Annoying native lifeforms

Day 3 Wednesday. 11th August 2010

Hot and humid. This morning we drove over the mountains to our house. It about a 20 mins drive from Kameoka through some beautiful countryside. It’s like the typical post card image you probably have of Japan. Green rice paddies everywhere, steep mountains and white cranes (like the bird on the tail of JAL airplanes) flying around. We got to the house and Shizuka decided to greet the neighbour across the road. Now I have been to Japan many times and met many Japanese people and all have lived up to the stereotype of being polite and helpful. Our neighbour shattered this myth. What an asshole. He wouldn’t even open his door and told Shizuka that he was too busy to talk to her and to go away. She was quite upset as she is a sensitive soul. I, on the other hand don’t give a fuck. We are there to renovate this house and I don’t care what anybody thinks. His “too busy” consisted of vacuuming his house and doing the laundry.  Obviously his wife calls the shots and he is what the Japanese call “kaka denka” which translates as “hen pecked”.  While Shi-chan was upsetting the neighbours I was upsetting the local wildlife. The house has been empty for nearly 3 years and the garden is all overgrown. Consequently it is home to many of the various weird and wonderful bugs that inhabit these islands.  First up is the wasps. There are 2 kinds here…big ones and huge ones. The big ones are merely scary. The huge ones are terrifying.  Technically hornets, they sound like a small helicopter and are as big as your thumb. Apparently if one of them bites you symptoms can range from searing agony to death. Next up was the big spiders hanging around in their webs. I have seen these before and though they look evil they are actually fairly harmless.  Moving around to the back of the house I came upon another creature. He was green and about half a metre long. Now I have seen snakes before. When I was in Arizona I got used to the big rattlesnakes I would see from time to time. They give you plenty of warning and start rattling when you get close. This one was sneakier. I only just heard him as he slithered under the house.  When I described him to Shizuka she said “Don’t mess up with him!  ” Apparently he is a dangerous model.  Also spotted were large stick insects, praying mantis, a massive black female beetles and big spiky grasshoppers.  This place is like a zoo! Luckily there were no killer centipedes. 

Sweet home Hatano-cho

All this vegetation has got to go so off we went to the hardware store for some gardening tools and chemical weapons. I needed a machete to do some weed slashing. Can’t buy one. Here you have to have a licence to own a knife bigger than 6cm. Instead they sold me a wicked looking sickle type deal which could quite easily be used to murder someone.
Apparently straight knives are a dangerous threat to society but curved ones are not.

Reptile Territory

Back to the ranch for a bit of slashing. Shizuka attempted to poison every living crawling thing by waging chemical warfare. We made good progress until it got so dam hot we decided we needed some cold beer and air con. After lunch I went down to the carpark to fit my Navigation system to the truck. Shizuka insisted to stand around with me while I was doing it in case some neighbour decided I was a car thief and called the cops.  All in all, a constructive day.