Another ghastly blog you shouldn't read if you're squeamish or were planning on eating today, about another macabre museum I urgently needed to visit as soon as I read about it.
The assorted tapeworms and other organisms displayed at the Meguro Parasitological Museum in Tokyo aren't as shocking as the deformed baby corpses and crushed skulls of Bangkok's Siriraj Medical Museum, but this research centre still probably isn't a place to take your kids on a family day out in Tokyo. Unless it's me as a kid.
Meguro Parasitological Museum
(目黒寄生虫館)
The world's longest tapeworm (8.8 metres). I'm not much of a hypochondriac, but I've had a sneaking suspicion that I've been sharing my burgers and biscuits with one of these for the past 20 years or so
The museum's star attraction - a dolphin stomach with anisakis infestation.
You weren't planning on eating noodles tonight, right?
The explanations only come in Japanese, so I don't know what the hell's going on
Assorted animal parasites that you definitely have inside you right now
Parasites that achieved the impressive feat of making these fish look even uglier than normal
So some crabs got sick, big deal. Who cares about crabs? You're going to have to try harder than that to get an emotional response out of me
NOOOOO! WHO DID THIS??? What kind of God could let this happen?
I bet this is only here so some bored lab technician can hold it aloft and make an 'I've got turtle head' joke a couple of times each day. (R.I.P. Leonardo)
Trematoda, apparently. There go my hopes of an educational blog. It's probably bad for you?
We don't need a translator for this one. You remember our old friend filariasis from the Bangkok Parasitology Museum? Just to remind you
This place isn't just a gratuitous gore-fest - it's a research facility too, which has been running since the 1950s, and that means there are plenty of delightfully impractical old tomes lying around that you're not allowed to read
If you enjoyed your visit, you can buy a souvenir T-shirt of neodactylodiscus latimeris and other popular parasites, which helps to support the facility's important research as well as giving you the power to make people spontaneously vomit in the street.
Stay healthy, readers! And please make sure you cook those sausages thoroughly before scoffing them down.
