Japanese Urban Legends Part 2/3
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Jinmenken
Fan Death
Bake-Kujira
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Gashadokuro
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Joro-gumo
Okiku Doll
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Jinmenken
Four words, dogs with human faces. You might want to rethink wishing your dog could talk to you. They’ve reportedly been seen in Japanese cities running along highways faster than Sanic. Jinmenken are potential bros, if you leave them alone they will most likely ignore you, if they talk to you then it’ll generally be to insult you. A theory is that the Jinmenken are actually just Japanese macaques, a type of monkey which have dog-like fur and human-like faces, and that Japanese drunkards end up thinking they're dogs with human faces, but like I said, that's just a theory.
Fan Death
Fan death is an Asian urban legend specifically associated with Japan and South Korea. Put simply, if you leave an electric fan running over night in the room you’re sleeping in, you will die. Killer fans can be traced back to the 1920’s where people were warned fans cause nausea, hypothermia, breathing problems and even facial paralysis. God bless air conditioning.
There’re fan death dedicated websites if you’re into that stuff.
Bake-Kujira
The decline in whaling in Japan is probably down to these guys, when a whale is killed it could possibly come back as a Bake-Kujira, a whale skeleton which acts as it did in its previous life. Just seeing one is enough to cause your village to burn down; you and your village can end up contracting plague and famine among other diseases and disasters.
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Gashadokuro
A giant ******* skeleton made from the bones of people who have died from starvation, it wanders around looking for people to grab, they then bite your head off, drink your blood and add your skeleton to their pile. Pretty brutal.
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Joro-gumo
Joro-gumo is a giant spider who can transform into a beautiful lady, usually her bottom half is a spider whilst the top half is a human. If you’re a guy looking for a creepy waifu then give her a call, she’ll seduce you and wrap you up in a web, after all that kinky stuff she’ll poison and eat you.
One variation of Joro-gumo is a woman holding a baby who asks men passing by to hold it, if you take it you’ll realize the baby is made up of thousands of spider eggs which all then hatch.
Okiku Doll
Dolls can be creepy enough without being possessed by the ghost of a young girl. Okiku doll, named after her first owner, was brought by a teenage boy for his two year old sister, his sister loved the doll, she played with it, spoke to it and dressed it, however the girl died. Her family refused to get rid of the doll, they eventually realized that the doll’s hair began growing and believed their daughter had possessed the doll, in 1938 they decided to hand the doll over to Mannenji temple in Iwamizawa, Hokkaido, if you have balls made of steel you can actually go see it. The hair is said to still grow today and has to be cut annually.
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