* This essay column is written by a longtime foreign resident of Japan.

Summer is when the forces of evil, when the Dark Side mounts its major offensive of the year to repossess my little piece of Setagaya. Based on the principle of su casa, mi casa (your house is my house), and like a crowd of long-lost relatives turning up, uninvited, on your doorstep, everything that can creep and crawl, fly or float, buzz and bite beats a path to my house once the Meteorological Agency formally announces the end of the rainy season.

I knew when I came to live in Tokyo that I was coming to a jungle, but it was a concrete jungle where I would be fighting for space with several million other people. But it is really a jungle out there. Although I come from a small town in the north of England that is surrounded by woods, fields and rivers, I'm not used to such wildlife, and I don't mean what you see on the last trains out of Shinjuku.

I'm not a violent person, I'm a gentle soul. Ask anyone in England and they will tell you that I wouldn't hurt a fly. But when it comes to defending my home, I am prepared to spill blood, especially if it's the blood of something no more than a couple of centimeters long.

Bleeding heart entomologists would probably say that they have as much right as I have to the 28 tsubo of Setagaya that I call home. They were here before me and their hundreds of thousands of progeny will be here long after I have come to my senses and left. Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara would tell you that as indigenous Japanese they have more right.

But come summer, right and might are on my side, and I put on my war face -- imagine Mel Gibson as William Wallace in Braveheart -- and prepare for battle. Although I have armed myself with every toxic spray known to man, every trap, every repellent, I put my trust in God, and a rolled-up newspaper and the sole of my slipper.

The offensive usually begins with a "shock and awe" aerial bombardment. Everything that can fly is thrown at me in the first wave -- annoying bluebottles and pesky fruit flies, vicious mosquitoes and suicidal green hard-backed beetles that look like miniature Thunderbird 2s and hammer away at my fly screens. Then come the ground forces -- the ants, often with aerial support from their winged brethren, and the armored divisions -- the cockroaches.

But I'm a seasoned campaigner, a veteran of foreign wars. I can repulse these attacks with only superficial wounds -- it's impossible to kill every mosquito -- and little collateral damage. Unfortunately, the odd ladybug and moth is killed in the cross fire.

By the end of August this year I thought the worst was over, but while I was at the front a special forces unit was setting up a base behind my lines. These were the elite, the Arnold Schwarzeneggers, the Delta Force, the SAS of the Insect Kingdom -- wasps -- and they had built a nest on my balcony.

This obviously called for a tactical rethink because wasps fight back. I consulted some Web sites and the Encyclopedia Britannica, and decided that they were paper wasps, chiefly because they are regraded as the least offensive of the species -- although building a nest of regurgitated vegetable matter seems pretty offensive to me -- and because their sting is supposed to be the least toxic.

A frontal assault was out of the question, but I couldn't wait for them to hatch and invade en masse. Fortunately, the gods -- in the shape of Typhoon (No. 16) Chaba -- intervened and the decision was taken out of my hands. After 12 hours of torrential rain and howling wind, by the time I had summoned up the courage to scale the heights and take them on, the nest was a soggy mess floating in my guttering and the wasps had gone. But come summer, they'll be baaaack!

I'd welcome any comments or opinions, in Japanese or English, about my column. You can write or fax me at The Weekly, or e-mail me at jtweekly@japantimes.co.jp

The Japan Times Weekly: Oct. 9, 2004
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