Lost in the massive confusion and destruction of the 2011 Japanese tsunami, a fishing vessel has shockingly been found afloat off the western coast of Canada.

The ship is the largest piece of debris found yet from the natural disaster and is being monitored as debris as of now. It will hit landfall in roughly two months if not stopped at sea.

Meanwhile, the boat could just be an eerie harbinger for even more random Japanese stuff. Is is estimated roughly two tons of debris washed off shore and the main mass of that should start hitting North America in two years time.

[BBC] via WT reader Jeff

The Japanese earthquakes and resulting tsunamis dominated the news in early 2011 bringing horrifying picture of destruction and tragic loss of life. But in the rebuilding phase, a strange side effect emerged. Survivors of the disaster reported seeing a larger than usual amount of unexplained activity in the sky.

UFOlogists claimed it to be visitors from beyond surveying the damage on Earth. But one man has a different theory: flying cryptids have been unleashed over the Land of the Rising Sun.

The appearance of these atmospheric beasts varies wildly. Accounts have variously described them as amorphous and cloud-like behemoths, finned squid-like creatures, floating jellyfish, translucent, vaporous blobs, amoeba-like organisms, and even dragons. The sizes of atmospheric beasts likewise run the gamut from tiny and bird-like, to gargantuan monsters hundreds of feet long.

…The thing is that earthquakes and tsunamis influence more than just the Earth and the seas. When the powerful earthquake hit Japan on March 11, it not only jolted the Earth, but also shook the skies above. When earthquakes and tsunamis occur, they generate surface motion that in turn can trigger waves that can shoot up all the way to one of the highest parts of the upper atmosphere, to what is known as the ionosphere. These events are known as seismotravelling ionospheric disturbances.

Brent Swancer, writing for Cryptomundo, goes on to note that Japanese earthquakes in 2004 also triggers Sky Beast sightings.

[Cryptomundo]

In general, we find “isn’t Japan weird” items well.. a little 90′s. Sure, they are weird. But it’s pretty well worn territory and when Vlad Putin is giving straight faced interviews about Wood Goblins and Yetis we feel the most fertile under recognized ground for weird news has drifted West.

That being said, we could not resist posting this video for anyone who has not already seen it for three reasons:

1- There is a strangely confined feeling to it. It’s all shot on one set or green screen and the bizarre imagery carries the entire clip.

2- It never gets super gross or sexual.

3- The song is really catchy.

So here you go, Weirdlings the tune you won’t be able to get out of your head this weekend.

[YouTube]

Check out this amazing video that shows what happens when electricity meets flesh. A Japanese women scaled an electric pole and refused to come down, and while arguing with authorities touched one of the lines, sending a 10,000 volt spark arcing from her finger to her face. To her credit, she argued for another 45 mins. before firefighters finally talked her down.

A Japanese coal city abandoned in 1974 has been officially off-limits for anyone looking to explore the slowly decaying buildings that once was home to thousands. That did not stop this brave explorer and his trusty guide who not only infiltrated the infamous Battleship Island but took some super insane pictures while there.

[Gakuranman]

Everyday this week…Brett Rounsaville brings us the Weirdest Inventions ever conceived.

A topic like this, sometimes you owe it to the world to pay lip service to the big clichés. Case in point, I think we can all agree that if there’s one group of people we know we can count on to come up with one of the weirdest inventions we’ve ever seen…it’s the Japanese.

So now, the problem becomes, where do we start? Which Japanese invention will hold today’s place of honor firmly in position while adding the necessary support to present it in the best possible light? Which Japanese invention will simultaneously lift the bar and separate itself from the pack? Which Japanese invention will allow for the most gratuitous use of thinly veiled innuendo?

I bring you…The Solar Powered Bra! (I can’t help but feel this is the perfect time for Thus Spake Zarathustra to reach its crescendo.)

I’m not even sure what I love most about this. Is it the beverage holding pouch attached to either… er… chest… piece…? Is it the extra-literal use of the term “green?” The scrolling LED billboard?

