Dear Diary,

Okay, so, today I went down this crazy rabbit hole on the internet. You know how it goes, one minute you're looking up the best places to get ramen in Tokyo, and the next you're knee-deep in a Wikipedia article about Japanese ghost trains. Not the spooky, Halloween kind of ghost train you see at amusement parks, but real trains that are supposedly haunted.

Apparently, in Japan, there are these urban legends about trains that run on tracks they're not supposed to, at times when they shouldn't be running, and they're filled with all sorts of supernatural stuff, like, passengers who vanish into thin air, or stations that appear out of nowhere and then disappear just as quickly. It's like the Twilight Zone, but on rails.

Some people even claim to have actually ridden these ghost trains. Can you imagine? I mean, I love a good thrill, but I draw the line at potentially encountering spirits on my commute home. No thanks, ghosts, I'll take an Uber.

Anyway, the stories about these ghost trains are scary. There's this one legend about a train called the "Senzan Line" that supposedly travels through time. Apparently, if you board the Senzan Line at midnight, you'll end up in a different era altogether. And then there's the tale of the "Kisaragi Station," which only appears on the 20th day of every month. People say that if you manage to board a train at Kisaragi Station, you'll be taken to the land of the dead. Um, hard pass, thanks.

But here's the kicker, diary: there are REAL ghost trains in Japan. I know, but don't get too excited because my friend Qu informed me the real ghost trains are more of logistical conundrum than a paranormal one. To keep a regular train schedule, the trains run at night with no passengers on them. But even those trains have a strange kind of mystique, silently prowling the tracks while people sleep. Maybe they really are haunted? 

Okay, time to close this chapter of internet-induced paranoia and get back to reality. Until next time, diary!

Xoxo, 

Maria