was found there and a group of youths are soon arrested for the crime. That's Saki. Youths. Oh, it's very bad. This is like a little mini true crime case. Okay.
01:03:16
Speaker
We know that these group of, yeah, they're like teenagers, like 16, 17. The oldest was like 19. And they saw him pull up at a stoplight and approached his vehicle. And they said they needed his car to pick up some girls. So quit acting tough and get out.
01:03:38
Speaker
What? Oh my god. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Losers. Carjack him, like, with no weapons, but just a bunch of idiots. So he refused, probably because he was like, what the fuck? I don't need this shit. I mean, he probably regretted that, unfortunately. He managed to break free briefly and ran down the road trying to get help from any other motorists.
01:04:07
Speaker
But nobody really was there or noticed him or stopped to help. Okay. So they recaptured him and continued to beat and batter him bloody. Jeez. Yeah. They tried to kill him first by throwing him off of the candaport. I don't know.
01:04:32
Speaker
they're near a dam and then you get this tunnel so i'm not sure if this is part of the dam or a bridge or something oh yeah it said that they tried to get him over this but he was they were unsuccessful getting him over the edge because he was clinging to the fence part for dear life oh yeah oh my god yeah and then one of the youths was supposed to have or said to have hesitated at this time and been like
01:05:02
Speaker
okay what are we really gonna do this we don't need to do this and then when the other ones was like no we're all in this together and that like we have to kill them so we don't get in trouble we don't want to get found so stupid oh i know what is this flashback to last week's yeah it's like then don't steal the dude's car in the first place like yeah
01:05:29
Speaker
Exactly. They put him in his own trunk, then beat him some more with rocks and whatever they could find. And he escaped a second time, said the one source there, but they pretended they wouldn't hurt him. So I guess he came back out or something like that, which just sounds horrible. Then they tried to dump him into the dam, the Ricky Maru Dam.
01:06:00
Speaker
But ultimately, that didn't work either, so they burned his body after dousing him with gasoline. Jesus. Yeah. I feel so bad for that guy. Like... I know, I'm like, I feel bad for not giving a trigger warning that this one was just about to get to like a brutal crime case. But if it's haunted, if this is like, this really happened, then...
01:06:30
Speaker
Yeah. There's some bad juju there. Yeah, that's awful. Yeah. He was found to have died from the blood loss because, you know, they lit him on fire, but he wasn't quite dead yet. He was still running around screaming, burning. And they just ran away. So they had to come back after to really make sure he was dead because they were such cowards.
01:07:00
Speaker
Oh, I'm sorry, was I not reporting that very fairly? I can't do it. No, they are cowards. They're like, terrible. Yeah, no sympathy for them. And sorry, but any time I hear the word youths, I cannot help but think, did you ever watch New Girl?
01:07:25
Speaker
Yes, it makes me think of New Girl 2. Are you the youths from the statistics? He's like in his 20s and everyone's youths. Are you the youths from the statistics? Schmidt's great though.
01:07:47
Speaker
Yeah, one afternoon when I was sick, I literally for like a couple hours just watched compilations of funny moments from New Girl and was like, and that was in every single one of them. And I was like, yes. Same with when he's trying to pick their daughter up from daycare. And they're like, like, where is she? And they're like, a man came. And it was like, it was like a white man. It was like, of course it's a white man. Something.
01:08:18
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, later seasons. Deep cut. But that's got some good actors in it. Like those are some funny people. It took me a bit to get into it, but because I don't really like Zooey Deschanel. So I didn't think how the character can be. But yeah, the rest of them, it was just too funny.
01:08:45
Speaker
Yeah, Schmidt and Nick, like just so funny. They're hard to resist. They do that crazy drinking game that reminds me of like Calvin and Hobbes is whatever murder ball he used to play. I can't remember, but theirs is, what is it? Something American?
01:09:09
Speaker
Yeah, they're like drinking and looking it up and there's no actual rules or layout of what the game is or explanation. Nah, that would just take the fun out of it. But like, you want to play it and then it's like, there's nothing, there's no way to play it because like nobody knows what it is.
01:09:34
Speaker
to me it's like they took a game like that sociable card game where you can like assign you know you drink one for an ace or you can drink two for a two but then you could take the face cards and like you could like if somebody gets that they can assign a different rule I imagine it like evolves something like that where they're like yeah they add a rule and they add a rule you get a rule
01:10:02
Speaker
I just used to love watching it because they're like playing like the florist lava and then they're like being presidents and presidents wise and it just made no sense. Yeah, they're doing shots. They're doing shots off encyclopedias. I don't know. Screaming about presidents. Making costumes. It seems so fun. I want to play it. I know.
01:10:31
Speaker
Oh yeah, not fun things. That's right. That's what we were trying to avoid. Yeah. So basically they did that and then they went to a bar and bragged about it and they were overheard. So the good news is they were arrested soon after and all found guilty. Good. They were stupid from start to finish.
01:10:58
Speaker
wow yeah just brutal um and it also said that the word inunaki means dog bark i love how it just started with that and then doesn't go on with that thought at all yeah i ran into that a few times when i was reading something and you're like oh this is translated to english no
01:11:26
Speaker
Um, that stuff is funny though. I miss English translations. I love that. It said, the tunnel is no longer in use and after many trespassers, the tunnel is now sealed with concrete blocks. So that's why it looks all sealed up. Okay. It looked like you still might be able to get around them. I know in some of the pictures, it wasn't all the way to the top. It looked like you could maybe climb, although it wouldn't be comfortable.
01:11:57
Speaker
Yeah. The tunnel was the setting for a new Japanese horror movie called Howling Village, and after the movie, the tunnel suddenly became a tourist hotspot, even crowded even during the pandemic, end quote. Howling Village. I'm gonna google this. Yeah, so it sounds familiar for some reason. Oh really? Yeah.
