Mollee Meets the Neighbors

It would seem I have gotten ahead of myself. My enkai wasn’t actually my first rodeo with drinking in Japan. 

Let’s flashback to my first week in my village. I spent lots of time traveling to my schools, meeting new people – lots of new people with difficult names – and playing with children – lots of children. Before work each morning my neighbors’ kids would ring my doorbell and ask me questions such as whether I preferred baseball or volleyball (volleyball) and what my favorite color was (green). Soon, we would become tag buddies and I would learn to appreciate the obvious superiority of Japanese physical education. That’s a story for a different day though. 

The week flew by and it was Friday. I had no plans. On Saturday, I knew I would meet up with some fellow JETs for Indian food (yum). That particular Friday night, however, I had nothing. I put on my rough (casual) clothes. I cooked dinner. I didn’t burn it. I celebrated. I returned to my living room. I turned on my computer. I remembered that I didn’t have internet. There was silence. If I had a clock I would have heard it ticking. Then, the doorbell rang. 

My clock tells me it is 9:30p.m. This is too late to be the children and no one else really knows where I live. I am confused. I am also bored. I stand up and walk to my door.  I look through my peephole. I don’t recognize any of the people. I open the door anyway (mom and dad if you’re reading this I swear I make good decisions…). 

The conversation that followed brought three particular items to my immediate attention: First, these were my neighbors. Second, they wanted me to follow them somewhere – presumably to their house(s). Third and perhaps most importantly, they were drunk. Very drunk. 

“Just a moment,” I said. I grabbed my keys, locked my door and followed them into the night.

We walked down my walkway and through the garden that sits between four different houses. We stepped (carefully) over the gaijin trap (an alternate name for the deviantly hidden open air drains that foreigners like me always manage to fall or drive into. Stay tuned for stories on those.)and walked under their house into an open aired garage and kitchen. At the center sat a table that was buried under mounds of food. 

The beer, which they immediately handed to me (I love Japan) was ice cold. It was the first cold anything I had had in a while. Its name translated to “The sensation you get in your throat,” as the proud owner of a dirty mind, I thought this was hilarious. 

The food they offered me was delicious. They had chicken wings, friend vegetables, more vegetables, fruits (coming soon: a love sonnet in iambic pentameter dedicated to nashi: the Japanese Pear) , and much more. Then came the Sweet Fish. 

Now, the sweet fish is a funny thing. Everywhere I have been in Japan has had sweet fish and every person that has offered me sweet fish has emphasized how the aforementioned sweet fish is a delicacy and special to THEIR PART of Japan. In all cases they have looked and tasted identical. Everyone everywhere has sweet fish. It would be like trying to say that white rice was special to an area. Of course, I would never say this to anyone. I bit in and mumbled “ah, oishii” (ah, it’s delicious!).  

This, of course, lead me to the next part of eating sweet fish: the head. A sweet fish is served as a whole fish, usually fried and often on a stick. This means you eat everything: bones guts, head, and the EYEBALLS. Every time I have eaten Sweet fish (seriously they’re like the French fries of Japan) I have managed to get around eating the head. I usually eat it slowly enough so that another course or set of food appears before I have to finish it or say that I’m full (even when I’m not). Many of my Japanese friends have told me this is a shame because the head is the most delicious part of the fish. They tell me the eyes are juicy and delicious. This makes me want to vomit. Every time I imagine eating an eyeball I imagine teeth (wide and dull with coffee stains) biting through my own eyes and imagine what the passage from a mouth to the stomach would look like. Then, I imagine that the protective film over the eyes would squish and squirt nasty liquid everywhere when I bit in. Needless to say, I lied and said I was full. 

Throughout the Sweet fish ordeal, I got to know my neighbors. Since I am still in the process of becoming conversational, there are specific topics I like to talk about new people. I find the questions “What do you like to do,” “What are your hobbies,” “do you like ____” are readily understood and answered even if I have no idea what their reply is. Naturally, I turned to these. My female neighbor explained that her hobby was getting drunk. Her favorite thing to do was to drink beer. She liked many different types of beer and sometimes liked wine too. I told her I thought she was awesome. Soon, her husband (also very drunk) joined us too. 