Ultimately, I think I’m just happy that women are finally being released from the shackles of having to plug their cell phones into a wall to charge while they sleep. Every. Single. Night. How daunting.

Finally, they have the freedom to charge their electronics as they go about their business in the work-a-day world! Provided it’s sunny out. And they aren’t wearing any clothes…

Also, please don’t wear this current coursing corset out and about on a rainy day. Or wash it. Or…I better stop now.

What do you think? Weird enough for you? If you’re a girl, can you imagine wearing one of these? If you’re a dude, can you imagine wearing one of these? Can you do weirder? Impress me, Team. Let me hear your thoughts.

Check out this weird shape-shifting UFO caught on camera in earlier this month in Yokohama, Japan. It changes from saucer to sphere and back again. And you have to hand it to the cameraman for keeping such a tight shot on it.

UFO, or SFX Senior Project? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Each week, Weird Things’ own Matt Finley breaks down one of the oddest elements of our culture in a feature we call Monster Of The Week. This week we focus on the Slit-Mouth Demon of Japan. Monday we were introduced to the world’s worst Butterface. Wednesday we gave you sure fire tips to avoid her wrath.

I still don’t feel like I’ve completely managed to twist my mind around Kuchisake-onna. By extension, it’s likely that you haven’t either. If you’re deeply familiar with Japanese culture and society, you probably feel as though I’ve only brushed the surface of the legend, regurgitating all the requisite facts – slit mouth, surgical mask, vain inquisition and murder – without arriving at any real interpretive narrative insight save for another bogeyman rant and some tired Women’s Studies rhetoric that, itself, was plucked from an American curriculum. If, like me, your understanding of Japanese culture and society is wrested from a pack of cultural stereotypes and loose associatives – anime, game shows, Samurai and academically motivated suicides – Kuchisake-onna probably remains, quite literally, a ghost, a fanciful story, untethered from any definitive cultural prerogative or fixed history. I can confidently link the Bermuda Triangle to the New Age movement, to the UFO mania that began in the 1950s and to a curious fixation on Atlantis. Kuchisake-onna? All I can do is tell the story.

Even the intrepid, if over-confident, know-it-alls over at our English-language Wikipedia have desperately tried to resolve the slit-mouthed woman through a Western lens. The “See also” column provides links to Bloody Mary, which is described as “a similar apparition in Western urban legends” (they’re both women who terrorize children, but, otherwise, I’m missing the connection), La Llorona (which I covered in November 2009) and the Glasgow smile, the popular Western (more specifically Scottish) term for the wound caused by the slitting of a victim’s mouth from ear to ear (think the Black Dahlia and/or Ledger’s Joker). Of course, run the Japanese Wikipedia page for Kuchisake-onna through Google translate, and you don’t get any of that. In fact, the page alludes (I’m sure in Japanese it flat out says, but the auto-translate made the syntax all wonky and there’s enough subject/verb disagreement to constitute a full-on armed conflict) to clashing histories and varied folkloric iterations of the legend, all of them re-shaping the grinning specter through the susurrus murmurs and whisperings rising up out of individual prefectures.

All of the treasures of Japanese Wikipedia lie AFTER THE JUMP…

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Each week, Weird Things’ own Matt Finley breaks down one of the oddest elements of our culture in a feature we call Monster Of The Week. This week we focus on the Slit-Mouth Demon of Japan. Monday we were introduced to the world’s worst Butterface.

Popular folktales are just that – popular. And they belong to the populace in a way that few other types of media ever will. Like in any game of telephone, these whispered stories are just one subversive tongue away from being notably and untraceably altered. If parents can use fictions to manipulate a child’s fears to form a sort of behavioral corral, the child can use fiction to build a ladder over the fence or, better yet, smash the beams entirely. One kid says something; a few more repeat it, and pretty soon you’ve got mobs of little Asian children pelting hotties with Pocky. Or, at least, that’s what you get in the case of Kuchisake-onna. While smirking mothers berated their children with threats of slice-and-dicement at the scissor-wielding hands of the grinning curfew enforcement proxy, the children were spreading rumors that a defensively thrown stick of Pocky proves perfectly sufficient in warding off the hungry snippers of ol’ Slit-gob McCutty. No Pocky on hand? Don’t worry. There are plenty more head-scratching Kuchisake-onna evasion techniques.

