Halloween may not be for months, but it's already peak haunted house season in Japan, where seeking a bone-chilling fright is a long established summer tradition. Kimono-clad ghosts with bloody eyes convulse in agony and lurch towards 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 a visit to a haunted house is seen as a refreshing respite from the season's often stultifying heat and humidity -- thanks to both 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 AFP she had come there with her friend Himari Shimada "to get cool". "I broke out in a cold sweat without even realising.
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' time," Naruse said. This year, Japan sweltered through its hottest July since records began 126 years ago, with temperatures in the country 2.16 degree Celsius higher than average.
In central Tokyo alone, 123 people died of heatstroke last month, when extreme heatwaves fuelled by climate change saw a record number of ambulances mobilised in the capital, according to local authorities. - 'Chilling the liver' - Many haunted houses in Japan play up to their refreshing reputation by using slogans such as "a shudder that blows away the summer heat". The idea can perhaps be traced back to the Japanese traditional theatre form of kabuki, according to Hirofumi Gomi, who has worked behind-the-scenes as a producer of haunted house experiences for three decades.
Lore has it that a few centuries ago, kabuki theatres struggled to lure spectators in summer because many loathed being crammed inside without air-conditioning. But that changed when performers swapped sentimental human drama for full-on horror -- aided by various tricks and contraptions, similar to a modern-day haunted house. "For patrons wilting under the heat, dazzling visual effects and gripping ghost tales were more bearable than the subtleties of human-interest stories," Gomi said.
"So maybe haunted houses don't so much cool you down as make you forget the heat momentarily." At the Namjatown haunted house, which is meant to evoke an abandoned, spirit-infested town, organisers are confident about the scary tricks up their sleeves. "In Japanese, we say 'kimo ga hieru', or literally 'chilling the liver' -- a reference to the sensation of getting goosebumps," Hiroki Matsubara, of operator Bandai Namco Amusement, told AFP.
"We believe visitors can experience the feeling of being scared, surprised or 'chilled to the liver', which will hopefully help them enjoy a cool feeling in summer." A furious Donald Trump unleashed a torrent of rage in the pre-dawn hours Tuesday after an ABC News correspondent called him out for racial "slurs." Trump's post-midnight Truth Social post railed against ABC News' George Stephanopoulos over a contentious interview with a Florida Republican who tried to defend the former president questioning of Vice President Kamala Harris' race .
"I watched three weeks ago as George Slopadopolus interviewed Crooked Joe Biden, doing everything possible to keep him in the race after his terrible Presidential Debate performance," Trump wrote about 12:20 a.m. ET.
"Liddle’ George, of ABC FAKE NEWS, was so solicitous and nice, asking easy questions and doing whatever was necessary to make Sleepy, the WORST President in the history of our Country (Kamabla is the WORST V.P.), look alert and sharp.
"It didn’t work, but he tried!" Trump has amped up his anti-media rhetoric in recent days after he responded to tough questions at the National Association of Black Journalists convention last week with responses commentators condemned as racist and likened to a train wreck . ABC News has become a particular point of frustration for Trump after correspondent Rachel Scott asked him to justify remarks that Black lawmakers born in this country should "go back where they came from" and describing Black prosecutors as "rabid" and "animals." On Monday, Trump appeared on the live stream of influencer Adin Ross , who famously got a friend arrested in Romania after he urged him to flee on his live stream , and insulted Scott again.
"I didn't know who she was, but she was nasty," Trump said. ALSO READ: Don’t be fooled: Project 2025 is already happening Trump didn't rail against Scott on Tuesday, but he appeared furious that Stephanopoulos challenged Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) in an interview Monday to justify his remarks on Harris' race.
"You just did it again!" Stephanopoulos told Donalds when he tried to argue Harris' Indian lineage validated Trump's comments. "Every single answer you gave, you repeated the slur." In the earlier hours, Trump echoed the insults he hurled at Scott the day before.