Mr. Neighbor sat down next to me and introduced himself. He was very red faced and very smiley. I introduced myself back. I asked him what sorts of things he liked. His answer was very long and very fast and his regional accent was very, very thick. As a newbie to the Japanese language I often find myself in situations where I don’t understand all of what a person is saying to me. Usually, I try to pick out particular words and figure out what they’re saying. For example, while a person is talking I may pick out “ park….. often….. children….” This tells me that this person at some time or another has encountered children at the park. If they seem friendly or nice I assume they take their children to the park or play with kids of people they know at the park. If they are creepy I may imagine the “Sex and Candy” music video that was popular in the 80s (maybe the 90s). Usually context clues help me figure things out. 

However, there was no context and I could pick out no words. In fact, I couldn’t pick out a single syllable. I couldn’t even hear a “desu” that indicates the end of a sentence. I sat there for five minutes and eventually started laughing at the ridiculousness of my predicament. This laugh was aloud and soon Mr. Neighbor started laughing too. Then, he said “Ah, she gets it! [Literally he said “she understood it].” Of course, THAT he annunciated perfectly. My neighbors now think I’m some Japanese genie that is so good that I can understand puns and jokes (or at least that’s what I think my co-worker said that they said about me. There’s some room for interpretation on that. The phrase good at Japanese was in there somewhere.). 

Eventually, Mrs. Neighbor disappeared into her house. She was gone for maybe four minutes and she and her daughter/niece/younger female friend reappeared with a toy. There was a yellow cat standing on a stand. He wore a top hat and a bow. There was a button. They pushed it. The cat started shaking its butt. Music started playing. It was Shania Twain’s “I’ll Get you Good.” The cat’s mouth started moving to the words of the song. I cracked up and then started singing along. They were impressed by this. They asked me to dance too. I asked them to teach me to dance. They taught me the female part of a traditional dance that I won’t even try to name. Mrs. Neighbor added in some extra moves (I’m assuming that butt shaking wasn’t part of any traditional dance in Japan – maybe I’m wrong). I copied and they cheered. 

Later that night we played with sparklers, ate a delicious nashi (pear) dessert and I was able to meet one of the women in my Eikaiwa class. Needless to say, my first rodeo was a success.

Enkai? Konpai!

The Friday night  that followed my caving and book-shelf-building adventures was the night of my welcome party. In Japan, these are called “Enkai” and they can get a little crazy. In my case, a little crazy is probably the understatement of the year, perhaps even century but I’m working on being humble so we’ll stick with year.  

In Japan the legal limit for alcohol when driving is 0.00% which means that no matter how iron one’s liver may be, you cannot have a single drink and drive. Thus, at five o’clock the party bus arrived at the office. That's right; I said PARTY BUS! This falls right after the epic Neko bus (studio Ghibli's cat bus) on the list of epic buses produced via Japan (so epic it has a list).

 At the venue, everyone was given hiragana name tags (I will forever love the people I work with for printing these in hiragana rather than Kanji, because they are the only reason I got several people’s names right [for those that don't know, hiragana is a phonetic alphabet like our ABC's whereas Kanji are indiscriminate shapes like the crop circles found in the farmer's corn field. We're told they all mean something but they all kind of just look like squiggles and circles.]). 

After the name tags were handed out, we were seated. I sat down with the village mayor, the Junior High school Principal, the head supervisor of the BoE (henceforth referred to as BOSS-san  [funnily enough this is what all my co-workers refer to him as when he is not in the room. I use his real name but think this is hilarious]). About thirty or forty of us were seated at two different long tables. In the center was a third table that was capsizing under titanic proportions of food. There was every kind of sushi and sashimi imaginable, lots of curry (which is very popular in this region of Japan), and lots, lots more. I briefly contemplated sumo as a new career path.