Blood Ruby

This is less a defensive technique than a befuddling rewrite of the whole story. In this version of the Kuchisake-onna legend, a person who answers, “Yes.” to the mutilated woman’s gash-flashing second query is handed a giant, blood-soaked ruby. I guess because kids are so nutty about their precious stones. Just make sure to wash it off before setting it in the eye socket of a cursed pirate skull. Also to make sure that it isn’t just a blood-soaked Ring Pop.

Confusion

This is a strategy that could only come from the Pocky-crusted mind of a grumbling, apathetic adolescent: In response to Kuchisake-onna’s maskless “Do you think I’m beautiful now?” simply reply, “You’re so-so” (in the seventies, when teens still exhibited a modicum of verbal competency, it was, “You’re average looking.”) The response will cause the insane monster to pause and think for a moment, giving you the opportunity to sprint away, or else trudge hollowly onward, burdened as you are by the soul shackles of your drone parents’ suburban conformity deathstyle. A more recent variation of this same strategy claims that you can tell Kuchisake-onna that you’re late to a previous engagement, and she’ll apologize for her rudeness and let you pass, unscathed (this also works with sharks).

Do the do

This variation’s a mixed bag – it spares your life, and you don’t have part with any of your crunchy snacks, but you also don’t get a fat gem smeared all over with someone else’s blood, and you have to wear Pomade. Because Kuchisake-onna hates the smell of Pomade. But, then, so do most ghosts. That’s why licensed parapsychologists call it “exorjism.”

Find four more SURE FIRE ways to avoid mutilation at the hands of the Slit-Mouth Woman AFTER THE JUMP…
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Each week, Weird Things’ own Matt Finley breaks down one of the oddest elements of our culture in a feature we call Monster Of The Week. This week we focus on the Slit-Mouth Demon of Japan, come back Wednesday and Friday for more!

Ancient, feudal Japan’s legends of proud warriors and disgraced Samurai haven’t always mixed well with contemporary urban legends and trendy pop cultural fads. The harakiri-inducing “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III,” for example, found its titular rubber-suited pizza fetishists travelling back to 15th century Japan, where they pose as demons, fight an evil warlord and learn a valuable lesson about self-esteem. The legend of Kuchisake-onna, the grotesque and reviled slit-mouthed woman, however, gets the job done in both timelines. Bonus: some newer versions of the story sprint so far into left field that, by the time you realize the entire business is just another cautionary tale engineered to keep the ladies demure and the unaccompanied minors from running roughshod over the pachinko arcades, they’ve collided with the outfield wall.

Kuchisake-onna is, on initial inspection, a beautiful woman, save for her surgical mask – a not-uncommon Japanese urban accessory worn for protection against airborne viruses. She’s tall and graceful, with dark eyes and, often, a black umbrella. Most of the stories begin on a foggy night, just as a school-aged dawdler, procrastinating his way home, passes by the mysterious woman, who is standing in a circle of streetlamp light. As the boy glances up at her, she approaches him and asks, in a soft voice, “Do you think I’m beautiful?” He looks her up and down in his best, ignorant approximation of his horny uncle’s notorious roving-eyed strip leer. “Yes.” He replies. The woman’s response is not the anticipated, blushing “Arigatou.” Instead, Kuchisake-onna tears of her mask to reveal a hideous, gaping mouth that’s been slit open ear to ear. For some reason (probably because she’s evil), she has rows upon rows of razor-sharp teeth. “Do you think I’m beautiful now?” cackles the poo-grinning -Onna. The child freezes. He stammers. He swallows once and attempts a double-time version of the top-to-bottom ocular hump.

Who the hell is this lady?

Find out… AFTER THE JUMP…

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