White Flag and Bed Bugs

With fish-like flopping and flipping, I have come to a decision. This place is not that bad. Somewhere along the way, amidst the moldy shoes, and the multi-legged bed fellow (I will get into that later) I have found my stride. It is not that swimming against the tide has tired me out; it has just simply become boring. Japan, with all of its quirks is not going to change because I see it as bass akwards. I am not really sure why up until now I thought that it should. People are going to be parking their shrunken cars on blind curves long after I am gone, so I think it’s time for me to chill-out, and slow down. Better yet, I say join them. It is kind of liberating to be able to, at any given moment, on any sized road, simply flip on your hazards and stop. “Wow that was really cool shrine, I think I need a picture”, (Flip the red triangle and all is absolved). “Shoot Andy, I have to use the bathroom, would you mind stopping?” ”Not at all (flashers on), be my guest. I will wait right here.” It never seems to matter that the mini-mart in which she is bathroom poaching has an empty parking lot. People just are not to be bothered with proper car stowage. In Japan, hazards are the diplomats of the road. One just flips them on and they have full immunity; you park where you want. I guess no matter what size rock you throw in the river, the water will find its way around….Or something. Funny thing is, even as you completely block one side of the road for your own self-serving needs, you still receive a smile and nod as they drive by. So, in my over-worded way, I’ve reached this conclusion: With a little tolerance, a couple more local phrases in my arsenal, and the right pair of borrowed prescription specs, Japan is looking alright.


As for the bed fellow, well, my tolerance only goes so far. A few mornings past, at 1:30 to be exact, Maggie leapt out of bed with the fury of Christmas morning. The light came on, the covers stripped to the floor, and I was left squinting in blurred confusion. “I think I was just bit by something.” She said “See that, those three little red marks (pointing toward the second piggy from the left), I wonder what it was?” Unfortunately, not for lack of trying, no three toothed critter was uncovered. Lights were turned back out, freshly shaken covers were righted, and we found our way back to lala land.

Act two:

At 6:30 that same Sunday morning it was now Maggie’s turn to wake to the whoosh of flying bed sheets. This time we hit the floor simultaneously and turned back to the bed.

Centipede! Three and a half inches of leggie unpleasantness was in the center of our bed, and still chewing its mouth full of my thigh. Mad as hell and not really sure what to do next, I broke the cardinal rule: I turned my back. Just for a moment mind you, and only to get a smacking implement. But when I turned back in my best well-braced battle pose, the ‘pede was gone. We are talking seconds. But that fact was of no comfort to either of us at that moment. Long story short, we destroyed our bedroom. Thanks goodness for late rising neighbors, because on this morning, Victoria did not have any Secrets. In a blink, our entire room was staged out on the patio and we were back through the sliding doors to hunt down our feisty interrupter. This task proved not to be easy. For the little monster blended pretty well into the baseboard. Thankfully, find it we did and needless to say that bug did not see 7:00am. The damage had most-certainly been done though. I think it took us three hours of steady coffee intake and Scrabble playing to remove the shakes.

I now look back on the day with nervous chuckles. But mostly what sticks in my mind is the response of our teacher friend Tom, when I told him about our irksome wake-up call. He just looked at me with brows a furrowing and said in his best science teacher tone: “Hmm, centipedes are not hunters, you must have provoked it.”