01:12:28
Speaker
So the thing is that there might there was a village nearby because I was like okay so they explained the tunnel but they didn't explain why it's called like there's village and stuff and then it said on Wikipedia according to historical records written during the Edo period
01:12:49
Speaker
Oh, there it is again. The real Inunaki village, and then it gives the coordinates, officially referred to as Inunaki-dani village, was established by a dispatch group of the Fukuoka domain in 1691. Wow. Yeah. Bunei Shinozaki was appointed as the village headman.
01:13:16
Speaker
the village's sources of income were producing ceramic products and steel manufacturing. A coal mine was established here later and a castle called Inunaki Gobakan was founded in 1865 under the recommendation of Kato Shizo. I was just trying to understand what happened to the village. So that's why it's a little bit of its history.
01:13:44
Speaker
I looked up the movie and that's not the one I thought it was. So I'm trying to figure out which one I was confusing it for because that was a great movie. I'm like scrolling through my letterboxed. Where is it? It wasn't howling to do with werewolves or anything. No, like it was.
01:14:08
Speaker
like set in a little village i can picture the cover of it that's what i'm trying to find it but okay like i said so many good horror movies from there um so what it said was in april 1889 due to the introduction of the town and village system in an kidani was integrated into the nearby yoshi kawa village
01:14:37
Speaker
Yoshi, which over the years merged with other areas eventually creating the city of Mayawaka. The site of Inukendani was submerged in 1986 due to the construction of the Inunaki Dam, completed in 1994, and residents of the village were relocated to Wakita.
01:15:06
Speaker
That's literally Akita with a W in front of it. Akita? That's cool. Akita, like my dog, who's a Japanese. Well, he's an American Akita, technically, but there's Japanese Akitas and I think they're the OG. What do they look like? I'm going to Google Japanese Akitas. Oh my God. They have like slightly pointier noses.
01:15:31
Speaker
Like bit of a, like Fenrir already kind of has a bear face, but like- Oh my god! They're so cute! It looks like Henry Cavill's dog. What kind of dog does Henry Cavill have? An Akita. Is it an Akita? Yes, I believe his is a... His might be a Japanese Akita and mine's an American because yeah, their noses are different. I love bear. An Akita.
01:16:00
Speaker
Yeah, and it's named after. He's an American Akita. Okay, he is an American Akita. Well, that's exactly what Fenrir is. I didn't know they were the same type of dog. His is so much like floofy. Fenrir looks so skinny. Yeah, I've seen floofier ones.
01:16:20
Speaker
When you put the collar on them, it stops there. I call it has rough from sticking out so much. So then they don't look as loopy around the face. Yeah. They are so cute. Oh, I know. I love dogs like in that family and then like the Huskies too, like, cause these dogs are definitely snow dogs. Yeah. My dog would be sitting outside in the snow today, even though it's like minus 24 Celsius.
01:16:51
Speaker
Yeah, it's pretty brutal. Yeah. Sorry. I'm still trying to find this. It's named after Superman. Kai. No, what is Superman's? Sorry, is this going to strike? What is Superman's alien name again? Do you know what I mean? But Cal. Yes, his dog's name is Cal, named after
01:17:22
Speaker
Kal-El, which is Superman's name. Yeah, Kal-El. That was just going to bug me. Okay, so there was a village, and there really was a village called Inu-Nakedani, and then it was
01:17:45
Speaker
washed away during like after the construction of the Inunaki Dam, like the village was relocated. So then upspraying the urban legend about it after that.
01:18:00
Speaker
And that goes that when the dam was under construction, the people whose homes were soon to be underwater were being told to evacuate from the area and go live somewhere else, basically. Yeah. But it said that some villagers refused to leave their homes, and so they were tied to them inside them instead and left to drown. That's awful. Like common criminals.
01:18:28
Speaker
I think and I hope that's not true, but I think that's the urban legend part. That's so creepy. I don't like that. No, I mean, people do that when they say like a hurricanes come and people start tying themselves to shit. I know people that refuse to leave. Yeah, there's a fire. They're like, I don't want to go. You're like, but you kind of have to. I mean,
01:18:59
Speaker
I know some people stayed behind I think in Katrina in place helped out in places where people might not have been able to leave crazy stuff yeah I'm still I'm still trying to find this stupid movie yeah I've seen too many movies this is bugging me so many horror movies too right
01:19:25
Speaker
Yeah. I don't remember any of them. I'm like, have we seen this? This is what I say to Pat all the time. Have we watched this? Well, that's why I do this because right when I start watching a movie, I'll log it and then sometimes I'm like, I have seen this before. Oh, this is me listening to podcasts lately. Oh, this story sounds familiar. Yeah.
01:19:46
Speaker
But sometimes it's just because I've heard it on a different podcast. So then that really fucks with you because you're like, did I listen to this before or just the story? Right. So even if that didn't happen, there was other stuff that really did happen in the area, like a married couple jumped off the dam on January 1st, 1996. Jeez. Romeo and Juliet.
01:20:15
Speaker
Which, it's kind of surprising neither of us decided to do anything with the suicide forest. The suicide forest. I think I've watched too many movies about that place. Yeah, I do feel like it's pretty known. If you guys don't know, it is in Japan and a lot of suicides do happen there. It is pretty self-explanatory, unfortunately. But very sad.
01:20:45
Speaker
I think maybe that's why I went in a different direction too. But yeah, this was a couple that jumped. There was also a 64-year-old man who was killed in 2000 and dumped into the dam. And the bridge next to the dam is also a known suicide spot and heavy traffic car crash spot. Or maybe not heavy traffic, but high car crash spot.
