Definitely. Not. Rice.

I have some serious (bug) problems. So much so that I sometimes feel like my life story would be more interesting to an entomologist than someone that wanted to live or teach in Japan. I am proud to present yet another Japanese bug story. 

               Yesterday I came home and walked into my kitchen to grab a glass of water. There was rice all over my floor.  I stopped and stared. I was confused. Since my house seems to suffer from an incurable bug problem, my cleaning habits have more or less consistently bordered on obsessive. I lie awake at night if I know that I left a dish unclean. Obviously, this was insanely out of character. 

               I stopped and asked myself questions: 

Did I drink last night?

I didn’t remember drinking. I opened the fridge and confirmed that my six pack was full, my wine bottle was unopened (yes, I do refrigerate my wine! Don’t judge me! Stop!), and my Gin was still sealed. Check, check, and check. 

Did I hit my head last night?

 I hadn’t seen any bruises that morning and no one had pointed anything strange out that day. If I use light brown eye shadow instead of skin tone my students know and excitedly tell me how cool they think that is. They would have told me. I felt my head. Nothing hurt. Check and check. 

Did I even eat rice last night?

The answer was no. I had made the equivalent of a breakfast burrito with potatoes, onions, eggs, and tomatoes. No rice. 

Did my rice spill? I checked to make sure that all my doors and windows were closed and locked. If my rice had spilled, something or someone had spilled it. I grabbed my spider slaying broom and began to search my house. I looked, timidly, under and behind each piece of furniture. Check, check, check, check, CHECK, check, check, check, and check. Then, as I shuffled my way back to my kitchen in defeat I remembered something: I didn’t even have rice in my house to begin with. I had finished my first and only bag nearly a month before and never got around to buying more. 

WHY THE FUCK IS THERE RICE ON MY FLOOR?

That particular question I yelled aloud. Now, Japanese walls are thin. If my neighbors are having an argument I can hear the entire thing. However, I take great comfort in the fact that my neighbors speak almost no English. Any phrase beyond “hello!” or “see you!” is rewarded with a blank stare. Their children speak a little more English, but as one of their teachers I can confirm that “why the fuck” isn’t in their lesson plans or their vocabulary lists. I can get away with yelling a lot. 

Miffed, I grabbed a broom to sweep. Then, I noticed something. The rice. It was MOVING.I looked closer and discovered that there was no rice on my floor. There were HUNDREDS of (fly larvae)/(other larvae)/(secret option C) making a mass exodus to the holy land: my trash can.

I dropped my broom, grabbed the vacuum and fought the urge to vomit or gag by calling “BEAM ME UP SCOTTY” and making various spaceship sounds. As I did this, I noticed a couple flies buzzing around the kitchen. I caught myself wondering whether these were their parents and what it would be like to watch one’s children get sucked into a giant vortex of doom. This made the whole process a lot less fun. I’m not that weird; right?

 Ted Bundy once explained that he chose not to enter graduate school for Psychology (I was a Psychology major) because Psychologists were some of the most messed up/weirdest/strange people he knew.* I’m going to choose to ignore that (I mean, the guy killed and tortured people, I don’t think he’s a good judge of character) and continue to tell myself that I’m normal. 

Until next time!

 *I tried to find this exact quote and could not. I had a professor that had interviewed him back in the day, and this story came up in class. If I can find proof I’ll post a link.

The Gaijin Trap

               Along the poorly marked streets of rural Japan there lies in wait an insatiable beast that yearns to swallow foreigners alive. We call it the Gaijin Trap. Now, here are a few things that one must understand about a Gaijin trap to truly appreciate its horror: It is always well hidden. It is always deep. It is often shaped just so a tire or runner could slide in perfectly. And, as we found out one weekend, it is often well hidden by overgrown grass. The Japanese people in this area seem to have developed a sixth “Gaijin Trap Avoiding” sense, which steers them to safety time and time again. Foreigners, such as my friends and I, seem to lack this sense. This is the tale of our encounter with the aforementioned Gaijin Trap. 

               The day was young and we all met in Hitoyoshi by the train station. We were excited and ready for adventure. We were going to a famous waterfall to go swimming. We squeezed together in a car and chatted as we drove to a friend’s house. We reorganized into different cars. Two of my friends and I opted to ride with a fellow new JET, who for the purpose of this story we will call Hawaii. 

