Destination Suicide Park

Our dear friend Pia C. told us about a park in Japan that is known for being a place where you can commit suicide in peace. Well, that place is Aokigahara park, which indeed became internationally known as a popular destination for suicide; almost unbelievable,  but true. It has been said that there are 50 to 100 deaths per year at this forest.
Brrr….but; the fact that Japanese Culture is so, so different from the Western one, becomes evidently more clear when watching the interesting Vice flick below. (don’t be alarmed by this post we’re fine, doing very well actually! xoxo)

“The site holds so many bodies that the Yakuza pays homeless people to sneak into the forest and rob the corpses. The authorities sweep for bodies only on an annual basis, as the forest sits at the base of Mt. Fuji and is too dense to patrol more frequently.” (via vice youtube channel)
“signs at the head of some trails urges suicidal visitors to think of their families and contact a suicide prevention association. In an exhaustive 2017 feature story on Mount Fuji, Smithsonian magazine columnist Franz Lidz wrote: “Distraught teens and other troubled souls straggle through the 7,680-acre confusion of pine, boxwood and white cedar. In the eerie quiet, it’s easy to lose your way and those with second thoughts might struggle to retrace their steps. According to local legend, during the 1800s the Japanese custom of ubasute, in which elderly or infirm relatives were left to die in a remote location, was widely practiced in the Aokigahara.”(read more wikipedia.org/wiki/Aokigahara)