01:21:15
Speaker
so it's just like a whole bad area yeah also there's a phone in the little phone booth there at the dam and it's said to ring every night at 2am and if you should be so bold as to answer it then you'll be locked inside the booth and drowned just like the villagers did right there in the phone booth no that's creepy yeah that's some like
01:21:45
Speaker
I don't like that No, I don't either. I'm like, oh So does water get in there with you like a magic trick gone wrong or what? Right and it's just in the phone booth like slowly filling up. That's okay And that's all why the road is now closed and the tunnel is all sealed Gross Then
01:22:14
Speaker
We had something that was just called the Red Room Curse, which is very short and not so sweet. Yes. Why is there always a Red Room? The Red Room is that bad place. I had to do it. I didn't even think of that. But Black Widow, that's where they do all the training for the Black Widows. Oh, I figured out what I thought.
01:22:44
Speaker
The thing was called, it's called the wailing. That's why it was very like howling. It's called wailing. Yeah, it was very good. Says a stranger arrives in a little village and soon after a mysterious sickness starts spreading, a policeman is drawn into the incident and is forced to solve the mystery in order to save his daughter.
01:23:09
Speaker
It was a good movie, but it's 156 minutes. It's like two and a half hours. All right. But like all the reviews were really good. Um, and I can't remember if I watched, I'm sure I had to download it or something, but yeah, it was really good. It's like a, maybe it's on shutter. Maybe the like sickness that goes through.
01:23:37
Speaker
Everybody is like kind of like a almost like a zombie type thing. Okay. Yeah. Like along that kind of line. So it was good. It was very long though. But good. That's okay. We're long, but we're good. In fact, we're so
01:24:01
Speaker
let's say loquacious um yeah or chatty that our spotify was telling us that we had recorded more than 909 or 99 of the other podcasters in our category yeah with over 5 000 minutes of content that means we're in the top one percent of podcasts for like the minutes
01:24:28
Speaker
The length. It's probably like true crime punk. Yeah, I don't know. For like the year though. It means we had more minutes. We were in the top 1% of the amount of minutes of our content for 2022. So you're welcome. And that was at first I was like, why is it only saying 41 episodes? And I was like, oh, because it was just this year. Oh, yeah.
01:24:58
Speaker
So we did, I mean, we'll be coming up to two years. So does that mean we have like, if it said we had 5,000 and something minutes, does that mean we have like probably just under 10,000 minutes? Scary. Including Patreon? Probably. Somebody quick add up. 25,000.
01:25:28
Speaker
quick, somebody add up the length of all of our episodes. Oh my God. I should be an app for that. And our Patreon, well technically Anchor, Anchor would tell us most of them, we could add them up. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. By the time this comes out, speaking of Patreon, you should be able to check there for a
01:25:56
Speaker
special guest yeah it's a surprise i won't be in it but i could let you listen to it though yeah well you gotta do what you could do as other podcasters said kelsey's throat got ripped out by a demon this last month we didn't have a lot we could do yeah it definitely felt that way and i still
01:26:27
Speaker
still I can like feel it in my lungs and like yeah my throat still feels weird and then my ears are still a little off yeah yeah but getting there this last week I started feeling quite a bit better so it's no joke yeah no it's wild but
01:26:53
Speaker
I'm excited. Tell me about this red room. The red room? Red room. It probably has several versions, so it said, but this one's very simple because most often it's just a computer pop-up that pops up on your screen, says, do you like? Like, blank.
01:27:19
Speaker
dot dot dot whatever. It does not finish. And then when you try and close this annoying little pop up ad, it just reappears right away.
01:27:33
Speaker
like those worst, like in the early 2000s and late 90s with the internet pop-ups, click, click, click, click. And they're just like... Like 72 layers. Yeah. And you'll see them down also. So it's like, what do they always do? It's the, they're opening something and then it's like, poo, poo, poo, poo, poo, poo, poo, like all across their screen. And it's like 52 ads of like porn. It's like a snake. And it's all these porn things. Yeah. Oh my God.
01:28:04
Speaker
yeah so yeah it starts out with like do you like and then he's trying to get rid of it and it comes up and says do you like the red room this sounds like salad fingers it's like oh creepy pasta i don't know where he started from but there's so he's the a weird green guy and he's
01:28:31
Speaker
What does he have? Like rusty spoons for fingers or something? That's why they call him salad fingers. But yeah, there's weird things. If you look up salad fingers, there's stuff about him and like blood and like all this weird. So it's very like creeper past it. E like character kind of thing. But there was, it's back with like that, um,
01:28:57
Speaker
stupid unicorn that would go on those adventures in youtube like early 2000s that was annoying like kevin the unicorn or some shit videos oh my god i don't know if i was uh in that algorithm at that time it might have been a bit too old at the time for it but
01:29:18
Speaker
I love it. I was gonna say it sounds like a spin-off of Edward Scissorhand's creepy cousin. I will quickly Google salad fingers for you. I couldn't remember his name and I was like, rusty spoon blood fingers. And I was like salad fingers. Of course. Yeah, this is... Oh no, he's just got like weird fingers.