               The drive began peacefully enough. We drove through her town which turned to rice fields which turned to more rice fields. We slowly approached hills and mountains. As we ascended the hills towards the sky, the roads began to narrow.  The road eventually became such that the average-obese American would have difficulty navigating it on foot. Yet all the signs pointed to the fact that this still was a two lane road. I’m still looking for the shrink button in my own car. Then, the roads began to wind like that obnoxious game at Chuck-E-Cheese called SideWinder where the goal is to get a marble from point A to B. 

               We were following more experience JETs and this created a false sense of safety – which was still relative because we all felt that at any moment we might drive off a cliff. This had nothing to do with Hawaii’s driving and everything to do with the size and shape of the road. When we reached a straight way we finally felt save. 

               As if on cue a large truck flew around the corner. It was hogging the middle of the road. It swerved to the right. We swerved – too far – to the left. We saw the mythical Gaijin Trap only moment before we flew in. The front and back left tired rolled into the Gaijin Trap with a resounding thud. The car was trapped. We sat there in shock. Someone laughed nervously and it spread through us like herpes through a frat house. Our friends ahead of us stopped and reversed. They hopped out of the car and laughed. We laughed more. I contemplated asking Hawaii whether or not I could take a photo and then decided not to be an ass. I consider myself to be a good decision maker. 

               After a few moments of awkward laughter the guys banded together to lift the left side of the car out of the Gaijin Trap. Hawaii sat inside and steered it to safety. We drove about 10 under the rest of the way. 

               So should you ever find yourself in rural Japan, remember: Gaijin Traps are there and they are waiting for you. Watch out!

There's a Huntsman in my Bathoom

I would like to interrupt my dis-chronological (it could totally be a word) storytelling to bring to you: The Huntsman in My Bathroom – a Mollee the Adventurer Special. 

            This weekend, I went to the JET Ashikita beach party. For those who don’t know what that is, Ashikita is a city in the Kumamoto Prefecture of Japan. It has a beach. A party is a social gathering that is often accompanied by copious amounts of alcohol. Check and check. 

            Before I left, I decided that I wanted to try out my super savvy, Japanese bathtub. I had woken up three hours ahead of schedule and couldn’t fall back asleep. A hot bath seemed like a great time killer (but little did I know of the killer* that laid in wait!).

            I went through my morning routine: breakfast, reddit, and a hint of stretching. I walked into the kitchen and turned on the water heater. I found a change of clothes and grabbed a towel. I excitedly frolicked into my bathroom. I looked into my bathtub and screamed (sorry neighbors!). Inside, sat a huntsman spider that was a little bit larger than my hand. He was no Sparky but terrifying nonetheless. I dropped my towel and ran out of the bathroom. I slammed the door behind me. I took comfort in the fact that my shower door just so happens to be the only door in my house that seals completely (Mollee:1 Nature:0). I decided I didn’t really need a bath and got dressed again. 

            A few hours later, my friends arrived and we left for the beach party – which I promise to describe at an undetermined later date. We returned Sunday afternoon. I postponed showering as long as possible. I cleaned my house. Twice. I rearranged my tables. I decided I did not like their new positions. I re-rearranged the tables. I decided I liked them best in their original positions. I moved them again. I went on facebook. I did laundry. I ate a snack. I brushed my teeth. I flossed. I ran out of ideas and had a staring contest with the shower door. 

            Eventually, I had to shower. You can only go so long without bathing in such a humid place. I was already pushing it. I opened the door and jumped back; nothing. I tiptoed into the shower room – running first just in case he was waiting over the door. Nothing. I checked the walls. Nothing. I looked into the tub. He was there and dead. 100% dead. This was somewhat of a relief, although rigor mortis accomplishes nothing in the way of making a giant spider seem less scary. I still felt the need to double check. 

            I tapped the side of the tub with my foot. Nothing. I kicked the side of the tub. I banged on the inside of the tub with my shower cleaning brush. I sprayed him with the shower hose. Nothing. He was definitely, 100% dead. 

            Why?

            I immediately found myself asking just that. There are only a few things that can kill a huntsman spider that I was aware of: birds, bats, fan-weilding women (see Mollee Vs. Sparky), old age, starvation, poison, bigger spiders, and mukade. It’s not a pleasant list. I cringed. There had been no birds or bats in my house and I could confirm that the floor-fan warrior had been absent. She and I are very close. The spider didn’t appear to be full grown (he was smaller than Sparky) so I couldn’t quite settle on old age. That meant that a bigger spider, a mukade, poison, or starvation was involved. Since I couldn’t prove the latter, I set out to disprove the former. I searched the bathroom for clues. There were no mukade or spiders and not a sign of black mold. I don’t actually know if black mold is toxic for spiders too, but I don’t think that looking hurt. I made extra sure that the gas stove was off. It was. 