"I watched Slopadopolus viciously attack Congressman Byron Donalds, a future star in the Republican Party, with nasty and totally inappropriate questions, the exact opposite of the treatment given to Crooked Joe. The good news is that Byron swatted him away like a fly, not to be heard from again!" In a follow up post, Trump called Harris a coward , an insult she and a growing number of Truth Social users have hurled against him after he backed away from an ABC News debate slated for next month. Trump now insists Harris, with whom he dubbed yet another nickname, must debate him on Fox News.
"Kamabla Harris is afraid," Trump wrote. "Will be easier to defeat on the Debate Stage than Crooked Joe Biden, just watch!" CONTINUE READING Show less Spectators poured into Benin's capital for a new festival celebrating traditional masks over the weekend as the West African country seeks to attract visitors and showcase its cultural heritage. The three-day Porto Novo Mask Festival drew participants from across Benin as well as neighbouring Togo and Burkina Faso.
There was excitement in the crowd as spectators caught sight of some masked and costumed figures rarely seen outside their respective regions. The main street hummed with traditional music while officials and members of the public watched displays of acrobatics and stilt-walkers perched on eight-metre (26-foot) poles. Benin's government and city authorities launched the event to replace the Porto Novo International Festival, usually held in January, and there were both secular and religious masks on show.
Voodoo, known locally as Vodun, is widely practised in Benin. It worships gods and natural spirits while showing respect to revered ancestors. "I'm very moved -- I saw masks I'd never had the chance to see before," said Vodun religious dignitary Severin Alode, 43.
"I've never seen such a buzz. It's a first." The festival's main attractions were Gonouko, towering masked figures from Porto Novo, alongside an array of other masks and appearances from Zangbeto, traditional Vodun guardians of the night.
Even the rare Hounve mask was on display, as Vodun dignitary Adanklounon Ado Setondji explained. "Our parents knew how to hide the Hounve, but as we are in the mindset of promotion, we have to take the masks out and show them to the public," he said. Before the festival, rituals took place away from spectators.
Bale Atchade, a 65-year-old Vodun dignitary, said there were ceremonies centred on resolving social problems and others linked to infertility. - 'Source of pride' - Ayaba Collete Dossou, a member of the national Vodun rites committee, said the Porto Novo festival showed "the beauty of our culture and our wealth." The city's mayor Charlemagne Yankoty said the event "puts Porto Novo in the spotlight.
" "The mask festival will enhance Benin's culture and reveal its full value in terms of heritage and culture," he said. Earlier this year, the government revamped another of Benin's cultural celebrations -- its famous Voodoo festival -- in a bid to attract more visitors. "Vodun is of economic interest to us, since tourism is an important sector," said President Patrice Talon at the festival in January.
He said he hoped that event would help explain "what Vodun is and how it is practised" to domestic as well as foreign tourists. There were signs his wishes were being fulfilled at the mask festival in Porto Novo, too. Frederica Nzamba, a 30-year-old visitor with Beninese roots, told AFP she came to "better discover and understand Benin's culture" after 16 years living abroad.
The festival, she said, was a "source of pride." CONTINUE READING Show less I hear it frequently on my radio/TV program : Americans are baffled about what’s happened to Donald Trump . He used to seem so formidable, a very real threat to American democracy, the pal of dictators around the world.
Now even Putin is dissing him, cutting the very prisoner deal with President Biden that Trump said a few weeks ago the Russian dictator would only do with him. He’s gone, in the minds of many Americans, from being a danger to being merely weird. What happened? The simple reality is that Trump has entered the Fat Elvis phase of his career.
He hasn’t grown or developed new routines; he’s just reliving his old hits every day, playing to a nostalgic and mostly elderly audience who fondly remember his glory days. His pathetic attempt to question the racial identity of Vice President Harris was just a warmed-over version of his Obama Birther slanders; they played well back in the first decade of this century, but now they’re just old and flat. His claim that Hispanic immigrants and asylum seekers are “taking Black jobs” is just a makeover of his 2015 coming-down-the-escalator pitch.