01:29:47
Speaker
Oh, and he played with like dead dogs and stuff. Yeah, this is him. Very like creepypasta like guy. He's got like weird fingers. Oh, you froze it. Oh, there we go. Okay. Oh, yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Big bumpy eyes. Very
01:30:11
Speaker
yeah yeah drawing og slender man solid fingers okay yeah they do have a similarity to them now i have to see if hold on if it is kevin the unicorn what kevin the unicorn oh no it's not kevin the unicorn never never kevin
01:30:40
Speaker
I don't know what that one was, but there was like stupid, it was like an episodic like YouTube thing somebody did of like shittily animated things of like this unicorn and his friends and all I remember is at one point they're like trying to cross a bridge and they all die. Oh, I remember watching some weird cartoons on something called like joecartoon.com. It was like frog in a blender kind of stuff. No, this is all on like,
01:31:09
Speaker
early youtube oh god that sounds like a scary place yeah anyway so this thing pops up it does and then it asks if you like the red room and then it just turns the whole screen red and it scrolls by with a list of the curses victims oh that's creepy i know this one could and did
01:31:39
Speaker
become a movie should become a movie. A short film. I mean, it's very short. That's all that happens because you feel the hairs on your neck rise as you feel someone just watching you and then you just slip into unconsciousness to be found dead on the floor by whoever next comes to your room.
01:32:05
Speaker
Oh, okay. I might have seen a similar movie. It said that a short movie came out called The Red Room Curse in 2016. So I think it was literally a short film, maybe. Definitely. But I could see there being something similar to maybe
01:32:30
Speaker
Like there's ones where technology is the thing that can infect you and you have to like cover all the windows and everything. For that episode of Fringe. Right on time. Her sister's daughter. What's her name?
01:32:54
Speaker
Oh, Olivia's. Yeah. Yeah, Olivia's me staying with her and it's that one with the laptop that like pop up or whatever. Oh, yeah, it's very much like the ring. There's this video game and yeah, it's very VR but then something's like really out to get you in it. Yeah. That one was creepy. Because you're like
01:33:19
Speaker
yeah your kid's like playing something you're like oh that could kill you get away from that screen yeah um and then also apparently it had uh when i was searching up the red room curse to see if there was any more info yeah it came up that there was a spotify there was a song oh i guess it seems like there's always a song or a band name or
01:33:45
Speaker
I've been finding a lot of them lately, what with Whaley and 52 and... You have to go back and watch Mr. Uriast Oceans if you don't know what we're talking about. Watch? What are we talking about? We're a podcast. You can't watch this unless you go to Patreon. You can't watch it at all. You can watch other videos, but not episode videos yet. Oh no, we haven't recorded any full episodes yet. To me that...
01:34:14
Speaker
I'll watch people's videos of their full episodes if they have it on YouTube or something, but you might not always jump at their Patreon just to watch the videos. I used to for wine and crime, and then I was like, eh, it went up to $5. Eh. Yeah, I canceled all my Patreon stuff. Yeah, I like to support some people, but depends who it is. Yeah.
01:34:43
Speaker
um the song came out it was by Filmy Ghost so you know big name big name and it was among a playlist of Japanese horror tales and one of them was called No Face and I didn't look into that at all you're welcome. Another friendships. They have the creepiest ghost names for some of these. Oh yeah
01:35:12
Speaker
You definitely do. Them and, like, the Japanese... So, as people having no faces... Sorry, I was hearing what you're saying. When they... Yeah, and they lose their mouth and eyes. Yeah, they just... In the...
01:35:28
Speaker
the new Wednesday series, Wednesday Adams. Oh, my brother's been watching that, yeah. It's pretty good, I liked it. Oh, I'm definitely gonna check it out. They have, for their school of outcasts that they have, they have, I can't, they call them the faceless or maybe they don't like say them, but they're the same thing, they have no eyes and like nothing, it's basically just like smoothed over.
01:35:54
Speaker
Oh god. Yeah, so we have no mo, no eyes, no nose. Yeah, they're just at the school and you're like... Like hell. It's kind of cool. Yeah. And I found out in like behind the scenes thing that they did it
01:36:15
Speaker
with prosthetics. It wasn't CGI'd on like after because we were talking about, yeah, when we were like doing our intro thing and Jenny Ortega that plays Wednesday, she's like, yeah, we turned around and we're like, what are those? Oh my God, they're so awesome. And she's like, you could see them. And she's like, they became obsessed with them because they were like so weird. And they're basically shown in like two shots of the entire show for like two seconds each shot.
01:36:44
Speaker
okay yeah but yeah she said they had like the full prosthetics must have been done they must not have done it with CGI which is creepy yeah exactly how would you breathe in that although you should see some of the get-ups they were in fucking mass singer they don't look like they can breathe in it and they can let alone they can hardly walk sometimes yeah we guessed right on that tonight
01:37:13
Speaker
Anyway. Yeah. I have only ever seen two episodes. I know, I know. Wait, who? You said who plays Wednesday? I thought it was... Jenna Ortega. I thought it was the one from Parks and Rec and stuff. No. Aubrey Plaza? No. She's not in there. What?
01:37:40
Speaker
That's not Aubrey Plaza. Have I not really watched a trailer yet? I don't think so. Yeah, she's like 16 in high school. Does she look like Aubrey Plaza? I feel like I'm going crazy. Not really. Well, she would make a good Wednesday.
The Curse of Tamino's Hell
01:38:00
Speaker
She's just not 16, that's all. Yeah. Okay, okay, fine.
01:38:07
Speaker
Fair enough. I haven't actually looked it up yet. I just assumed from seeing like three second clips or it advertised to me on my Netflix that I knew who it was and apparently I don't. That's funny. Okay. This next one is also a curse. So there's your segue. It's a curse poem. A curse poem. Wow. Yeah.
01:38:36
Speaker
It is called Tamino's Hell. Um, I don't care. Yeah. Are you gonna read it? Is this like, uh, Macbeth? We don't say Macbeth in the theater. The play is cursed. Yeah. Yeah. Cause you're, it is like, you're not supposed to read it out loud, but... Oh no! We'll post it in the episode description. Oh my god! That seems worse somehow.