            When these couldn’t be found, I briefly moved my search outside of the house. I looked for larger bugs on the walls and for any evidence of pesticide. I saw none. I decided I would never really know. This brought me to step 3: Spider carcass removal. 

            As an arachnophobic, spider carcass removal is a daunting task. A simple pick up and toss out the window is hardly a viable option, because that would involve ignoring the possibility that a zombie spider could be real. By the same token, vacuuming the body up could also be ruled out because at best I would have to come in contact with it again when I eventually emptied the vacuum and at worse the mutant zombie spider could come alive and escape into my house via the long hose. I could sacrifice a pair of kitchen tongs and throw it directly out the window or into the trash, but my kitchen tongs aren’t particularly long. This lead me to a somewhat more creative route: fire. I have problems, believe me I know. 

            I stood in my bathroom and contemplated burning the dead spider, who I had named Lector, because he reminded me of the mask that Hannibal Lector is forced to wear in the Silence of the Lambs movie to keep him from biting people. 

Initially, fire didn’t seem like a bad choice. I could light a piece of notebook paper on fire and throw it onto Lector’s body in the bathtub. He was already dead so this wouldn’t be cruel – unusual is still debatable. The bathtub was metal rather than ceramic so I did not worry that the fire would cause any lasting damage. My house also doesn’t have a fire alarm, which was alarming (see what I did there) to discover but convenient at the time. 

Then, I started to wonder how bad it would smell and how much smoke it would produce. Although Lector appeared significantly larger, his mass probably wasn’t that much greater than my thumb and pinky finger combined. I stood there and contemplated how bad a burning finger would smell. I hoped never to find out. I worried that the stench or smoke would be too large and would attract my neighbors. 

I then imagined trying to explain the aforementioned, hypothetical scenario to my neighbors. It went something like this:

Neighbor 1: Mollee-san, did you know there is smoke coming out of your windows?

Neighbor 2: We were worried so we came together.

Mollee: It’s okay. I was just burning a spider. I realize that they’re viewed as protectors of the house here, so I want to assure you it was dead before I lit it on fire. I checked by spraying it with hot water and smacking it with a broom. But it looked dead before I did those things – and it was!

Neighbor 1: …..

Neighbor 2: sou desuka….

Mollee: Thank you for checking on me. I apologize for interrupting your evening. 

            My Japanese is also awesome in this scenario. I then stood there and contemplated how and if I would actually be able to explain what the heck was going on. I re-questioned whether or not I had a fire alarm. I couldn’t find one. 

            Eventually, however, I decided that burning a dead spider in my bathtub was a bad choice. I decided to leave it alone and try again the following day. The following day I decided I would use my broom and a dustpan to collect the spider and throw it outside. 

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*A huntsman spider isn’t actually dangerous unless you are a bug, in which case I want to congratulate you on your master of the English language and urge you to donate your body to science.

A Beach Adventure

My ability to tell stories in chronological order rivals my ability to write legibly and knowledge regarding flamingos* (see bottom for back story). In other words, it’s nonexistent. That being said I would like to now share my beach trip story with you. Rest assured that when and if this becomes a memoir I will make an effort to put these events in chronological order. Maybe.  

The morning after my enkai I awoke still drunk. My alarm started screaming at me at six thirty and somewhere in the ball park of seven I got out of bed. I felt like I had just spent 17 hours in one of the teacups at Disney world. When I reached my bathroom and my mirror I discovered that I looked like it too. I then tried to piece together why my alarm was going off on a Saturday. After a minute of reflecting on my reflection, I remembered that I had a planner and my answer just might be waiting inside. It was. I remembered I was going to the beach with my friends and that I had woken up early to shower and prepare. 

I then remembered that I really needed to shave my legs. I couldn’t be one hundred percent sure but I had a strong feeling that the Yetti look was out in Japan too. Shaving in a spinning teacup? I assured myself that this was a good idea. I’ll spare everyone the details and simply say: it wasn’t. Not even kind of. I searched in vain for Band-Aids that I knew I didn’t have and eventually settled on awkwardly standing around to wait for my cuts to close. 

Then I remembered that my friends had said they would arrive around 7:20. It was now 7:40. I walked outside and they were there! My friends informed me that they rang the doorbell while I was in the shower and were contemplating over what their next move was. Had I walked out a minute later I might have missed them. 

