Behind the Curtain: Advice for people coming to Japan (Ep. 39)

Once, wolves roamed the mountains of Japan—not simply as predators, but as protectors, messengers of the gods, and sometimes gods themselves. For this special archive episode, I’ve combined two earli...

29 Sep 39min

The cicadas are fading, the bell crickets are singing, and autumn is beginning to creep into Japan. There’s an old saying: aki no hi wa tsurube otoshi—“an autumn day falls like a well bucket”—describi...

14 Sep 19min

This episode is story time. We’re traveling to the remote Oki Islands in the Sea of Japan for an old Japanese tale collected by Richard Gordon Smith in his 1908 book Ancient Tales and Folk-Lore of Jap...

31 Aug 24min

In Japan, ghosts don’t wait for October. Summer—especially the hot, humid weeks around Obon—has long been the season for ghost stories, strange encounters, and deliberately scaring yourself silly. I...

17 Aug 26min

Every Obon, Japan’s ancestral spirits return home—guided by tiny fires and carried on cucumber horses. This year, for the first time, I’m responsible for preparing my father-in-law’s family altar. Joi...

3 Aug 34min

On the final days of Obon, fishermen along Japan’s western coast once believed the sea belonged to the dead. In this episode, I read Lafcadio Hearn’s eerie and beautiful essay “By the Japanese Sea.” ...

20 Juli 43min

A short Tanabata tale from the Uncanny Vault: Orihime the weaving princess, Hikoboshi the cowherd, and the river of stars that keeps them apart. On the seventh night of the seventh month, wishes are w...

7 Juli 19min

Two little boys find a dead bird on a mountain path. One accidentally touches it with his shoe, and suddenly the invisible contagion begins. Fingers cross. A circle is made. A hand chops through it. “...

7 Juli 29min