01:39:06
Speaker
read this without knowing what it is but no yeah it is it's one that uh i think i read that some youtuber had read it on their thing and all they said was that they felt funny and this article person was like but they probably said that just to get more likes and i was like well or they had something bad to eat for lunch i don't know
01:39:33
Speaker
I don't want you to curse yourself though. Okay, but no, it's not as maybe got as much credit as the the Scottish play as they go. More of a Bloody Mary. They said the first one to die after reading it was a little girl. And
01:39:59
Speaker
The poem's origin is traced back to the author of it, Seijo Yaso. I am sorry. An author of poetry who was known for children's nursery rhymes and popular song lyrics. And it came out in a collection of poems called Sacking in 1919. Okay, so it's more than 100 years old at least.
01:40:28
Speaker
Oh my god, don't say that. That's hard to believe because 2019 was yesterday. The rumors are that he wrote it at age 27 after the loss of a loved one, his father or possibly his sister. Who knows? Somebody. We do know that's who wrote it anyway. Yeah.
01:40:57
Speaker
But the legend goes that it was written by an actual young man named Tamino, and that his parents were none too pleased about that fact, as it was very grim and gruesome. So they were so frightened of him that they locked him in the basement and ignored him until he starved to death. What? But that's the legend around the poem. So you know, take all that with a grain of salt because it's
01:41:27
Speaker
That's so creepy. I know. So that is what they say caused his angry spirit to imprint on the poem and that's what latches on to it if you are to read it. Or also I read he was possibly angry because he was an ill child stuck in a wheelchair and like very unhappy with the world. Okay, that's fair.
01:41:58
Speaker
I don't know. It's an either or situation. Yeah. And then, yeah, I had a like you, you know, just a common summary of it or an interpretation, if you will, on one from one website. But hmm. Yeah. Yeah.
01:42:21
Speaker
The meaning of the poem is open up to interpretation rather, but the most common summary is that a boy named Tamino is in love with his younger sister and loses his soul. With the loss of his soul, Tamino descends into hell, which may be a metaphor for war. His older sister encourages him to win the war as she spits up blood
01:42:53
Speaker
yeah okay i saw that in the first couple of lines of it that i read um his younger sister sister does the same while spitting up fire tamino presented to still be young and innocent throws his life away for the cause he cries for his younger sister as he travels through the seven valleys of hell tamino eventually reaches the eighth level which is the most painful
01:43:21
Speaker
He suffers more with each passing level. There are also certain items on Tamino's clothing and different hints throughout the poem that relate the story back to the battlefield of World War II. The story ends with Tamino dying in battle, never to return to his family. That's depressing, like all around. Oh yeah. Doesn't it make you want to read it? No. No. Yeah, it does seem...
01:43:50
Speaker
dark, like, Metallica songs that are about people coming home from the war all paralyzed. You, like, listen to the lyrics, you're like, oh my god! A 1974 movie took much inspiration from the poem as it happens. The director was Teriyama Shuji, and it was called Den En Ni Shi Siu, or Pastoral to Die in the Countryside.
01:44:21
Speaker
AKA pastoral hide and seek. Okay. Completely unrelated. Yeah, I don't know why there's two different kind of English variations or translations. They do that in some, like some countries movies get released under different names.
01:44:45
Speaker
Yeah, that just makes sense. Sound familiar. It's not too common, but yeah, there's been a few times and you're like looking up a movie and you're like, this has a different name. Like when it actually gets released in like Canada.
01:45:01
Speaker
Oh, okay. It made me think of hide and seek, which I did like as a man. Yes. So it was one of my favorite movies for a long time. We watched it in high school, like in class as an assignment, which is like, why? Wait, what? Yeah. Oh, no, I was thinking.
01:45:27
Speaker
This one. Yeah, Robert De Niro and. Oh, the creepy one. Oh, no, no. Oh, maybe it's called. OK, maybe I'm thinking it's called hide and seek, but it's actually called ready. Is it ready or not? Yeah. The horror movie. But then she has to play hide and seek with the family she married into. But yeah, that's right. You're not kill her. Damn it. I always think it's called hide and seek.
01:45:58
Speaker
Anyway. That's a good one, yes. Sorry, people. I'm so confusing, everyone. Okay, so this is why then after the director passed away fairly early at 47 from cirrhosis of the liver, they blamed the poem.
01:46:20
Speaker
Wow. Or just like drinking heavily? Not his drinking, no. It's got to be the poem. Oh yeah, it's totally the play that's cursed. It's like, I don't think so. But rumors still swirled of some college students passing away after reading it and other incidents like injuries, like falls. Sorry.
01:46:46
Speaker
Permanent loss of voice was a weird one. Oh, okay. Yeah. Almost been there. No. I know. I was like, that's probably going to be triggering for you. Throw in the loss of hearing, eyesight. Sorry. Well, it's like, what will I have left? I'll just be like fucking Helen Keller over here. I also know.
01:47:17
Speaker
Yeah, um, yeah, exactly. But these are what they're saying too. They're like, oh, they're having the worst time anyone that reads this poem. All the events were said to be after the people read the poem aloud, daring to defy its curse. And
01:47:37
Speaker
According to a website in the 88th, in Japan in the 80s there was a trend of filming friends who were intent on reading the poem out loud. The trend became popular and reportedly there were no consequences to reading it out loud most of the time. But all it said was that nowadays it might occur at random, however in Japan it's usually still avoided, especially by the more superstitious, which as a country they tend to be, I guess. So I do have
Sleeping Habits and Hearing Experiences
01:48:05
Speaker
it pulled up. It's not that long.
01:48:09
Speaker
Yeah, it seemed like it. There was a few I talked about even back in Death Omen's episode. Oh my god. There was some stuff about Japan and not turning on or not having a fan going in your room when you sleep because if you fall asleep, the fan will cut you or something.
