Musings of a Drunken Monk: Individual Entry Archive

Let me tell you a little bit about bugs. Specifically, let me tell you about the differences between American Mosquitos and Japanese Mosquitos.

Prior to coming to Japan, I had assumed that if another country had Mosquitos, they would be the same as they are back home; dumb, slow, annoying, and ubiquitous. What I have learned after spending two summers battling them is that they are quite different here, and I can only assume other countries have some other evil Mosquito strains.

The only things Japanese Mosquitos (hereby referred to as Ms because I'm getting sick of writing "Mosquito") share with American Ms are ubiquity and irritation. They are indeed everywhere. And they kind of look alike. But Japanese Ms seem to have these fuzzy antennae things that American ones don't, and there's also a separate kind that is black-and-grey striped. Neither are dumb or slow.

Back home, you can easily nab an M out of the air with one hand. Mashing one against the wall is a cakewalk. Here, it's damn hard. I think they're smaller and they're definitely faster here. It's so easy to lose sight of them, and the moment you've done so, they're probably sucking your sweet sweet red nectah (blood). Just the other night, one woke me up by buzzing in my ear (something they rarely do, actually), and I spent the next 45 minutes trying to kill it. Several times I tried to go back to sleep, only to have it bite me on some new and inconvenient bodily location.

And let me talk about that for a moment. Back home, when they bite they get full and slow and leave you alone. Here, it's like they've been invited to an endless buffet. They keep coming back for more and never seem to give up. A single M has bitten me like 5 times in as many minutes. And their bites itch like hell. I theorize it's because my body is used to American M bites and can deal more easily with the hystamines in their pokers.

It all comes down to using these electric M machines that only sometimes work, and waiting out the end of the season. Winter ain't great, but I'll be spared spending whole evenings stalking about the room singing "Where are you, you little fuckeerrrr? I'm gonna killlll you!"