Mosquitoes Make Baby Jesus Cry

Let’s see if Sarah is reading over my shoulder. Maybe if I type her names a few times, she’ll take notice. So, here goes. Sarah sometimes asks, ever so impishly, ‘Whatcha doin’?’ and then takes a peek at what I’m writing. Ah, I think my experiment here will be a failure – she’s just moved to the computer across from me. I suppose I can leave all that text there if she returns’ Not that I mind at all. I just like teasing her by any means at my disposal.

Anyway, what has happened since last I wrote? Not an excessive amount really. Perhaps I’m actually settling in here. Though, staring at my hands as I type, I am reminded of last night’s mosquito attack.

I went to the hill North of City Hall to explore and take photos. There, I found’

Woah. I just remembered my dream from last night. Odd. I won’t repeat it, but it was indeed odd and a little amusing.

Anyway, sorry to leave that sentence hanging – so much anticipation, I’m sure. Unfortunately, the payoff doesn’t warrant such a buildup. I found a small shrine and a somewhat disheveled Japanese garden. Beyond them was stairway leading up into the woods that passed by more of those tiny stone shrines I like so much.

While taking photos in this area, the mosquitoes caught a whiff of my scent and descended upon my exposed flesh with the ferocity of, well, a swarm of hungry mosquitoes. The little bastards left plenty of their itchy marks on my hands, arms neck and face and now, the little red spots catch my eye as I type.

Why would God make mosquitoes? I was trying to figure this out last night. The only person who could see mosquitoes as a positive addition to Earth’s bestiary is a social Darwinist. From their point of view, the disease-transmitting insects serve to weed out the weak from the strong and to kill off those whose genes would not have made a good addition to the pool.

But everyone knows that social Darwinists are idiots and assholes. No, the existence of mosquitoes is indeed further proof of God’s non-existence or it suggests that he/she/it is either not especially benevolent (downright sadistic is more like it) or doesn’t have control over all we are lead to believe (a.k.a. everything).

But here I am talking about God and Darwin in adjacent paragraphs. It’s philosophy class in the ’50s! The point is, mosquitoes are fuckers and I hate them. They marred what was otherwise a quite enjoyable photo session – a no-no in Darbyland.

Dodging the irritating little bloodsuckers (and slapping at them when their landings lacked subtlety) I ascended the hill and found a larger temple at the top of the long flight of stairs. After scolding myself for not having brought bug repellant and taking fewer photos than I would have liked in the fading light, I turned to the left where I found a confusing map of the trails on the hill.

I tried to decipher it, but I could hardly determine which way was up. I struck out on a trail at random that led me to a winding staircase and finally the transmission towers on the top of the hill. I tried to take some photos of the staircase, but I had to concede to the bugs. They were victorious and I retreated down the hill. My war wounds are visible, but fortunately, today, they are not especially itchy. I will live to slap mosquitoes another day.

Part of me almost feels bad when I kill them. The whole respecting life ideal that guides me runs contrary to the slaughter of insects, but I have to argue that it truly is in self-defense. I should have been more prepared I agree, but still, I’ll leave them alone if they don’t bother me. Actually, I’m not entirely sure I would. I really do hate the bastards. They’re just so bloody evil.

So, that was the highlight of my evening last night. Tuesday night was spent first cleaning my grubby apartment then watching ‘About Schmidt’ with Sarah. Great movie. Parts of it reminded me of my Dad – maybe because he was so keen on it when he saw it and recommended it to me. It had a perfect message for the small pessimist within me.

After the movie, we watched a bit of my illegally-procured BBC World, then listened to music. A good night.

Today, I have been trying to get a hold of people to go to the lantern festival in Matsushima on Sunday. I may have the interest of Brent and Jo piqued so we’ll see what happens.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 12th, 2004 at 12:00 am. It is filed under Blog, Japan, JET Programme, Travel and tagged with japan, Travel, travel log. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.