The night began with an opening speech made by Mr. Genki (I don’t feel comfortable using people’s real names online so I have assigned everyone specific nicknames). Mr. Genki likes to run marathons and hike and climb mountains. He giggles a lot. The speech was in Japanese, and a very quick form of Japanese, but from what I gathered he said that: I (Mollee sensei) was from Texas, that I spoke Japanese fairly well, that I worked very hard, and that I smiled all the dang time. The last one made me laugh. The smiling thing is something that everyone and their mother and their mother’s mother’s mother feel the need to point out. If I’m every beamed up into space, I could tell you that the aliens would discuss where/how they caught me, whatever organ they intended on harvesting, and the fact that I smile all the dang time. Also, maybe they'd tell me what the crop circles mean - who knows?![And that ye whipper snappers is how I learned me kanji.]

After he spoke, the mayor got up and stated that he was happy to have a new ALT in town and looked forward to me working with the children. BOSS-san then stood up and introduced me. Then, I got up and introduced myself. I said I was from Texas and thus I also love Yuu Darvish (yeaaaah Rangers!). I said that I studied English in college and that I was very excited to be the new English teacher. I explained that I love sports and that I was looking forward to teaching and playing with all the kids. 

After my speech, Mr. Genki got back up and re-introduced me in greater detail. This consisted of a very long list of my hobbies and a joke about how everyone seems to see me jogging (in a village of 4000 people this isn’t really a surprise) everywhere. Then, we Konpai’d (toasted) and began our feast.

Oh, and during my speech, the playboy bunny (one of my co-workers tried to explain to me in English that a fellow co-worker had a reputation as a player, but he definitely called him a playboy bunny instead of a player. Thus, playboy bunny) presented me with flowers that were a gift from the office. Here are my flowers:

After the initial toast, Playboy bunny and Silly-san (When I first talked to him he explained that his likes were beer and alcohol, his hobby was drinking, and he disliked not being able to drink at work. He’s also very goofy and has the cutest daughter ever!) presented to me a platter with six different shooters (alcohol + mixer) that they wanted me to try. I looked at the mayor and Boss-san, who then explained that the previous ALT did not drink and they were all VERY excited that I did. This made me realize that explaining the Aggie Ring tradition at work may have been a bad choice (Also kids, peer pressure is bad-wrong.). As I ate, I slowly finished these (all but one actually). 

In addition, there is a tradition very specific to my village where you take a sip from a giant glass of souchu, bow to the person who handed it to you, and pass it to the next person (in most of Japan this is viewed as a kiss – but everyone and their mother was doing it here and they made a point of saying that it was okay in my village but not anywhere in Japan). So, in addition to my shot platter, I also drank a mystery amount of Souchu (maybe the aliens can fill me in on that too after they marvel at my iron liver...). 

After this has all hit (and I have a poker face when I’ve been drinking!), the mayor realized that there was a piano in the room (go figure) and asked me to play for everyone. So I did. Let’s just say that while everyone loved it and while I got a standing ovation (woo hoo!) I’m pretty glad that there isn’t a recording of what happened there. 

After the first Enkai stopped, we got back in the party bus and dropped some of my co-workers off. Five of us, however, continued to the ni-kai (the second party). We went to a Karaoke bar that had a set fee for all you could drink for two hours. Japan is a wonderful country.

 I slowly sipped on Ginger Highballs (which if you ever find yourself in Japan you absolutely must try) and watched my co-workers sing. Then they asked me to sing, so I did my own rendition of Michael Jackson’s Beat it. This got me a lot of applause and I was immediately asked to sing a Lady Gaga song. I chose Bad Romance. I got a standing ovation throughout the bar. (I don’t know if I was just that good or they were just that drunk. I have a feeling that the answer lies somewhere in the middle.) 