It was new and novel then and caught the love and attention of racists all across America; now it’s just a tired retread. His forcing Republicans in the House to vote down the border bill that Oklahoma Republican Senator James Lankford principally wrote just adds to the perception that he’s a rank hypocrite with little interest in actually solving America’s problems. His newest fundraising grifts — “gold” tennis shoes, bloody-ear bobble head dolls , raising the Mar-a-Lago entrance fee for spies and hangers-on to $1,000,000 — are every bit as pathetic and sloppy as his old pitches for Trump steaks, Trump water, and his failed Trump “First Class” Airline.
His entire career in the media has been characterized by rich-frat-boy flamboyance and testosterone-driven excess, from publicly cheating on each of his three wives to bragging about leering in the dressing rooms of teen beauty pageants to his faux “successful businessman” routine on NBC. Today, though, nobody is shocked, amazed, or impressed; more Americans pity him than are in awe of his proclaimed masculinity. The one aspect of his public persona that hasn’t much changed is his naked racism, although even that has become boring.
He’s now desperately trying to slice-and-dice the American electorate so he can pit separate groups of people against each other or suck up to whatever faction he thinks might save his doomed candidacy. He’s trying to appeal to boomers by saying he’ll repeal the income tax Reagan put on Social Security; it’s not working because boomers remember that every one of the four budgets his administration produced when he was president called for radical cuts in Social Security. He thinks he can ingratiate himself with Jews by saying that Kamala Harris “doesn’t like Jewish people” when most Americans know she’s married to one.
When that didn’t work, he tried sucking up to Benjamin Netanyahu and inviting him to Mar-a-Lago; most Americans realize that both men are spinning political plates in the air as fast as they can to avoid going to prison for corruption. Now he just sounds like an aging antisemite afraid of jail. He believes young people will swoon when he says he wants to eliminate income taxes on tips, but most young workers are still old enough to remember that in 2020, as the Economic Policy Institute noted in their headline , “Trump administration finalizes regulation that will cost tipped workers more than $700 million annually.
” He thinks trash-talking women, calling them “nasty” and other epithets, will bond men to him; instead, they imagine him bursting in on their mothers, sisters, wives, or daughters in a Bergdorf-Goodman dressing room. In each one of these efforts to either turn Americans against each other or slice off and nail down a segment of the electorate, Trump is ignoring what most citizens are fundamentally concerned about: the physical, emotional, and fiscal health of our entire country. Nobody — outside of his Greene/Gaetz/Boebert fan club in the House — believes his promise to pardon the people who tried to beat over 140 police officers to death is righteous; it just makes him look and sound like a sleazy, washed-up, wannabee mob boss who hates cops.
The only “new” policies Fat Elvis Trump has come up with are those brought to him by billionaires dangling campaign contributions: — He wanted TikTok banned until billionaire Jeff Yass — the largest American investor in the platform — visited him at his shabby golf motel. — He correctly pointed out that Bitcoin is a risky commodity rather than a currency until Bitcoin aficionados and billionaires Elon Musk, Joe Lonsdale, Doug Leone, Shaun Maguire, Antonio Gracias, and Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss came to his defense. He doesn’t have any new vision for America: he just wants to be the star of his own version of The Apprentice , reliving the highlights from his glory days and, of course, keeping himself out of prison by taking control of the Department of Justice.
He oversaw the unnecessary deaths of a half-million Americans, giving America the second-worst Covid death rate in the world because of his incompetence. He gave us the worst economy since the Republican Great Depression of the 1920s. He nearly destroyed an international alliance of democracies that it took good men and women across dozens of nations — and two bloody world wars — a century to put together.
Fat Elvis Trump thinks he can keep spinning the old hits, but polls now show that — outside of his elderly white rally audiences — Americans have figured him out, are tired of his cons, and have moved on. And it couldn’t happen at a better time: A new day is at hand if enough of us will simply show up and vote this November. NOW READ: 'It reeks': Law enforcement balks at Trump's 'Secretary of Retribution' plan CONTINUE READING Show less.
