Friday, January 04, 2008

Horror of the Ninja!

A couple of weeks ago my family and I passed through Ureshino town in Saga prefecture. While we were there we visited a funky little "theme park" called Hizen Yume Kaido. It's basically a reproduction of Ureshino during the Edo period. And while it was interesting to walk down the streets and look at the buildings, the highlights for me were the "ninja shows" (I had the opportunity to actually throw some "ninja death stars"!) and the several "haunted house" attractions.

I took the photo below with my cell phone while walking through one of the haunted houses. I didn't think much of it at the time (I wasn't especially "scared"), but I today I uploaded my cell's memory card to my pc and this pic caught my eye. The almost-black-and-white-ness and the grainy quality (click to enlarge) really give it (to my eye) a creepy kind of look.

7 comments:

  1. Had you not told me the back story, I think I would have guessed that this was a picture of some other planet's moon.

    This is sort of a repeat of the opening scene in The Little Prince, don't you think?

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  2. Which is not to say that the picture isn't pretty appealing, of course. But then, pretty much all your pictures are good, and I don't want to give you a swelled head by saying that over and over.

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  3. Brendan,
    I can't recall the scene in The Little Prince you're referring to, but I haven't seen that in years (and then only in snippets here and there).
    I want my head to swell until it blots out existence itself! (Well, not really...)

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  4. yes it does. Very creepy.

    this reminds me of how whenever I go to rent a Japansese movie, with research in mind, my options are predominately horror movies.

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  5. Ky:

    I never saw the movie, but the opening scene in The Little Prince (da book) was this: the narrator describes the first picture he drew, which was a boa constrictor after it had swallowed an elephant. He showed his drawing to the adults and asked them if it scared them. They said, "Why should we be scared of a picture of a hat?"

    If that doesn't ring a bell, or you don't get what I'm talking about, this might help.

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  6. Brendan,
    Ahh... now I see what you were getting at. BTW, several years ago I visited a museum (somewhwere near Mt. Fuji) dedicated to The Little Prince and it's author (I know his name, but can't be bothered to check for the right spelling--St. Exu-something!).

    Taff,
    Japanese horror movies generally rate very high on the "creep-you-out" index. I quite like them. I don't usually watch Japanese dramas (hell, I'm living one!). You can't go wrong with Kurosawa...

    AV,
    Thanks!

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