After this, I pawned off the microphone so that I could sit and drink a little more. Then, an older man in a business suit approached and asked if I would sing a song for his friends. I said yes. They started playing Whitney Houston’s “I’ll Always Love You,” and I belted out those high notes like a pro.  - or at least it felt like I was a pro. Afterwards, Happy-san’s (nickname assigned because this guy is HAPPY all the time) wife picked us up and dropped me off at home. 

I had felt like I had kept myself very under control but was still a little nervous walking into work the following Monday. However, everyone told me they had tons of fun and that they would like to party with me again. In fact, the following week Mr. Genki invited me on an office hiking trip, my supervisor took me out with her friend, and I was invited to a fancy pantsy teachers party. I guess I did something right. ‘MERICA.

"Arts and Crafts"

The night of the caving extravaganza, I was invited to participate in the children’s craft day. I didn’t expect this to be nearly as exciting as caving, but I love coloring so I was very excited. I spent a significant amount of time imagining what we would be drawing or coloring or paper-mache-ing (The verb form of paper mache). As with the caving episode, I’m going to flashback to my childhood for a moment so that I can emphasize just how crazy this experience was for me. 

Arts and crafts started early: preschool early. I went to a preschool that was attached to my church, so we frequently colored various pictures of Jesus and his homeboys. Sometimes we got to cut out sheep (lambs) or make Christmas decorations. One time I think we actually got to fill plastic Christmas tree balls with colored sand. Mine was filled with green and gold because they are the best colors planet earth has to offer (fact – not opinion). In elementary school, we did crafts with yarn and paper cut outs. During nap time we had the option to stay up and doodle. I filled entire notebooks with Jurassic park themed dinosaurs. There might have been blood. My teacher(s) might have called my parents to make sure that I was mentally stable. I was just very expressive. In middle school there were no actual arts and crafts but projects were frequently graded on one’s ability to successfully cover them in glitter (the herpes of craft supplies). This was often the case in high school too. I was a glitter genius and thus I was able to go to college, where unfortunately glitter was no longer a viable method of receiving an A+. However, I was still able to occasionally practice the “art and craft” during lecture in the form of abstract doodle. There were flowers EVERYWHERE. 

Flash forward to Japan: Dang I look older… Anyway, I am being told that I am allowed to play with kids and make arts and crafts. I am ecstatic. I am wondering what their stance on glitter is and if they have green glitter. I arrive at the school. I walk inside the gym where said “crafts” are to take place. There are tarps everywhere. The Principal steps up to give instructions. I, realizing he is speaking way to fast, foolishly decide to read the English phrases on the kids’ clothes. I wonder what “Send Time Signals” is supposed to mean and where I can purchase said shirt. 

The Principal stops talking, we place various blue mats on the gym floor. “Cool,” I think to myself, we must be painting! (We used to bust out tarps for Turkey hand paint day in Elementary school [for turkey hand art, simply dip your entire hand in a bucket of paint and give a piece of paper a high five. Draw on legs and a beak. You have a turkey!]). A bunch of high school boys walk in carrying crates of wood. I sit in a circle of kids. We are handed lots of wood, hammers, nails, the thing that measures the angles (I’m edumacated I swear!) of said wood, a whittle to make holes for the nails, and HANDSAWS. Read that again. One more time now. Yes, I did say HANDSAWS. They handed SEVEN to TWELVE year olds HANDSAWS. Why? Because we were going to cut the wood and make BOOKSHELVES. 

Now, aside from being surprised that I wouldn’t be painting, I was nervous that I or some kid near me was going to cut their finger off. No such thing happened. In fact, everyone worked together to make sure everyone’s wood (lol wood) was cut just right. We held wood in place so that our partner(s) could hammer everything into place. At the end, we got to stamp our bookshelves as a sign of accomplishment of sorts. Here is the bookshelf that I (with the help of the first graders) built:

The craziest part of it all was that the kids were crazy surprised that I had never done this before and that I had never used a handsaw. Apparently they do it all the time. 

