Beetlemania

Last weekend we were hanging out with Ted, who is currently my main man in Japan. He's teaching English in a school outside Hiroshima, so it was a great opportunity to pick his brain since Fiona and I will soon be teaching as well.

He said the actual classroom time was fine, but the most interesting things he had to say dealt with the kids themselves. One day we were walking down the street and he started telling us how Japanese children are obsessed with beetles. He said that they all have picture books and little toy beetles that they drag around with them and basically just flip out over.

Of course I found this fascinating. Beetles? I guess they're cool, but I would have thought that what with being surrounded by dope transformers and video games from the year 3000 the kids would pay a bit less attention to bugs and a bit more to all the cool toys they have access to.

However, about 15 minutes after Ted dropped this little knowledge nugget on us I happened to find a small toy beetle on the street. I was psyched - I figured I'd come upon a cool little souveneir that I could take home.

Boy was I wrong. About 30 seconds after I picked it up a grown woman came rushing over to me with a frantic look on her face and said what I can only imagine was "Oh thank God you found my beetle" in Japanese. Then she ripped it out of my hand and jogged up the street to where her friend was waiting for her with a relieved look on her face.

It's worth mentioning that she didn't appear to have any children with her. It was her beetle, and she wasn't afraid to love it.

Then, last night we were strolling around the Gion Festival in Tokyo and we walked by a stall where there were a bunch of kids flipping out. Being huge gaijin (foreigners), we muscled our way through the crowd and got to the front of the pack to see what was up.

I should have known that there is only one thing that can drive Japanese kids to such hysteria. It was a beetle raffle. Apparently, you pay a couple hundred yen and you get to stick your hand into a box and pull out a number. If that number is over 10 then you get some little toy beetle like the one that meant so very much to that lady. However, if your number was from 1-9 then you got an actual live beetle. And these were big, luscious beetles. I can only imagine how happy the kid who pulled out that number 1 must have been.

I thought about sticking my hand in the box, but then I realized that with my luck I would have pulled out the number corresponding to the biggest, weirdest, pincer-est beetle, and I just didn't want to deal with that at all.

I tried to get a shot of the beetle stall, but it was too dark and they all came out blurry. Instead, here's a few photos I've taken over the past couple days. Sorry, no time to put them in an album:

A line of Geisha-to-be waiting for their turn to walk in the Gion Festival Parade

The infinite thrill of conveyor belt sushi. Look at all those plates!!

Another young Geisha.

Me and the horse sushi.

One of the many, many busy Tokyo intersections at night. On the left is one of the largest department stores in the world.

Posted by flow Frazao on July 15, 2005 at 11:05 PM in Japan | Permalink