01:48:36
Speaker
Yeah, because I was like, that's really narrowing down our options for white noise at night. We like to have a fan sometimes. Damn, what a callback. I used to not be able to sleep without a fan.
01:48:55
Speaker
I always had to have a fan or I was going to sleep so terribly for almost my entire life. Gotta have that white noise, eh? Right. Because my ears were so bad and I could hear so little, I couldn't hear my fan at all for three weeks every night.
01:49:17
Speaker
Now I actually can't sleep with my fan on because it's too loud. It keeps me up, so I sleep and it's dead silent. I don't know. It cured me of requiring a fan to sleep at night.
01:49:35
Speaker
That's pretty crazy because you like grow up with something one way and you're like, I need my house to be like that quiet. Or if you grow up in like a louder house, you're like, I can fall asleep through anything. Doesn't matter. Yeah. Like ever since I was a little kid needed to have even just like clip little fan going like just something. Yeah. Yeah. It's been weird because the last few times I've tried to turn it on, I told my parents this too, like,
01:50:03
Speaker
Even though my hearing isn't 100% again, some sounds are louder. I can hardly stand to listen to my car radio at the same volume I used to because it seems so loud to me. And other things that used to seem so quiet in my house now seem so loud to me because I just got used to everything being so, so muffled.
01:50:26
Speaker
Isn't that crazy? Yeah. So there's been I've been getting like headaches and stuff for a few days at work when it's been like really noisy at work. Because I'm just like not used to it just being so loud. Yeah, it's been weird. Your eardrums blown out or something like, yeah, after an explosion. And then all of a sudden you're like having to get it back again. It's like, whoa. Yeah, yeah, it's weird.
01:50:55
Speaker
everything seems louder. I got used to just being in silence. Then we had issues where I was like, wait, I sounded so loud. And you were like, well, I didn't know because I could hardly hear anything. Hopefully the audio has been okay.
01:51:19
Speaker
But the funny thing enough was that the author of the poem actually lived to be a rather ripe old 78 years old. Well clearly he never read it out loud himself. He lived 51 years after writing the poem and he was known to have read it out loud numerous times so it might be a little bit deep on. Maybe he's just immune to it because he wrote the poem.
01:51:49
Speaker
Well, I'll risk it, okay? Because now you all want to hear it. If Alana dies, I promise we will post this on YouTube. The YouTuber didn't die. Someone else wrote it. This is just the rough English translation. I shouldn't say that. But, okay.
01:52:11
Speaker
Elder sister vomits blood, younger sister's breathing fire, while sweet little Tamino just spits up the jewels. Sorry. Okay. I never got poems. I'm sorry. I know. They're so... I don't know. I like some of them, but yeah, it's... It was like never my thing. I don't like deciphering and analyzing stuff that much. Yeah.
01:52:41
Speaker
I mean, in a way, lyrics are poetry. But yeah, it's like I prefer reading stories rather than these little stanzas. All alone does Tamino go falling into that hell, a hell of utter darkness without even flowers.
01:53:04
Speaker
Is Tamino's big sister the one who whips him? The purpose of the scourging hangs dark in his mind. Lashing and thrashing him, ah, but never quite shattering. One sure path to Avicii? I think? The Eternal Hell.
01:53:24
Speaker
into that blackest of hells guide him now I pray to the golden sheep to the nightingale how much did he put in that leather pouch to prepare for his trek to the eternal hell spring is coming to the valley to the wood to the spiraling chasms chasms chasms okay
01:53:50
Speaker
I'm sorry, as you were listening things, I just went to the window, to the wall. And all I think is that Betty White and Sandra Bullock are on the campfire. I love the proposal. Oh, yeah. Ryan Reynolds, right, right, right, right. Okay, Betty White. Funny people.
01:54:18
Speaker
That's all I could think when you're listing things in that way. We're left because we're scared, no. Oh yeah, chasms, chasms of the waggest hell. The nightingale in her cage, the sheep aboard the wagon, and tears well up in the eyes of sweet little Tamino. Saying, oh nightingale in this vast misty forest, he screams. He only misses his little sister.
01:54:47
Speaker
His wailing. Fuck the big sister. I don't care about her. And wasn't he fucking one of them? Yeah, it was the little sister. That's why he misses her. A twin zest. No. Gross. His wailing desperation echoes throughout hell. A fox peony opens its golden petals.
01:55:11
Speaker
down past the seven mountains and seven rivers of hell, the solitary journey of sweet little Tamino. If in this hell they be found,
Toilet Ghosts of Japan
01:55:20
Speaker
may they then come to me, please, these sharp spikes of punishment from needle mountain. Not just on some empty whim is flesh pierced with blood red pins. They serve as hellish sign poems for sweet little Tamino. That's it.
01:55:41
Speaker
That's so weird. Eerie. But anyway, we have some funnier stuff to end it on because we have a couple of toilet loving demons. I was going to say, where was the toilet? Where was the toilet? I had to spoiler you and tell you that it was coming. In case you were going to cover them.
01:56:09
Speaker
All right, the first one's called Akamanto or red cape, red vest, or ake, kami, oi, kami. Basically red garment clothing person. This Japanese urban legend is about a masked spirit who wears a red cloak and who appears to people using toilets in public or school bathrooms.
01:56:38
Speaker
Right. Public bathroom demon. Yeah. No, but particularly elementary school bathrooms. Ew. That's where they get talked about the most. It's usually in the older or seldom used bathrooms, often with an older squat style toilet because Japan. So like
01:57:04
Speaker
They're in the floor, they're in line with the floor and you squat over them, which is the correct posture for pooping, apparently. Yeah. Don't they have those? They have those in like Dubai or something too, don't they?
