Encountering wildlife (part 1)

As the long, hot, and inescapably humid summer wears on here in Osaka, yet another traditional facet of summer in Japan has reared its alien head. Well, actually, not so much “it” as “they”. And by they, there must be at least a few million of them around here. I am talking, of course, about the cicadas.

Cicadas, a kind of bug famous for their long life cycle (and exceedingly short adult phase), are by no means unique to Japan, but since I hadn’t encountered that many up close when living in the North Country, it came as something of a shock to find that their population density in Japan rivals that of the humans. I found this out one morning last week, as I was jolted from my slumber by an eerie buzzing sound. going out onto the balcony of my apartment to see what was up, I was greeted by the near-deafening sound of lots and lots and lots of cicadas, all making their signature noise at once. Even after a week of getting used to it, it’s still quite disconcerting to hear when I’m just waking up and not yet able to remember just what that infernal racket is.

In spite of that, I do have to admit that I find the cicadas pretty cool. As bugs go, they’re a decent size, easy to spot, and entirely harmless to humans, which means that their song is regarded something along the lines of crickets chirping on a summer night back home. Only, much louder. But what the students at my school find the most entertaining by far is the shed skin they leave behind after molting. This outer layer of exoskeleton, which usually holds the shape of its former occupant quite well, appears to be an object of immense value to find during their outdoor activities. The reason, of course, is that they are an ideal size (and just “gross” enough) for chucking at one another. Plus, showing one to a female student seems to be an easy way to elicit an absolutely ear-splitting scream. (In the interest of fairness, however, I should note that some of the girls do this to each other, which makes it seem as though their horror and revulsion is something of a selective response.) Clearly, the empty shells alone provide hours of entertainment. And while I don’t know just how old this “game” is, there’s a reference to them in the Tale of Genj (though it has less to do with cicada shell-throwing than it does with a lady shedding her outer robe to escape the overly-amorous main character). Personally, I think maybe the story would be better if it had some cicada shell-chucking, but maybe that’s just me.

Aside from gathering the discarded shells, however, another popular pastime in Japan is cicada-catching. This involves going out with your net and collecting as many cicadas as you can, in order to… be the best collector, I suppose. Bug catching as a whole is a popular hobby for children in Japan, no doubt due to the island’s plentiful supply of oversized and/or weird-looking insects and arachnids to find. (Mothra is a stretch, but not by quite as much as you’d think.) At any rate, it’s easy to see where the idea for games like Pokemon came from: it’s just a natural extension of what’s already a popular pastime for Japanese children. Minus the wandering around for months without parental supervision, anyway.

Of course, with the bug population being what it is, there’s plenty of things that get by through eating them, and perhaps the most numerous that I’ve seen are the bats. Now, I know that there are bats in Northern New York, as we’ve had a few in our attic over the years (a fact my mother can certainly vouch for), but I never really saw them in action until I came here. At twilight, you can see them, circling, swooping, and flapping their leathery wings over the many rice paddies in the area. The first time I saw them, I thought they were just a flock of large-ish birds, but once I saw them up close, I realized that not only were they bats, but there were an awful lot of them. If I were a more squeamish person, this would probably lead to nightmares and such, but as long as they don’t bother me, I’m fine with it. After all, they keep the mosquito population down, and in a country whose chief grain product is farmed in fields full of standing water, this is important. (I suppose that this would also be the place to mention that I’m looking forward to a certain movie about a certain bat-themed individual, but unfortunately, it won’t come out here for another three weeks.)

But while bugs and the things that eat them are all well and good, there are far more (and arguably more famous) creatures that can be touched upon… hopefully I’ll get to those in another article. Until then, I’ll be trying not to wake up in a panic from the cicadas’ song.