Monday, September 18, 2006

seek and ye shall find spiders

ok, ok people! all this pestering to see some impressive arachnids. well let me tell you this: if you go looking for spiders in japan, you're going to find them. and if you don't go looking, they'll find you. every day on my way down the hill to school, i walk my face into several newly-spun webs--good times. now i keep a protective arm up because i've actually gotten a web-in-the-eye which is too weird. i used to have a "no spiders in my living space" policy, but i've amended it a little. at first, i was killing them when i found them, but then i found a poisonous centipede (the dreaded mukade) caught in a spider web, and i began to feel more greatful for them. spiders actually aren't the worst thing you can find in your house. plus i find the little ones that hop like frogs oddly hilarious.
then there was the BIG one. i saw this guy for the first time after the previously discussed asthma attack. after struggling for days to simply breathe, i was so relieved to finally have clear airways that this wall-schnauzer, as i've taken to calling it, didn't seem like such a big deal. happily it was only in my laundry room, not my house.


i checked it out for a good long time (took pictures, and YES the eyes reflect the flash) and then startled it into scampering to a corner. these puppies can RUN. it could probably beat me in a marathon. there's no WAY i'm gonna be able to kill that thing with a shoe! it didn't seem fair that i was killing the little ones only because i could and leaving the big one alone, so i decided on a "if i can catch you in a glass, you will live outside" policy.
if this isn't big enough for you, here a photo of the "it's so big i'm moving back to the states" spider that another JET found in his house...i'd credit him for the photo, but i don't have his name.

6 comments:

  1. OK, my desire to ever visit Japan has just scurried up a wall and creepily squeezed into the dark crack where my romantic dreams of Africa migrated after I read about ebolah outbreaks in 'The Hot Zone'. Oh, and my appetite just climbed in there, too.

    I'll content myself with living vicariously through you and other brave friends who can endure the many-legged island nation. Walking through freshly-spun webs one morning, let alone every morning, on the way to work would be enough to make me jump off one of those picturesque coastal cliffs in a blind panic. As much as I love to see them (in books, movies, and blogs), spiders still give me the heebie jeebies.

    Ask and you shall receive, huh?

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  2. Holy spiders batman! That spider is appropriately named, as I would be so packing my bags and coming home. Yeesh! Do they eat rodents? small children?

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  3. amazingly, no. leave that to the mukade (i wish i were kidding!) bleh.

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  4. indeed, phelps! but really, that's just because i live in inaka or countryside. there are fewer spider scares in places like tokyo. the thing that gives me greater problems is mold, because of its insidious nature. i'm constantly wondering if my couch/clothes/tatami are molding.

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  5. My god, they're monsters!

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  6. I don't know that I would honestly be able to sleep. Granted, that blueish one was pretty damn cool looking.

    Josh

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