Month: June 2006

Future Spirits

Taro’s aunts called from Horyuji to say they were harvesting this year’s plums from the ancient trees in their front yard and to ask if I wanted to come pick up the resulting umeshu in seven or eight years.
Um, yes.
I can think of many stupider reasons I’ve heard for visiting Japan.

Bottled Water

In general, bottled water from France is expensive and disgusting.
Funny, it doesn’t taste nearly as bad drinking it when you’re in France. Maybe they save the good stuff for domestic consumption and export the lower grades. After all, that’s what Japan does with, say, solar panels (I’ve seen the sorting bins at the factory so I know this to be true; Grade A stays in Japan, Grade B is exported to America, and anything below that is shipped everywhere else.).
The worst tasting bottled water, in my opinion, is evian. And of course, evian spelled backwards is naive.
That is as far as I can bear to think today, thank you.

Red Mystery Beetle

Anybody know offhand what this bad boy is?

(click on image to enlarge)
I found him crawling on my car last month. When I tried to touch him, he flew off into the wind.
UPDATE #1: I’ve put in an inquiry to What’s That Bug. They say they are swamped, but maybe something will work out.
UPDATE #2: Whats That Bug wrote back:

Hi Justin,
We believe this beauty is one of the Cerambycid Longhorns, though we are not positive, and we have no idea of the species. The list of specimens that could use Eric Eaton’s assistance is growing and we are not sure when he will return from collecting in West Virginia. How large was this beetle?

To which I replied:

Hi, thanks for the quick reply. The beetle was approximately one inch in length. I will continue to try and find additional information here in Japan, and will update you if anything comes to light.

I’m really impressed with the dedication of the authors of the Whats That Bug site – go check them out as our correspondence is posted there as well, and they may update there when their resident beetle expert returns. Meanwhile, if any of you can help with the identification, I’d be grateful.
I wonder if this is the Eric to whom they refer. Wow!
MYSTERY SOLVED!: T harnessed his ancient Oriental powers of deduction and came up with what looks like the correct answer. This longhorn beetle is commonly known in Japan as a ?????? (benikamikiri); Latin name: Purpuricenus (Sternoplistes) temminckii.
Sources:
http://www2.gol.com/users/nanacorp/ZUKAN/beni.htm
http://naturaljapan.net/?pp_album=1&pp_image=benikamikiri01.jpg

Parking Inspector Assault #2

This time it happened in Okayama, the home of Momotaro (the chldren’s story character, not the kaitenzushi chain): Man busted for biting parking inspector
Now I’m just waiting for the first BIG story to hit. You know, “Man Drags Parking Inspector 2 Kilometers, Claims He Thought It Was Rat,” or, “Angry Ninjutsu Student Disembowels Parking Inspector,” something like that. Followed by a critical review of how revenues collected from third-party ticket collections aren’t reaching the projects they were intended for, how parking inspectors are ticketing innocent cars because they work on an underhand commission from their employers, and how it’s STILL FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND A PARKING SPACE ANYWHERE IN THE CITY.
Let’s all guess how many politician’s relatives started companies in the past six months that bid on the ticketing work…
Related Links:
The first assault on an inspector (flying knee kick of death)
Wherein I predicted violence unto parking inspectors (Truth be told, I was kinda looking forward to it… It’s all fun unil someone’s eye gets poked out.)