June 24, 2003 - 1:08 PM
Wes Ehrlichman

Well, last week marked the one year anniversary of SuperWes.com and I'd like to thank everyone for coming. I wanted to do something special, but my contests never really drew in the crowd so I think I'm going to try for a weekly updates every Tuesday. I wanted to do a new design, but I don't think I'm really in the mood to transfer all of my old journals over to a new design. I've been talking to Kyle lately and he actually decided to take the time to redo my page in flash.

Click me!

I think you'll agree that it looks amazing, but updating it (something I have enough trouble doing already) would be a more than a small pain in the butt. He did come up with the concept for the logo above though, so we can all thank him for that.

Today I want to talk about something I touched on a few journals ago. The summer bug problem in Japan. If you get a bit squirmy about bugs you might want to skip out on this one. Without further ado I present this week's feature!

SuperWes: Journey to Monster Island

Appreciate it, because that image took far longer than it should have... At any rate, the monsters here are starting to come out in force. Every morning I go on a spider hunt and I find at least one. Sometimes their camouflage lets them blend in with the rug and I've got to look for slight movements in the pattern. When I heard (not saw) my first spider crawling on the wall early last summer I knew that Kyushu must have something the water that causes insects to grow far larger than their God-given sizes.

There was a festival last week in Kajiki where they put spiders on sticks and hold the sticks up to each other and the spiders fight to their death. Unfortunately it was raining and I was stuck in the city without a car so I couldn't go. No problem though, because I can see spider fights in my house! Take a look at a few of these pictures.

  
In my house

These pictures were taken inside of my house. Spiders seem to be drawn into and around my house. Maybe it's because I don't clean very well. The one below that looks like a bee is the scariest one. This picture was thankfully taken outside of my house. On the porch.

On my porch

Hold on to your lunch, because I'm not done talking about spiders yet. The other day at elementary school I saw the largest spider yet, but it was also easily the least scary one I've ever seen. For you see, the spider was wearing a backpack. Seeing a backpack on a spider, no matter how large the spider is, will automatically remove any fear you might have had.

This Spider must love camping!

When I first saw a spider with a backpack on it I thought that the kids must have found an ingenious way to keep the spider in the school as a pet, without having it cause problems like put webs everywhere or attack the first graders. Turns out I was thinking too hard. The fact is that at schools in Japan, children are in charge of cleaning up. This makes my dirty middle school look like Martha Stewart's house in comparison to the elementary schools. So this spider has just lived here long enough that it collected so much dust and random pieces of paper that it appeared to be wearing a backpack. It can't be a coincidence either, because soon after I took the picture of this spider another backpacking spider was found just behind the recycling bins. The vice principal took a broom and scooped both of them, backpacks and all, out of the window.

You almost gotta feel sorry for it...

Spiders aren't the only monsters in Kyushu though, driving places late at night I always see frogs jumping across the road. Especially when it's raining. Now I understand the inspiration for Frogger. When I walk to school in the morning after a rainy night I count the squashed frogs scattered about the pavement. These aren't quite "dissect a frog in high school" size, but there's quite a variety of colors and it's just a guess, but I'd say that licking them would have quite an effect on your mind.

The other night when I was walking back from my English conversation club, the plague of frogs in the nearby rice field was so loud that If you listened close enough you could make conversations from the different voices of the varying species.

This is I think the first one I've seen, but I promise that as I was writing the frog bit above, the lunch lady who was sweeping the school jumped because she saw a lizard right in front of her. I've even got the picture to prove it!

Lizard in Japanese is tokage

Hero came to school the other day and dropped off one of his enormous beetles. I didn't ask why, but it's presumably for some sort of science class purposes. I caught a picture, but because most of the bug is hiding underneath its cotton hideout you can only see the horn. You'll have to use your imagination to figure out what size it is.

My name is Ricky

Other animals that you can find out here include a variety of bees, snakes, and poisonous centipedes. Apparently there are wild monkeys and wild boars in the forests at the top of the mountains in this area but I'm pretty lazy so I can only assume that this is true.

  
Enormous Bee

Ahh, but I've saved the best beast for last. I went to Doug's house one afternoon last month and there was a strange bug on the concrete just opposite his door. It looked a bit like a centipede, but with a lot larger and fewer legs, and it was easily 3 inches long. When I saw it I yelled "Oh my GA!" (because that's the Japanese way of saying oh my god) and started banging on his door. Apparently the bug also had the ability to sense sound waves because the strange legs/tentacles on the front/rear of it began twitching wildly as soon as I yelled. Doug rushed to the door, opened it up, and said, "That thing's still there?" Apparently it had been there for at least a few hours, from when he came home from work that afternoon until I came over to pick him up for Japanese class. He snapped a few pictures and asked the people at his work what it is called.

Here's one of Doug's pictures

Apparently the creature is called a Geji Geji and is only mildly poisonous in that you get a little itchy if you touch it. Here is a page in Japanese with another picture and an artist's rendition of the beast that is the geji geji.

Strangely enough, there are some excellent benefits to having so many bugs. Last month when Christina was here was Hotaru watching time. Hotaru is Japanese for firefly. The only other experience I had with fireflies in Japan was during my homestay in Tokyo 6 years ago. My homestay mother suggested that we go to some park in the middle of the night on a school night to watch some fireflies The whole concept of going out of your way to see fireflies is odd to me because I've lived in Indiana my whole life and the only thing you need to do to see fireflies is go out into the yard between 7 and 9 at night in the summertime. During this late night trip in Tokyo however, we didn't see a single firefly the entire time. In fact, all I remember about that experience was seeing an enormous, beautifully sculpted tree in the middle of a park in Tokyo. This is a strange and random memory to be sure, but it's how I justified staying out all night on a school night to myself.

Going to see fireflies on the island of Kyushu however, was an entirely different experience than in Tokyo. Me, Doug, and Christina met our friends Megumi and Max at a drugstore in Mianojo at around 8:00 and condensed into a single car. Max drove us all along a river that had a road on one side and a tree covered mountain on the other. As we got further away from main road, a few lights here and there began to show up within the trees of the mountain on the other side of the lake. The numbers of lights increased and by the time we parked the car, turned off the lights, and got out, the entire mountain seemed to illuminate under the small bug's fiery asses. It was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.

As we sat there watching, we all wanted to be closer to the action so found a path that led us down next to the water. From here, without the lights of the passing cars to mask the darkness we sat and stared at the beautiful sight. In Indiana I never noticed, but when a firefly lights up, it is following the lead of another one that is nearby. The effect of this is that when so many of them can be seen together it looks a mountain covered in Christmas lights, with the first light going off at the top of the mountain and slowly making its way down the mountain in an pattern of light, all turning on then off in the same pattern, then beginning again moments later where it all started. Of course there are a few stragglers that were on our side of the pond, possibly trying to make their way toward the fleet. But these stragglers are like the candles next to the Christmas tree; only adding to the beauty of it all.

Firefly on a finger

A few days later it rained, and apparently they won't show up again until next year. In short, if someone in Japan offers to take you to see fireflies it go and do it, even if you've seen them before.

Til next time, I leave you with this:

Wes Vs Godzilla