Uncanny Japan Podcast Review

The Dish Mansion by Katsushika Hokusai

A friend of mine introduced me to Thersa Matsuura’s Uncanny Japan podcast and as soon as I started listening, I was hooked. Thersa is an American ex-pat writer, who lives in a Japanese fishing town. She’s a reliable guide to obscure Japanese myths and oddities, many of them genuinely creepy and always interesting. The bi-monthly podcast comes in convenient bite-sized chunks, ten to fifteen minutes long. I listened to them over a week, compressing two years’ worth into that time, transporting me through the different seasons in Japan, as Thersa features background recordings of the frogs and crickets in her environment, along with snippets of local festivities and events.

These are some of my favourite podcasts in ascending order of creepiness.

Human-faced carp. These are koi carp whose facial markings make them appear to be human-fish amalgams. You don’t want to see one these looking up at you with their humanoid eyes from a pond because they portend disaster.

You can also learn about the Koshin Shinko. These are three parasitic worms living in the human body, who cause a whole heap of mischief because they have no particular affection for their human hosts.

The slit-mouthed woman’s aim is to terrify Japanese school children. It doesn’t matter that she’s an urban myth. Many Japanese children have been traumatised just by seeing her. I found it traumatic just hearing about her.

Playing hide and seek by yourself is a real game that you might not actually want to play. To play the game you need a variety of tools, but the main ones are a stuffed toy, a cutting implement and a TV showing static. Weird and ghostly phenomena occur when you play this game, guaranteed to freak out the participants, namely you and your stuffed toy.

‘Living Buddhas’ are Japanese monks who voluntarily undertake the arduous process of self-mummification to reach enlightenment. Thersa describes the steps in detail. Warning, there are photos of the end product on the Uncanny Japan website.

Happy listening. These uncanny tales will haunt your dreams.