I love this country.

Into the Deep

First off, I want to thank everyone for taking the time to read my first post (and for sharing it!). I did not expect so many views. That was AWESOME! Today’s tale is a lot less horrific (from my perspective at least). Today, I want to talk about my experiences at one of the Elementary schools I’m teaching at and how insanely different it is at times from school in America. 

When I came to Japan to teach, I fully expected there to be significant differences in their school systems.  I knew I would take my shoes off 97183408134 times in a day and that constant bowing would have a positive effect on my waist line. I knew that school lunches would consist of awesome things like Onigiri (Japanese rice balls that usually have some kind of flavor. Salmon seems to be the flavor of choice where I’m at.) and cooked Unagi (eel). Hell, I even knew there was a significant chance that at some point I would be the unexpecting victim of Kochou, a (surprisingly) Japanese children’s game in which the goal is to surprise the victim by poking them on the butthole (If you’ve ever read Gaijin Smash you know what I’m talking about. If not, kids make their hands into a “gun” like they are playing James Bond. Then, they sneak up on their friends and do their best to take their “gun barrel fingers” and poke their friend on the butthole. I think the goal is to get as much finger in the crack as possible through whichever pants their friend is wearing. I haven’t been a victim yet but I’ve seen this happen a couple times. Kochou falls under the “WTF SRSLY” category along with people reading porn mags on trains and giant mutant spiders.).  What caught me off guard was the field trip. 

Last Friday, I was told to dress casually for work on Monday and Tuesday because I would be spending time with the children from one of my elementary schools. There would also be neighboring schools visiting from two other cities. I was excited because I have a strong preference for jeans and also because I’ve spent a substantial time in the office making, re-making, and re-re-making various lists and lesson plans as I wait for the school year to start (Oh, by the way, kids go to school in the summer here too. Instead of classes they have learning activities and game days and things. It’s awesome.).  I was told that Monday was fieldtrip day and that Tuesday was crafts day (I’ll save that for a different post). 

Now, I’m going to back up for just a moment so that when I reveal what exactly we did it’s a lot more dramatic. I grew up in the DFW area of Texas (for those non-Texans, DFW stands for Dallas- Ft. Worth area. There is a super big airport between the two cities.) Parents were pretty overprotective of their kids and had enough money to file ridiculous lawsuits if little Jimmy fell and scraped his knee, so our excursions were confined to safe places like the park across the street or the kids section of a museum. We had an athletic field day one time a year and there were no contact sports. You could also be put in time out for hitting the tetherball too hard at recess. I think the craziest thing we ever did was go to the Zoo, where we were forced to wear neon, burn-your-eyes-out yellow shirts and hold hands with another person at all times. 

Now, FASTFORWARD to field trip day in Japan. I was told that we were going to a limestone cave. I was pretty stoked because the cave was on my bucket list of “Things to Do While I’m in Japan.” (Did I mention that I’ve been making a bunch of lists lately?) That being said, I knew I would want to return to the cave so I could take the fuller, more dangerous tour. The first sign that this wasn’t the basic cave tour was that upon my arrival I was immediately handed thick, calf high rubber boots and a hard hat with a headlamp. I ignorantly assumed this was a gag for the kids. That being said, I felt quite spiffy in my caving gear. Then, the cave leader got up to speak at a million miles per hour. This is what I was able to make out: “…… light….. bats….. mukade [giant, poisonous Japanese centipede]…. Be careful….. don’t fall….. fast water….. don’t fall…. Light on….. emergency …… don’t fall…” This was one of the moments in my life where a translator would have been really, really handy. He finished and we entered the cave. 

