A bug enthusiast’s dream and your average person’s worst nightmare, this rare titan beetle discovery has set Japanese Twitter abuzz.
scary (Page 19)
And just like that, we’re scared of the dentist again.
Scarecrows? More like terrifypeople.
A quirky adventure game, or a terrifying ploy to brainwash children of the world into becoming hippopotamus-like big-nosed creatures?
What could be scarier than looking in a mirror and seeing a demon staring back at you? How about being too engrossed in your smartphone to even notice…
Feeding fish is an innocent pastime — unless you’ve got a whole pond and a thousand fish instead of a small tank! Then it looks more like a horror movie!
Are you afraid of the dark? Most children are, but as we get older we get used to going out at night and start to realize that the world during the twilight hours is the same as during the day, only a bit darker.
But that lingering fear of the darkness often remains somewhere deep inside, forgotten but never entirely gone. Bring those fears back to the fore again this Halloween with Yomawari, a cute but creepy new game for the PlayStation Vita.
Bubble tea, also called boba, or pearl-tea, had its beginnings in Taiwan but has spread in popularity throughout the world. The creamy milk-tea dotted with chewy, gummy-like tapioca pearls and endless flavor possibilities makes this the perfect snack when you can’t decide if you want something to drink or something to eat.
The tapioca pearls that give these milky drinks their fun texture are made from cassava root. Or, at least they should be. But an investigation in China has turned up a “tapioca” plant that makes pearls from materials that aren’t even edible…
Self-driving cars are getting closer and closer to becoming a reality, While there will always be those who prefer the freedom of driving themselves, the technology seems like it could have some serious advantages for public transportation. In the case of a bus, for instance, it doesn’t seem like it would be too hard to program the vehicle’s software to travel along a fixed route and stop at the predetermined bus stops to pick up and drop off passengers.
But while self-driving buses may one day become safer and more efficient than human operated ones, they’re a lot less likely to heroically prevent roadside suicides, as this bus driver in China just did.
Japan has been gearing up for Halloween since the end of August, but now that we’re actually into the correct month, we feel it’s acceptable to start posting Halloween-related articles. Today we’re introducing the Halloween festivities going on at Universal Studies in Osaka, Japan.
With Japan’s growing love of Halloween, and it’s long-held affection for seasonal sweets, the country now gets a bumper crop of special desserts for the year’s spookiest holiday. So far, most of these have been Japanese brands of Western-style candies and cookies with a Halloween-themed package, or maybe with a limited-time pumpkin flavor, but one traditional Kawasaki-based confectionary chain is looking to change that with a lineup of edible eyeballs, zombie fingers, and other Japanese sweets that look bone-chilling and sound mouth-watering.
Now that it’s October, fall is slowly beginning to creep up on Japan, which means seasonal favorite dishes including pumpkin, sweet potato, and mushroom will again be arriving on dinner tables across the land in no time. As for the lattermost, people from the countryside are more likely to pick or grown their own rather than buy mushrooms from the supermarket, and some varieties like matsutake can easily retail for a few hundred dollars.
Unfortunately matsutake and other kinds of mushrooms don’t fetch quite as high of a price in China, but while one man was gathering mushrooms, he stumbled across something that was worth much more: a giant bees’ nest.
There are plenty of horror movie villains that scare us so bad we can’t sleep at night. These include the classics like Freddy Kruger, Jason, and Chucky as well as some newer terrors like Pennywise, Sadako, and Ghostface. Well, isn’t it about time to expand the roster of baddies that keep you up at night? They might not be household screamfest names yet, but what about Freeza, Cell and Evil Majin Buu?
Yes…the Dragon Ball Z villains. We are not pulling your leg (nor ripping it off painfully), but one artist has rendered these two-dimensional anime characters into truly terrifying creatures of the night. So, hide your kids and hide your wives, because it’s about to get super scary.
No matter what your job is, it’s important to be skilled with the tools of your particular trade. That’s especially true if those tools happen to be firearms, which is why being part of Japan’s police or Self-Defense Forces means you’re in for a lot of time on the firing range.
It seems at least one member of the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force needs a little more practice, though, since one of his shots missed the target he was aiming for and hit a civilian home instead.
The brand-new Death Note TV drama just made its debut, and it left us feeling a little lukewarm, what with its rushed pacing and less-than-compelling changes from the manga and anime source material. Still, we probably shouldn’t be too harsh in our criticisms. After all, at just one episode in, there’s still plenty of time for the newest live-action adaptation to turn it around and deliver a portion of the thrills the original Death Note did.
Plus, we’d like to stay on the good side of the series’ death gods, since this creepy photo has us worried that maybe they can manifest in real life, and might even be watching us right now.
Japanese horror films are their own special brand of awesome. Movies like The Ring and The Grudge will sometimes make you roll your eyes with their cheesy acting and special effects, but at the same time contain certain horrifying scenes that will stick with you in your nightmares for weeks to come.
The latest installment in The Grudge series, Grudge: The Final has just come out in Japan, advertised by commercials airing all over. However, one commercial received so many complaints about it being “way too scary” that it was taken down and replaced with something more tame.
Are you brave enough to watch the original commercial? Then read on to get your chance.
The key difference between being an idol singer and a pop diva is warmth. Even if you’ve got perfect pitch and unshakable rhythm, if you want to succeed as an idol, you still need a heart-melting smile. Really, as long as you’ve got the smile, idol fans will even cut you a lot of slack on not having the other two.
So it’s a little unusual to gaze upon this trio of anime idols and feel a chill run down your spine, and not just because they’re made of snow.
The town of Fukusaki in Hyogo Prefecture has taken a rather unusual direction when it comes to public art. Namely, the town spent roughly 3 million yen (US$25,000) to install a red, mechanical kappa in the small pond at Tsujikawayama Park (辻川山公園). The strange fixture has become a local attraction, and is scary-looking enough to make children cry!
Just what could have driven the town to install such a creepy mechanical model?














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