Like funny articles? Get a light, entertaining story in your inbox every Monday. Sign up here.

Well I can’t pretend I was busy during my recent Japanese holiday.

The most gruelling part of my schedule was deciding which egg sandwich to start my day with. Then, when aimlessly wandering and looking at stuff became too exhausting, I would head to a sauna and then indulged in some pleasure time with a naughty little slat:

The good news about all this looking was that it allowed me to find plenty of what we all hope to come across while travelling in Japan — some really fucking weird shit.

Here are some of my favouites.

We start in an aquarium in Kobe. It wasn’t precisely a traditional setup. The exhibits were a little small, a little quirky. But they compensated for this with a blinding light and laser shows.

Wonderful for visitors, probably very bizarre for the fish. The least they could do, I thought, is give the poor bastards some MDMA. I don’t care what species you are, sober discos suck.

The laser show wasn’t the strangest thing at the aquarium, however. That title belonged to the butt wall.

“Isn’t the back of the creature cute?” The signs reads ominously. “You can enjoy the smell that you can’t usually smell while looking at its butt.”

Yes, this interactive display allowed you to bend over and get a good huff of penguins cheeks. Not just penguin, either! They had tiger ass, beaver ass, and even koala ass! Just when I was starting to feel homesick I can wheeze in eucalyptus-scented marsupial hole.

In Takamatsu I visited a yokai (which loosely translates to demon) museum. There were a few spooky characters on display, each with their own story or terrorising the locals.

And also this very gratuitously sexy raccoon dog.

The legend goes that raccoon dogs (or tanuki) would smear blue moss on themselves in order to transform into humans. In the 1950s a couple of people walking through the forest caught sight of a tanuki gathering moss from the bottom of a pond and putting it on its head, a story they later shared with the rest of the town.

They made no mention of the tanuki having enormous, juicy tits, so I imagine this was just artistic license on the sculptor’s behalf.

Meanwhile in Kobe, the only gratuitously large thing on this sculpture is the forehead.

Can you believe this is the second statue of a pissing boy I’ve seen in Japan? Because it is.

It might be in a scenic location, but this is still just some kid having a slash where he shouldn’t be.

I also ran into an old friend! Fancy seeing you here, self-basting hotdog man!!

He’s a bit worse for wear, but nice to see someone I know.

Meanwhile, as my friends get married or have children, this shop accurately represent my current status:

I hope wherever you are today, you are also with bread.

Get a new funny article in your inbox every Monday morning. No more, no less. Sign up here.

--

--

Stephanie Coombes

Stephanie's an award-winning journo with a taste for the weird. She writes about culture, society, and unseemly stuff she finds on the internet.