And So It Goes

August 17, 7:30pm, Tokyo

Japan’s fauna and I just do not seem to get along. A few days ago, after doing some remarkable-for-a-NYer legal fireworks in a nearby park with Daisuke and Weiyu (Host-Dad and Taiwanese host-brother, respectively), we were biking back home when I noticed something hitting me while in motion. I ignored it and kept going, but when we reached an intersection and stopped, I turned my neck and suddenly felt a sharp pain on my neck. I immediately cried out and swatted the offending object on my neck. It should be mentioned here that, should anyone doubt the tenor of my voice, I actually scream like a lumberjack more than a little girl, as can be testified to by anyone who has accompanied me on any indoor roller coaster that I mistake for safe Laser shooting experiences. This happens disturbingly often in Japan, despite my improving level of literacy, from ‘zero’ to ‘until recently raised by wolves’.
Anyway, after swatting at my neck, what I realized to be a spider landed on my shirt. About two centimeters around with longish legs the thickness of a fork prong, black, and intimidating, the spider leapt out as if from a collection of Victorian animal prints. It was somehow dignified, sitting on the surface of my lilac polo t-shirt, but I had no time or energy to ponder its aesthetic merits, as it remained a spider, and my initial prejudices against such creatures held. I fluttered the bottom of my shirt, and off the spider went, falling onto the asphalt. We left it there, crawling, and sped back the remaining hundred meters home, where I went on Wikipedia and found out that I should have bagged the rascal lest it be poisonous, so as to extract precious liquid for anti-venom. In this state of rising distress and abject fear, I then learned that Japan had no native poisonous spiders. This did much to ease the tension, but it did little to stop the strange tingly feeling on my neck. This too did pass; after all, as the old surgeon’s expression goes: “All bleeding ends. Eventually.”
Oh, and Cicadas are annoying. A bug that can chirp as loud as a jackhammer has no place making Tokyo yet louder.