Urban legend in Japan

I found this urban legend page.  I wrote about some of them already such as Taira no Masakado, Kuchisake onna and the school legend about Hanako san in the toilet. Today I will write about some other interesting legends.

company legends
McDonald's urban legends are global, and we actually have them in Japan. But how about KFC? Did you hear the story that KFC made chickens with "4 legs" with their bio technology?

The delivery company trade mark of sagawa is "Hikyaku", a traditional Japanese postman. Hikyaku wore a traditional red Japanese g-string Fundoshi! The legend was 'if you touch a red g-string on a sagawa truck, you will have good fortune, if you could touch it on a moving truck, the fortune would be bigger, and faster was better.' As far as I checked this story on the internet, many people wrote that they had tried touching it. What? he is not wearing g-string pants anymore?  Yes I heard sagawa had to change their trade mark red g-string to red pants. ha ha ha

Skylark is a chain restaurant that we can find anywhere in Japan. The trade mark of the restaurant is a bird that has a bellybutton. The legend is if you can find one without a bellybutton, you can eat food free in the restaurant.

Area legend
In aomori prefecture, there was a small village called "sugisawa". One day a guy killed all of the people who were living there, so sugisawa village disappeared from the map. The violent game SIREN was based on this legend. Here is a crazy UK version of the TV ad. yuck!

Aroebic man
I don't know about him because his legend was spread out mainly in western Japan. They say he wore green body tights and had a green prong like AROE leaf on his head. He would suddenly appear, dance and then dissappear.

miscellaneous
This is called 'turbo gramma'. When you drive on the highway at a blistering speed gramma knocks on the car window. If you see her, you will have a car accident. someone made a turbo gramma game.

I was surprised to find that this is just a legend, because I believed for a long time that this was a true story.
An american woman tried to dry her cat by microwave and of course the cat died from exploding. The woman then sued the maker of the microwave because there wasn’t a warning "do not dry your cat" in the instructions. Did you know that this isn’t a true story? A Japanese woman who lives in the U.S. says that in the instructions for chain saws there is a caution that reads "please do not stop chain say by hand" (who would?) is this true or legend?

Well we have more urban legends, but i will stop now for today. To be continued later :-)

Comments

[Marin]

About that Aroebic man... If you've ever played the Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask then you've seen a character that fits the description of Aroebic Man. His name is Tingle (here's a link to a picture: http://games.shizzle.be/2007/01/04/tingle-rpg-naar-europa)
I don't know...myabe they thought it would be funny to have Aroebic Man in a game...he even has his own game now, too... Or maybe the rumors of him started from the game. No idea. Hmmm.

[Emma]

I've seen the "Do not stop chain saw using your hand" warning on a chain saw my dad was using once. There are a lot of stupid warnings on products. For example, on hair dye: "Please do not use as ice cream topping." Why say that?

[EricP]

They have the KFC legend in the US as well. http://www.snopes.com/horrors/food/kfc.asp

[Mari]

Hi There
Cecile. milky? I have never known that. It means we should keep all milky wrapping paper?

[Richard@Home]

The hitchhiker is also urban myth in the UK. Sometimes she's a nun, sometimes an old lady, sometimes she's the victim of a previous horrible crash.

[Candace]

Sounds like Sugisawa village is also the
basis for Fatal Frame 2.

Turbo Grandma sounds like something similar from Hawaii. If you see an old woman hitchhiking on the side of the road and do not stop to pick her up, you will have an accident because the woman is the volcano goddess. If you do pick her up, she will disappear from your car when you're not looking.

[cecile]

someone told me that if you find a Happy on the wrapping paper of Milky candy, then its lucky? i know someone who kept his lucky milky wrapper =)

i love milky!!