01:57:21
Speaker
I think you can find them in many parts of Asia still, my friend Jill that does live in China, shadow Jill. It's often done little picture series is where she's like, Oh, this is what this bathroom looks like. Like some of them are still, yeah, the floor style or it's not always as common to have a
01:57:44
Speaker
western toilet but if they do I think in a lot of places in Japan too they have ones with fancy like bidet you know functions on the top and stuff. Quite the variety. Often the fourth stall is the cursed one as the number four is associated with death
01:58:07
Speaker
Yay. The students, or the stories, that's what I meant to put, the stories usually involved a student who stayed late at school for one reason or another, so it's late, often in the evening. And then the student finds himself in desperate need of a toilet and the closest one is the cursed and or actively avoided bathroom.
01:58:32
Speaker
Oh. Yet the whole school's abandoned and that's the only one that's not good. I know, they're studying right next to it. Once they finish going, they notice to their utmost horror that they are stranded on the toilet bowl. Ain't nothing on the roll. Sorry, that's from a Chili Pepper song. It's all about being stranded on the toilet bowl. No.
01:59:01
Speaker
Some of their early work was very highbrow, I must say. What did you stranded on the toilet bowl? To prove you're a man, you must wipe it with your hand. Stranded. Stranded on the toilet bowl. That's the real poetry. I don't know. I never liked red hot chili peppers.
01:59:24
Speaker
I know. I know. They're your favorite. I mean, I don't think they're perfect, though. It's fine. All right. If the student answers, yes. OK, back up. Sorry, that was so fun. I missed the line. OK, so they're there. They have no toilet paper. They hear a disembodied voice say, do you want red paper or blue paper?
01:59:56
Speaker
Red pill or blue pill? It's the Matrix. Yeah. Do you want Neo to come and give you a square of toilet paper? If the student answers yes, they are violently stabbed to death. What? Your life's blood spattering the walls. The answer was red or blue, not yes or no. If they say yes, red. I'm so sorry. Oh, OK. Who wrote these notes? You did. The teleprompter's crazy.
02:00:28
Speaker
And then your body will be drenched in blood and you appear to be wearing a red cloak, which if you remember was one of the nicknames for this. Oh, okay. Red cloak. Then the next time a student needs to go desperately to the bathroom, they're also forced to use the nasty one. Having heard the story of the other youth, they know not to answer red when the voice asks the question, or yes, because they're smarter than me.
02:00:58
Speaker
Do you want red or blue? They pick blue and are drained of their blood immediately, left blue, dead, and lifeless. What? So how do you win? There's no good answer. No toilet paper. You kill them! That's so gross. Sometimes the story is that it's a serial killer who lurks in the stalls, which I was like, oh, that's so a la Scream 2 with Jada Pinkett Smith.
02:01:27
Speaker
just to listen against the stall door because she hears whispers and then they just stab her right in the ear. You forgot about that. Yeah. Or sometimes it's a ghost, a tall figure with a sickly blue face. Some say it's a hairy yokai, which is like a supernatural entity or spirit in Japanese folklore.
02:01:53
Speaker
This yokai is called a canade. Literally kinkade without the C. So I don't know. Canade? I guess so. Canade. Who lives in the toilet and also likes to stroke people's rear end with its hand. No. Yes. That's the canade. So good. Don't like him. No. Or his pal.
02:02:23
Speaker
Tuare no Hanoko-san or Hanoko of the Toilet. Hanako, Hanako of the Toilet, who is a young girl ghost who haunts toilets, especially, you guessed it, school toilets. Moaning Myrtle.
02:02:41
Speaker
Yeah, they've got so many moaning myrtles and they're so horrible. She's supposed to have come from the World War II era, died either by A, an air raid strike hit while she was playing hide and seek, B, murdered by a parent or stranger, or C, she killed herself as a result of bullying. Take your pick. Those are vastly different answers.
02:03:10
Speaker
I know, right? And all very sad, either way. So why does there have to be so many versions? And they're obviously popular, the legends in Japanese schools, and have bled over into the media, movies, manga, anime, video games, etc. I think I watched a movie about a haunted bathroom.
02:03:35
Speaker
I want to now. Was it good? Quick, now go back to the letterbox list. No. You and your letterbox. Yeah, it was some like movie, but I remember it was. Yeah, it was like haunted. Bathroom, but the girl, I think she hung herself or something involved tagging, but it was like either maybe from the bullying.
02:04:06
Speaker
I think it was either like a Japanese school or like an orphanage or something. Oh, they were. Yeah. Oh, we have a horror movie called The Orphan. That might be a different one. Yeah, that's completely different. All right. OK. And like one by one. Yeah. One by one. Like the girls slowly were like getting killed by her or something. Oh, OK. Yeah. All Japanese.
02:04:36
Speaker
Girls are creepy. Sorry, if you're a little Japanese girl, you're creepy. I'm sorry about it. I think it's the bull haircut. Those long dark hair too though. No, I see. I think that's pretty.
02:04:52
Speaker
Okay, well it is until they're crawling across the floor at you like in the ring. Unwashed and like nasty, matted and wet, yes. But like- Ah, split ends. Otherwise, no, their hair is gorgeous. That's true, that's true. Pin straight. Share hair. Yes, it's amazing. Some days I'm jealous. I'm jealous of anybody that can just put their hair up in a ponytail and then wear it down again the next day.
02:05:24
Speaker
Because my hair is curly. If I put my hair in a ponytail, then it just ruins my hair. And then I cannot wear it down again until I wash it. So then it's like a big ordeal. That's true. I would just get a bump for a little bit. Yeah. I had someone that I quite say they had Asian straight hair once. And I went, oh, that's a pretty good description for it. But I probably won't use it because it sounds a little cringy.
