How To Kill A Cockroach and Other Life Lessons

Ahhh… humidity! Mother Nature’s double-edged sword. It can be both your friend and foe at the same time. It keeps your skin soft and complexion young. Yet, it can also make the hottest days seem impossibly hotter; so hot and muggy that you’d be willing to join forces with Osama Bin Laden, just to have access to the cool confines of his caves. Thankfully, those hot summer days of Japan have come and gone. The days are now warm, and the early mornings and late nights, cool.

During the hot and humid days of summer, homes in Japan can easily become mold sanctuaries. No food can be left out of the fridge for any extended period of time without it being taken over by colonies of bacteria. Regular cleaning is a must to stay one step ahead of the invisible life forces with whom you unwillingly share your living quarters.

Humid, moldy apartments also happen to be an ideal nesting ground for cockroaches. When I took over my apartment from the last English teacher, I unfortunately inherited a family of these tiny beasts. On occasion, when coming home late at night, I see the filth-loving creatures scurrying across my kitchen floor, back to their nests, hidden deep in the bowels of my apartment. Startled by my arrival home, and threatened by the bright, revealing lights of my apartment, they escape to the protection of the small crevices that we humans don’t even know exist. If you see one cockroach, it probably has 10 friends whom aren’t as slow and stupid, and whom you will never see. Fast and agile, they are, making them nearly impossible to catch.

But, stomping on a cockroach that you witness dashing across your floor is not the proper approach to terminating the infestation anyway. You see, by squashing one of the dirty little bastards, you release its eggs in your apartment, and soon after, you will likely be the legal guardian of its 10 children. There are several proper methods to fighting the war on cockroach terror:

1. ‘Roach Motels: These small traps bait the curious, eternally hungry critters inside where they get stuck on the glue-like floor of the trap. Here, they slowly, but surely starve to death. They can survive more than 2 weeks without food, so be patient. Sure enough, once the cockroach dies, or soon before, its eggs hatch (providing that it is female), and the mother’s carcass is surrounded by numerous little baby cockroaches stuck to the floor of the trap. I shed a tear, and then throw the trap in the trash. If only I could find traps that match the colour of my curtains!

2. Poison: This method tricks the ‘roaches into eating poison disguised as food. Judging by the fact that I occasionally find a dead cockroach lying on my floor, the poison seems to be very effective. But, like using poison to get rid of any pests, you have to question whether you want their bodies decomposing in your home, hidden somewhere where you will never find them.

3. Spray: The best method, but least convenient. The cockroach spray works wonders, but, in order to use it, you have to catch the vermin out in the open. Even then, this stuff is lethal, and I don’t really enjoy spraying it around my tiny apartment.

I’m fully aware of the stigma attached to people who live with cockroaches. These nearly indestructible insects seem to be the standard by which filth is judged, beaten only by rats and wild raccoons in terms of creatures that you don’t want living in the same room where you sleep. Describing a place as having cockroaches tends to sum up the general state of cleanliness. But, before you judge me, consider the humidity, nature’s double-edged sword that breeds all sorts of weird and wonderful creatures that you don’t find in Canada. I am a clean person! I run a clean ship! But, sadly, I have cockroaches. I have put a huge dent in their population, but the war is not won. I blame the humidity! Oh, and the filthy people that lived here before me.

It’s not only small, ghetto style apartments like my own that have cockroach problems. This past weekend, I was fortunate enough to do a homestay in a neighbouring town. I had signed up to stay with a host family in order to learn a bit more about day to day Japanese life. The family that I stayed with were very cool! I had a great time! I got to spend a night in their large, beautiful, hybrid (half Western style, half Japanese style) home. Sure enough, on the bathroom floor sat a little poison dish, waiting to be eaten by an unsuspecting cockroach.

My host family consisted of an 85 year old grandma, a middle-aged couple, and their 28 year old son. The grandma, like most old Japanese women, was not much more than 4 feet tall. When they age, Japanese women begin to hunch over like you wouldn’t believe; more so than any other race that I’ve seen (maybe from all of the bowing??). She spoke to me, a mile a minute, in Japanese, virtually none of which I would understand. She knew that I speak very little Japanese, but would just keep on talking, perhaps oblivious to the fact that I was smiling and nodding not to show comprehension, but just to be polite.

The son was a nice guy. In Japan, it is not unusual for children to live at home well into their 30’s. Many young people in Japan are not marrying these days, resulting in lots of single, young adults living at home with their parents and grandparents. I’m not sure if it is a cause or an effect of living at home until your mid-30’s, but most Japanese my age seem to be very immature. I’ve met many 30 year olds whose cars are covered in pictures of their favourite Disney characters, and who’s cell phones have Winnie The Pooh’s face on the display. Maybe it’s just my false sense of maturity, but is this not strange?

The middle-aged couple were very kind to me, feeding me loads of delicious, home cooked Japanese food and keeping my wine glass full during dinner. They, as well as the son, spoke decent English, allowing us to communicate easily, and also enabling them to teach me lots of Japanese.

Dinner on Saturday night was great! We had a huge Japanese feast, cooking the food on a grill right at the table. “We don’t buy Chinese vegetables in Japan” stated the husband during the meal, a cigarette burning between his fingers. “They are covered in chemicals. You never know what kind of diseases they will give you.” He promptly ground the butt of the cigarette into the ashtray and lit up another, holding it in one hand and his chopsticks in the other. Ironic, no?

It was interesting to note the division of labour in the Japanese home. Rather, the lack of division of labour. The women in Japan do nearly all of the chores. The husband of my host family would sit at the dinner table, and, in the most polite way, would order his wife to fetch one thing, or bring another. Regardless of who was closer to his desired object, he would ask for something to be fetched, and the wife would do so with a smile on her face. After eating dinner on Saturday night, I began to help her clean up the dishes, and she said shockingly, “Japanese men never help with this!”

“Watashi wa Nihon-jin ja arimasen,” I replied, saying that I wasn’t Japanese. “I wish I married a foreigner” she whispered under her breath.

Despite being a typical Japanese man with traditional views of domestic life, the father is a cool guy and an expert potter. Sunday, we spent the whole day in his pottery workshop. The whole family gathered there around the table, wearing smocks and bandanas, moulding clay with their hands. Even grandma hammered away on a chunk of wet clay, making what would eventually become a bowl. The father taught me how to make a coffee cup using the Kasama method (a famous pottery town in my prefecture). On the wall, his work was displayed in rows. His art is really amazing! I look forward to going again and finishing my coffee cup.

That night, I said goodbye to the family, and the son drove me home. There was a matsuri festival in my town during the weekend, so I spent Sunday night walking up and down the streets with some friends, taking in the awesome sights of the festival; traditional, giant wooden carts being pushed and pulled by sake drinking men and women in kimonos, glowing lanterns lining the narrow roads, Japanese people dancing drunkenly in the streets, and every where I turned, a group of my students waving at me and yelling “Eriku!” My sleepy town became alive for a brief moment in time.