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I once half-woke up in the middle of the night in a hot, sticky Japanese summer, to the sound of someone playing the guitar. "Who on earth is playing a guitar at this time of night?" I thought. As I became more awake, I realized that the guitar playing was very bad and tuneless. Then, as I became fully awake, I figured out where the sound was coming from — the electric fan. I turned on my bedside torch, and there was a huge cockroach running over it, strumming the metal cover wires with its feet!

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Must have been a member of the Merzbow school of guitar playing!

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I love the large spiders and their webs in my local park, especially in the very early morning when the dew or rain glistens on the Web.

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Yes, those webs look like lace. There are other spiders - quite small - that cover entire bushes with their webs. I call them the killing fields.

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Oct 20·edited Oct 20Liked by Gianni Simone

Mosquitos like me too much.

One morning I got up as usual, walked into the bathroom.

As I glanced in the mirror, I discovered my hands and face were covered in blood!

Once I cleaned myself up, I worked out I received a couple of mosquito bites while I slept, and apparently scratched them until they bled. All while I remained asleep.

No big deal. Although the morning had begun like the intro to a horror-thriller.

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Blimey! Sounds like a scene from The Mask of the Red Death. Or a John Belushi film.

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Oct 20Liked by Gianni Simone

Although they probably live in every part of the country, before moving to Kyushu five years ago, I had little experience with centipedes, which are called mukade (むかで) in Japanese. So far I have not been bitten by one of these aggressive bugs, which are said to have a very painful bite. Down here they get pretty big and have a nasty stinger. Our goal remains to keep them out of the house and to steer clear from them in the garden.

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That's right. I haven't had enough encounters with them to be really scared but mention mukade to my wife and she starts sweating.

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