The entrance to the cave had a bunch of bats painted on it and a long tunnel that gradually led downhill. It was well lit. This seemed normal. When the tunnel ended, we turned a corner and were in a cave – human additive free (I’ve only been in one other cave and they had carved walkways and things for people). The space gradually narrowed and there were lightbulbs on strings every 20 meters or so. On uneven sections, there were board or metal walkways placed for us to walk on (but save a poll every 50m or so these were unconnected to the cave itself.) They were very thin and tiny and creaked when large groups walked on them. The ceiling gradually become shorter and we had to duck to walk. I was VERY glad I was given a helmet because I hit my head so much. There were places that we had to crawl through  - very unexpected for this trip! 

We walked around for about 30 minutes – up and down thin, uneven mostly natural paths to look at the limestone and the occasional stalagmite or stalactite. We eventually went in a circle and came back to a place on the path where the path split off. One of my co-workers turned to me, pointed, and said fun. We followed the other sign, crawled a bit, and eventually came to an attendant standing by a ladder. He specified that it could only hold two people at a time so we slowly waited. The ladder dropped at least 10m for every meter it went out. We probably climbed down 20m on the thing too. This was also crazy because the ladder seemingly extended into blackness. Also, remember, there are 1^st-6^th graders on this trip. We all descend the ladder and are told to go left. We walk for a while and come to another ladder. We repeat this process. There are two directions and we are told to go left first. There is a rickety, human made bridge to the left that goes across very, very fast rushing water. We walk across this. We get to a part where the cave is too uneven for artificial anything, so we balance on rocks and lean against the wall and try not to fall into the water which, from what I understood was “deep and strong.” We walk along the wall for a couple hundred feet. Then, we have to cross the underground river by stepping (or in the case of some of the smaller kids) by jumping across rocks. At the end of this journey we found this beautiful  collection of stalagmites and stalactites: [I will upload once I find the cord that will connect my phone to my computer]

We returned, and to the right of that ladder was a waterfall that powered the underground river. It was beautiful.  We returned and exited the cave, crossed the street and began part two of our field trip adventure. 

Across the street there was a cliff. We rode down the cliff on these chairs, that sort of resembled ski lifts but without the bar to hold onto and without a back. Jimmy’s parents would have hemorrhaged. At the bottom actually the middle) of the cliff, we walked down a path and to a bridge that went across the river. The bridge did have fencing but that didn’t change the fact that it was at least 100ft over the river. We crossed, and walked down to the water where we examined the little pools that formed when the water lowered (I think we were looking at the bugs?). After the kids took the notes that they needed to and we re-crossed the bridge, rode back up the cliff, and returned to school. BEST FIELD TRIP EVER. I really, really wish that I could have done those kinds of things as a kid in the US. I totally would have gone to school in the summer for that.

Mollee vs. Spider

I'm not quite sure what the protocol is for an opening post in a blog, so I will keep my introduction brief and get straight to my story. I am Mollee, one of the 1500 JETs selected to be send to Japan this year. I was assigned to a small village in the Kumamoto prefecture and created this blog with the intention of blogging about my adventures and misadventures in Japan. If you would like to learn more about me please check out my profile (which I swear I will update after writing this entry). 

My initial intention was to write a blog one time a week, detailing my adventures as  a JET. However, after my first week here I realized that it would be a lot more interesting, both for me and my potential future readers (that's YOU!) if I detail one adventure (or in this case miss-adventure) at a time. This brings me to the actual subject of my first post: 

MOLLEE VS. SPIDER SPARKY

 Before I even moved to Kumamoto-ken, I was informed that there was a huntsman spider living in my house. I was told to let this spider, whom my predecessor named Frank and whom I had decided to rename Sparky, live. Why you ask? Because it eats the giant, flying cockroaches and the giant centipedes she said. When I relayed this information to my fellow JETs and friends back home, they told me I was brave. 

I don't know if I would call myself brave. After three peaceful nights in my village, I stumbled upon Sparky. There was the moment of horror when I realized the scuttling sound that I thought had been coming from a cat chasing mice outside was from the spider (EEEEEEEK!). I jumped out of my chair andback three feet and the noise from my landing made it run away. I was told to *try* to let them live since they eat cockroaches (which also grow to freaky sizes here) and centipedes which apparently are aggressive and WILL chase you (I feel like Steve Irwin...). So I just kind of yelled at it that he better eat all of the bugs (and I meant ALL of the bugs) or else I was busting out the Raid. I'm still on the fence about what I'm actually going to do.

