223B-Samurai Legends: Dinner Party

🍼 If your parent goes through the trouble of getting you superpowers...Kind of the least you can do is get them a new house. And fight all the dragons infesting that house. And get their increasingly specific and dangerous medical treatments for their very real and not made-up i ...  Show more

🪱Mr. Worm is getting married! That (not creepy) stranger is looking in your windows! Shin is driving tired!Five interconnected stories from Korean folklore about letting people know the real you. And 😈 The Creature: DuergarIf you're at risk of being beaten up by the Duergar, no ...  Show more

The obscure and terrifyingly deadly yokai, the korori, ravaged Edo Japan. On today's episode I'll tell you all about it, what it really was and how foreigners were the ones who brought it to Japan. Visit the Uncanny Japan website to read the show notes and transcript. Uncanny J ...  Show more

For the spooky month of October, I'm reading my short horror story, "Go-Away Monkey" from my collection The Carp-Faced Boy and Other Tales. It's set in an older Japan in a small village that has been ravaged by smallpox. If you remember Episode 4 (Monkeys and Monkey Lore), you'll ...  Show more

The Hell Courtesan (Jigoku Tayuu) is a mysterious figure that appears in art and story in Japan since the 1600s. But who is this beautiful high-ranked oiran who wears a kimono covered in images of hell? In this episode I talk about her legend and relationship with the eccentric m ...  Show more

His eyelids. He cut off his eyelids. But that is not all that the Daruma (Bodhidharma) is famous for. He's the man who brought Chan to China and Zen to Japan. Some say he taught the Shaolin monks how to fight while other tales talk about how he invented green tea, or well, his ey ...  Show more