So, you might notice that this going up a day late. Well, there’s a kind of funny story behind that.

The way that this typically works is that I write these out the day before they go up on the blog proper, so that I can get them posted to my Patreon first. That means I typically write these posts on Sunday, then schedule them to go live on Monday. That didn’t happen this week.

Because I was up all Saturday night with the worst case of heartburn I have ever experienced in my near 38 years on this planet.

Getting old sucks, kids.

Anyway, let’s talk about Japanese mermaids, or ningyo.

“Mermaid” is a bit of a misnomer, though, since ningyo basically just translates to “fish person.” It’s different than the Hans Christian Anderson-ish mermaids we’ve come to know and love, though the word applies to them now as well.

See, rather than having the upper body of a pretty lady and the lower body of a fish, ningyo just full on have the body of a fish and the face of a human. Which sounds less like “alluring siren” and more like “sleep paralysis demon.”

There’s kind of an interesting dichotomy surrounding ningyo: see, their flesh is supposed to be super tasty and also makes people immortal. At the same time, however, catching a ningyo is supposed to be incredibly unlucky, so you should probably throw one back if you manage to catch it.

There are, of course, plentiful tales surrounding these beasts, on of them being Yao Bikuni, or “The Hundred Year Priestess.” So we start of with this fisherman who, one day catches a super-weird looking fish. And, naturally, his first instinct is to try and eat it.

He doesn’t want to eat it alone, though, and decides to show it off to a bunch of his friends at a dinner party. One of the friends, though, takes a peek into the kitchen and notices that this thing has a human head, and tells the other guests that maaaaaaaaaaaaaybe eating it isn’t a good idea.

They take his advice and wrap the fish bits in some paper and throw them away on the way home. Except for one dude, who gets super drunk at the party and forgets to do that. His daughter, thinking that the fish is a present, eats it, much to her father’s dismay.

To his relief, though, it doesn’t seem to be poisonous, but there is still an interesting side effect. You see, after the girl reaches adulthood, she stops aging. This seems pretty cool at first, but becomes less cool when she starts to outlive basically all of her husbands. Distraught, she becomes a Buddhist priestess and wanders for 800 years, before returning to her hometown to take her own life.

So that was depressing! Let that be a lesson: don’t eat fish with people faces, or allow loved ones to eat fish with people faces.

(Like these posts? Please consider supporting this blog on Patreon, Ko-Fi, or PayPal! I currently have a goal where I’m trying to save up enough money to upgrade my computer, so I can do gameplay videos and streams and stuff.)