4 and Counting.......

So far in our kitchen this summer, we have come across 4 very well fed cockroaches. I say "well fed" as in humongous cockroaches. 3 out of the 4 have met their maker, or should I say "perished" under the back side of a pan. 1 little bugger got away. It doesn't matter if my kitchen is clean. The disgusting creatures just love to surprise me when I open a drawer or flip on the light. Late summer is the season in Japan for insects to pump up on their steroids and scare us gaijin women silly. There truly are hoards of insects in Japan. It's much like a prehistoric island that time forgot when one looks at the shear size of the bugs here. Picture wasps the size of a human thumb. Just yesterday we came home and discovered on our satellite a spider the size of a small planet feasting on it's, moon-sized dinner. As soon as I saw it looming over our front door, I huddled by our front gate with Josh. I wasn't about to walk under this black widow looking thing. We had just invested smartly in some spider spray from D2 (A discount home store). Mike braved the pass under the spider into our house and retrieved the spray. After..... Oh, I don't know like 15 minutes of trying to spray it down, it still was pretty much unphased. Mike finally took a ball and knocked down it's web. It had been slowed down a bit by the spray but was still trying to make an escape. It had fallen to the ground by that point and I ran through our pathway to the front door. Mike battled away with the thing until he finally squashed it. He said that when he squashed it, it made a Pssssssss sound. GROSS!

Although this spider was big, I have seen bigger crawling around our front door. In fact, I think I got a glimpse of our roof-residing friend prior to the following front door incident. I was opening the storm shutters one afternoon when I thought I accidentally might have frightened a praying mantis. I looked again and realized that it wasn't a praying mantis at all but a leg of something much bigger. I quickly shut the sliding glass door and let it continue hiding outside. Several days passed and I forgot about my run-in with this 8 legged monster. One hot day while getting ready to run errands, I ran outside to the car only to find the spider-monster skittering across our front door. I kid you not, this thing was about the size of a large man's hand and it was fast. It was light brown with a skinny body and fat long legs. I picked up Josh and ran off not even going back to lock the front door (Hey it's Japan I knew our house would be pretty safe). I stopped by Mike's work and told him the tale of this beast. He, of course, in typical husband fashion, scoffed at me... telling me that the only big thing by our front door now is Bob the Robber coming to take all our household goods because of our unlocked door and that the spider is probably long gone, frightened away by all my shrieking. 'You'll See' I thought.

Sure enough, we came home and the spider was parked right under our porch over the front door. It was pretty skiddish, so after throwing a ball at it several times, it skittered on top of the roof. Man, it was fast. Mike was just about as startled by the size as I was. It's been several weeks and to this day, I still shake the front door in the morning before going outside. Just in case it's there. Hopefully the shaking will startle it away!

Despite my dislike of the enormous spiders and cockroaches, I'm actually enjoying the other bugs that are hanging around in the warm weather. I don't hear to many Japanese people complaining about the bugs either. In fact, it's considered good luck to see a spider first thing in the morning. I secretly believe that maybe this Japanese belief was inspired by a Buddhist monk who remembered his past life as a spider and wanted to save his "past life" buddies! Most Japanese spiders are harmless to humans. It's the ones that us westerners have brought over that are the harmful ones.

The cicadas here are extremely loud & large. The meeee meeee meee mating call that they create can drown out any conversation. There's also praying mantises, rollie-pollies, caterpillars, locusts, and big beautiful butterflies all over the place. On the boardwalk by the bay, there are thousands upon thousands of water beetles that scatter about as I come racing through with my jogging stroller. It's fun to watch all the children racing around with nets and small aquariums to catch all kinds of these critters. It's definitely a favorite past time for Japanese children. In fact, at the local Daiei and other stores they sell huge rhinoceros or stag beetles (Mushi is Japanese for beetle or insect). All or most Japanese children apparently have kept these creatures as pets. I recently read an article about how they now have live beetle vending machines! Apparently, a popular Fall season gift in the country side are "Autumn singing" insects which are primarily crickets and grasshoppers.

The Japanese love for insects is apparently rubbing off on me. Don't get me wrong, I still can't stand the site of a giant cockroach sitting in my kitchen or a cicada flailing about across my face. However as summer winds down, their (cicadas) meee meee meeeing is becoming less and less prevalent. It's a reminder that soon we will have to start preparing for the cold cold months when summer just seems like a long ago dream.

A little side note, we are now locked into the JapanBloggers Webring. If our readers are interested in more things Japanese, click on the icon above our Blogger button on the left hand side of our site. The left and right arrows take you to the next or previous blog in the ring, while the question mark option will take you to a random blog. Happy reading!