Halloween might be months away, but Japan is already in the midst of its peak haunted house season, with seeking bone-chilling frights being a well-established summer tradition. Kimono-clad ghosts with bloody eyes convulse in agony and lurch toward visitors at one spooky establishment in Tokyo, roaming around groaning like zombies. Summer is closely associated with the dead in Japan because it is believed that ancestral souls return to their household altars during the mid-August "obon" holiday.
So, visiting a haunted house is seen as a refreshing respite from the season's often stultifying heat and humidity, thanks to modern air conditioning and the less tangible chills sent down one's spine. Emerging from the dimly lit attraction at the indoor theme park Namjatown, 18-year-old Misato Naruse told Agence France-Presse (AFP) she had come there with her friend Himari Shimada "to get cool." "I broke out in a cold sweat without even realizing it.
That's how scared I was, I guess," the university student said beside a drained and speechless Shimada, also 18. Japanese summers are getting harder to bear, partly because of climate change. "Last year, it was very hot, but this year it feels even hotter.
And I wonder how much hotter it will be in a few years," Naruse said. This year, Japan sweltered through its hottest July since records began 126 years ago, with temperatures in the country 2.16 degrees Celsius higher than average.
In central Tokyo alone, 123 people died of heatstroke .