New sessions/New horrors Part 1 of many

There are a few things you hear a lot whilst living in Japan, "Can you can use chopsticks?" or "Can you eat sushi?" or "You have a very small head!", I've been here for almost 2 years and I still get asked the first two questions by teachers, and the last one is supposed to be a compliment OKAY!!! Whilst some people suggest this may be some form of discrimination (not against small headed people I should add) I prefer to think that its the Japanese version of "lets talk about the weather" an opening into a conversation that they all know how to say, although as most of these questions are asked at Enkais the next step is the drinking of sake where questions get more difficult and far more slurred.
Anyway
One other thing your guaranteed to hear is "Japan has four seasons" now I've traveled a bit, I'm (now) 28 years on this Earth and I'm pretty sure most places have four seasons, but most teachers I've spoken to insist that Japan has four distinct season from anywhere else....ERR okay I take it in English the seasons go cold, not so cold, not not so cold, not so cold back to cold but still really??? I actually think that seasons and particually today where its cold and windy don't quite cover the Japanese year, theres only one thing or rather a collection of things that truely reflect "when" in Japan and thats what animal is currently circling your head or preparing to jump at you

Back in blighty I live near the country side so I'm used to sheep, cows and angry red faced men but still the most exotic thing I saw in my garden was a grass snake. so it's certainly an experience to come to Japan and find so many things crawling, swimming, flying and buzzing at you. So I now present the first in hopefully a loooong series in a rough guide to knowing what that thing on your tatami mat is and whether you need a shot for it.
part one; Spring.

Oh spring time for new born lambs to play in the fields, birds to chirp from the trees
but this is Japan where things are armour plated, usually of massive size, have no fear of man; or all three.

Mukades You know how they say "All animals are gods creatures, except wasps, wasps are bastards" (well Saxondale says it) add Mukades to that list of bastards,
Think a centipede but bigger, sometimes muuuuuch bigger, now think it has two heads, yeah I'll say that again TWO HEADS. One on each end so that an enemy (me) can't tell which end will bite you and which one wishes it could bite you. Oh yes they bite.
oh and Mukades can apparently climb walls and ceilings. OH and they also come in pairs!!
Oh and the very best bit?? !! Mukades are apparently attracted to CO2 you know that stuff that comes out your mouth whilst your lying on your back asleep.
Now before you all start worrying I should say that Mukades generally are only 3-4 inches long, and the ones we've found have been slow thanks to the poison I've been putitng around. People say that if you put on alive into a small full bottle of oil it will produce an anti venom that helps sooth the rash and swelling caused by their bite. Well I say thats what doctors are for and find that actually bottle full of boiling water and bleech actually kills them off equally as well. Click here for a picture of a big mukade..If your brave,

Midges, Mukades are only seen on rare occasions, but midges ohhh midges how I hate theeeeeee. I live next to rice fields so theres nothing I hate more than riding home and ingesting buckets of the blighters however they do provide a handy meal for our next contestent. Something a lot nicer;
Bats! no wait, come on bats are cool, they eat all the annoying tiny flying things, they eat the bigger annoying flying things that eat your clothes, and all this in only the space of a few hours BATS ROCK!
In Blighty we had one bat that would have to do all the work (I don't obviously mean in the whole of England, there was at least 4 for that!), well here I love watching them in their tens if not hundreds in the ares all flying around collecting their crunchy insect rewards hmmmm crunchy. So next time you see a bat don't freak just remember its eating the flies that would be heading for your glass of wine.

Right this post is getting far to long Part 2 will follow soon