The plus side of not Raid-murdering everything in the house is that one: I won't have to dispose of deceased bug bodies (gross) and two: I'm sure spraying Raid all day everyday isn't healthy and probably doesn't smell too great. The super mega negative side is that I am an arachnophobic. I don't mean a "spiders make me feel icky... ewww" arachnophobic either. Back home when there would be a spider the size of my fingernail I would usually react by screaming and running away. (and not a step back - like a sprint). So the first time I saw Sparky he was only visible for a fraction of a second before slipping behind the door. I thought to myself: "damn he looked big but at least I'll never see him for more than half a second." This works since it would seem that seeing spiders way more so than the idea of them that sets me into panic mode.

Seeing him in the living room was freaky but I knew that all the roaches tend to congregate in my kitchen so I tried to rationalize that there would be no reason for him to run into my bedroom (there are doors but my house is old so even when I line them up as perfectly as possible [they slide] there is a bit of a gap). I also made a point of doing what I'm going to call my "godzillla walk" (where I stomp as loudly as possible and maybe even made some questionable "monster" sounds... I'm not proud of that). When I went into my bedroom, I slid the doors to minimize the gaps and banged on all of them for a little bit as if to indicate that it was a danger zone. Satisfied that I scared way any living thing in the house, I settled in to read Tina Fey's Bossy Pants, because that book can make anyone feel better. In hindsight, betting on spiders having object permanence was probably a bad choice. 

Sure enough, about thirty minutes later I hear the signature scuttle. It's kind of like the DUN DUN ....DUN DUN DUN DUN.... DUN DUN DUN DUN.... DUN DUN DUN!!!!! sound from Jaws only more terrifying because it's not on a TV screen. So I sat up, and saw him on my door kind of just staring at me. 

I started clapping. Nothing. I took a picture using flash hoping the light would scare him away. Nothing. I pounded on the wall behind me. Nothing. He started slowly walking down the door. I started seeing black spots. Now, the only thing more terrifying than a running Huntsman spider is one in stalk mode. Their legs move like the Nurses from the House on Silent Hill or the naked zombie thing from that Spanish semi-horror movie that has its eyeballs on its hands. I see more spots. I jump forward and bang on my bed as much as I can, like a pissed off gorilla on Animal Planet. He scuttles back to the other side of the door. I woke up facing the wrong way on my bed (I passed out). I sat up, grabbed my floor fan and held it like a baseball bat. Admittedly, using a gift from the Board of Education in my village and my primary house-cooling device as a weapon was probably a very bad choice. I was at a very low point. If you ever find yourself crouched on a bed holding a floor fan like a weapon, take a moment to sit back, take a really big breath, and think of a new action plan. After forty minutes (I wish I was exaggerating on that one), I was too tired to hold the fan so I set it down next to the bed and bawled like a five year old (not proud of that either). I then decided when I went shopping (today) I would buy a real broom to keep in my bedroom (so I could send him flying without breaking an expensive floor fan).

So, to summarize, while Japanese people seem to live in peace with these giant bugs, I run, scream, pass out, cry, and hide behind floor fans. Not a good time. That being said, when I finally calmed down enough to re-open my book I heard scuttles, cockroach hisses, and then silence. This morning the three cockroaches that had plagued my kitchen were no where to be found, so that was nice. Sparky is also no where to be found. I have a feeling that he only hunts at night because up until this point I had never seen him (3.5days) and this was my first time awake past 11pm. I think my plan (in addition to the broom by the bed) is to wait out the week and see how much he affects my sleep. 

                                  And thus, I shall close with a picture of my house guest: 

                                                                                                                 .... Sweet Dreams...