02:05:55
Speaker
Um, so you might want to know how to avoid this ghost. Wait, before you guys go, how do we stay away from this one? She's said to be lurking in the third stall of the girls' bathrooms on the third floor. So you gotta watch out for the three with this one. Okay. And four with the other one. So one and two and five are good. They should be.
02:06:21
Speaker
stall five at my work is a shower because for some reason we have a shower because we're a contact center and we have like a shower and we have like a room that has like a bed in it like we're just prepared for anything yeah the shower is a little weird it's a little creepy i gotta say it's got a stall door just like all the other toilets so i try not to open that one or look in it or anything yeah gross weird
02:06:51
Speaker
I know, and my friend said she saw an old Native American ghost at our work once in the bathroom, so I just... Anyway, to avoid this one, you don't want to bloody marry her, but if you do want to do that and call her, you go up to the door of this doll, you knock three times, and you call her name.
02:07:17
Speaker
And when you open it, you might find a little girl with dark hair and a red skirt, or just her bloody hand that grabs you. Or she turns into a lizard. A lizard. It eats you. I know, this morning Myrtle is very versatile. And finally, she's got another little friend that you might come into contact with while you're in there.
02:07:44
Speaker
Kashima Reiko, who is another bathroom spirit. But I'm not sure why she hangs out in the bathroom because she was apparently caught in half by a train. Oh. Yeah, that doesn't typically happen in bathrooms. No. But she does like to ask you where her legs are and then rip yours off when she doesn't like you. Oh shit. Then just pulls you down the toilet to hell.
02:08:15
Speaker
And that's my segment. Wow. Oh, I love Japan. Yeah, I was not expecting so many toilets. I have heard one or two things, but I haven't listened to a lot of people talk about ghosts from different countries in Asia. Yeah, that there's different podcasts coming out about that. Like there's
02:08:42
Speaker
stories with Sapphire that I heard of who's like she's from Philippines and I've heard different guests on some podcasts where they're like in my country we believe this and I'm like holy shit I love all these different ghost stories from around the world and beliefs and stuff and yeah so cool I'm trying to find the bathroom now I'm just googling Japanese horror movie
02:09:12
Speaker
bathroom bathroom okay because like the whole premise was mostly around the bathroom oh my god
Japanese Horror Cinema and Tarot Cards
02:09:25
Speaker
this is why i got letterboxed because i like literally cannot figure stuff out otherwise so i'm like what was that movie and then i scroll through the like 2200 movies i've watched
02:09:37
Speaker
Oh, yeah, it's like you you have a song stuck in your head and you go to Google and people have googled. What's the song that goes la la la la la la la? You're like, but how will they know? Well, next week we'll see Kelsey and she'll still be looking for it. Maybe. And we will be also talking about.
02:10:03
Speaker
Mm, some twisty, surprising or unexpected crimes. Yes. So that should be interesting because we can, that's really open. I could have some fun with choosing my case for that one. I know you've already chosen a case, so all I have to do is choose something that's not yours. Yeah, basically. I found one movie that was also good. I watched around the same time. It was called The Bridge Curse.
02:10:33
Speaker
Oh, okay. That sounds like my tunnel case. No. Four years after five students mysteriously commit suicide after taking part in a courage test on the ghost bridge in Danggu University, a reporter and a cinematographer are back to that place and try to get everything clear.
02:10:52
Speaker
So they like go there and there. If I remember correctly, like they were going to record while she walks. You're supposed to like walk backwards across the bridge. Ew. And then you basically get killed. Don't like that. Yeah. I've already risked enough this week. I just read a cursed poem. Yeah. Go sage myself. No. So creepy. We won't record Macbeth.
02:11:22
Speaker
Nope. You know, and I don't have a Ouija board. No, neither do I. I did get my tarot cards. I wanted them. Really? Oh, that's exciting. Yeah, I always have room for more sets, though, I'm sure. I can lay them all out and take a picture or something. OK, which deck is this?
02:11:54
Speaker
It's called Phantom Wise. Phantom Wise from Alice in Wonderland. It's supposed to be based off. The one who created it is the author of The Night Circus, which I haven't read, but apparently it's a pretty popular young adult book or something. I downloaded it. It's on my Kindle. I just haven't watched it yet. Is it a book or a show?
02:12:24
Speaker
It's a book. Oh, he said watched it yet. I read it. He's still looking for movies. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you for listening. Yes. We'll catch you next week. Bye. Don't forget to rate, review.
02:12:45
Speaker
Keep following us on Spotify because we loved seeing who had us in their top five and top number one podcast slots for the year. Yeah. 19 of you listened to us the most. Thank you. Yeah. Share it on social media. If that's you, I want to see it. Yeah, prove it to me. You're not a bot. Yeah. Oh my God.
02:13:18
Speaker
I know one of them is you, mom. It's okay. You don't have to share it on Instagram. I know you don't have one, but everyone else. Yeah. All right. Keep it cryptic.
02:13:55
Speaker
This has been Castles Encrypteds. You can listen to our podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker, Pocket Cast, and our YouTube channel.
02:14:06
Speaker
Please rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Reddit. On our website, you can listen to all of our episodes as well as view pictures for each of our segments. Check out our Patreon page to view all of our tiers and become a Patreon supporter today to unlock monthly bonus episodes and behind-the-scenes content. We are working on an Ask Us Anything. You can submit questions by social media or by email at castlesandcryptids at gmail.com.
02:14:35
Speaker
Do you have a spooky ghost story, a creepy cryptid sighting, or a thrilling true crime tale you would like to share and have us include in a future episode? Send us your listener story by social media or by email. Please include the name that you would like mentioned. Our music is by Cobia Fair. Our logo and artwork is by Antonio Garcia. Thanks for listening!