I started to explain that I had gotten really distracted in the shower but I realized just how awkward that would sound. I excused myself to retrieve my things from inside. I ran back into my house, grabbed a swimsuit and a towel, my camera, and my purse and rejoined them outside. 

I plopped into the car and we were on our way. I had decided not to waste any more time by downing a water bottle or grabbing a snack. I immediately realized the error of my ways. Outside the window, the world whizzed by in streams of colors like the trees on the forest moon of Endor when Solo, Ewoks, and friends are pursued by Storm Troopers. This looked like a great time in the movie. It was much less great in real life. In fact, the disparity was so great that I decided to awkwardly stare at my friends in the car and eventually my knees. 

For those looking for the Spark Note explanation of this story, I’ll save you some time; The lesson of section one of the story is as follows: There is nothing wrong with drinking, however, should you choose to do so it is important to do so in moderation and to also simultaneously eat and drink non-alcoholic beverages. Should you still be tipsy when you wake up you have already failed point one, however, point two: eat and drink other non-alcoholic things– becomes all the more important. Finally, because Japan is so stinking humid ALL the time, it is VERY easy to get dehydrated. This is especially true when drinking. Plan accordingly. Should you wake up feeling like you just escaped the Disney World Teacups, never, EVER decide to go for a long car ride. Now that we’re all caught up we shall progress to part two. 

After the first forty minutes the world decided that I was allowed to see things. This was good because the drive to Amakusa beach was beautiful. There were many cliffs and trees and we were able to follow the Kuma-gawa (Kuma River) most of the way. The rain didn’t dampen our enjoyment or growing excitement in the slightest. As we neared our destination, we stopped at a Conbeni (convenience store) to buy drinks, onigiri, and bento. 

Food in hand, we jumped back into the car and proceeded to the beach. We parked just in time to watch as bolts of lightning danced over the ocean. We stood there in silence for a few minutes, then, we all made the mutual decision that we would at least walk on the beach. We made our way across the roads and through a handful of deserters to the ocean. 

The soon to be deserted beach

We took some time to marvel at the sand sculptures that we assumed were made to celebrate the start of Obon week. I’m not sure how the various leaders or animals would relate to ancestors in any way but I do know if my great-great-great-something or another became a talented sand sculptor I would send a couple lucky crickets his or her way. Eventually, the lightening turned to distant thunder which turned to silence which turned to rain. We decided we would swim. 

The water was cold but very refreshing. I saw a fish. It saw me too and swam away. We watched as other people watched us and laughed at the attention. Kumomoto is an incredible prefecture but it seems that the farther you move from the capital, tourists this attracts. This makes no sense to me because it’s one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. Regardless my fellow JETs and I have often found that we are the first Gaijin (foreign person) that many people have seen. Random children run up and hug us, other random children cry and run away (oops) and others still make a variety of creative efforts to capture our attention. 

Unfortunately, this is also applied to people significantly closer to our age, including members of the opposite gender. This was highlighted by a particular incident at the beach. A group of about ten guys that looked to be about our age were walking by. They saw us, they stopped, they whispered. They waved, we waved back. We went back to our conversation. Then, two of the brave (?) ones RAN at us and jumped in the water. Now, I’ve gotten fairly creative with how I’ve expressed my interest in boys, however, never would I ever think to myself “hey, that guy is cute. I want his attention. I should run at him and see what happens!” This is an example of cultural differences, which you can learn more about in the section two summary and explanation section. 

After our beach extravaganza, we went to an Onsen and I got to experience the awkwardness of being naked around a bunch of other naked people. What I mean by that is, it was awesome. Should you ever find yourself in Japan go to an Onsen. Before we entered the Onsen, however, (did I mention I’m bad at telling stories chronologically?) I had a challenge to face. I hadn’t brought a change of clothes and had no way to dry off from the ocean. It was pouring outside and there were no bathrooms. I could either slip my clothes over my swim suit, wetting my only outfit, or attempt to walk into an Onsen in a swim suit. Something told me this was a social no-no. Fortunately, I came up with my Towel dress: I wrapped my towel and tucked the top into my swim suit forming a tennis-esque skirt and low cut top. Then, I put my shit on OVER the towel to complete the look that I so graciously decided to model below: 

Sexy, isn’t it? 

After the Onsen, we drove to Kumamoto City, where one of my friends and I caught a train back home. The train ride allowed me to enjoy a lot of the ride I had missed in the morning and to take the time to appreciate my re-found sense of equilibrium.