With temperatures now up at 37 to 38 C and humidity draining all will from your willingness it is nice to have some kind of agent that might buffer the effects of the heat. Here in Japan sounds have traditionally stepped in to make a psychological difference when the thermometer is about to burst. The most obvious ones are the wind bells that people hang up outside their windows and the bamboo fountains that fill up and drop to the rock base below, where they make a distinct “PUNK” sound, sort of like a hollow wooden replication of a bat hitting a baseball. Japanese also like the sound of suzumushi, a kind of ground dwelling tree cricket whose song sounds like a zithering bell. There are also the calls of bush warblers and oblong-winged katydids, jungle crows and, of course, bubbling streams. But my favorite sound of all, and one that fills me with melancholy and remembrance every time I walk along the paths among the rice paddies while swatting mosquitoes on my legs, is that of the Higurashi zemi, the evening cicada. For me it is one of the most beautiful and haunting sounds in the world.
Two cabbage butterflies mating on a leaf beside the Noh River, August 07, 2006
Two cabbage butterflies mating on a leaf beside the Noh River, August 07, 2006
In the heart of a big city like Tokyo the cliche says that nature exists as but an afterthought. For such hulking carbon-units as us humans that may well seem like the case, but all it takes is a slowing of pace and a pair of good eyes to see that the world around us, all of it, IS nature; we just have to learn how to see.
At the start of August, one cloudy day, in the midst of my summer-long hiatus from work, I decided one day to walk to the nearby Noh River and see what I could see. When I reached the banks I found myself slowly down to a crawl, barely moving along. These photographs are the result of nearly four hours stepping through the riverside grasses and bushes along a distance of only about 100 meters. What I actually saw far outnumbered what I captured in the camera. With the wind and light many of the pictures were either impossible to get, or else would have been uninteresting. If I had stayed longer no doubt I would have seen a lot more.
(What you see on-screen may look like washed-out photographs. The actual versions have much greater contrast, tone, and saturation. If you are using an LED screen you may want to tilt it back a little to allow more contrast and a darker image to show. The difference can really make the photos stand out.)
Stinkbug balancing atop frond.
Grass Lizard basking
This is actually a fiery red and yellow lily… I was amazed when I desaturated it and found this almost infrared film-like ghost of an image.
Male Red Dragonfly. This photograph took forever to get because the twig quivered at the slightest breeze and the footing at the edge of the river was so covered with dead reeds that I couldn’t see where my feet were.
I love the audaciousness and toughness of Fritillery Butterflies. They always seem to be the first to appear in the cold of mid-spring and the last to go at the end of autumn.
Black Ladybird Beetle. Call them the alter egos of those regular black-spot-on-red beetles you usually see.
Robberfly. Heavy-flying thugs of the insect world, they’ll go at anything that moves, including us, if they’re not aware that we are stalking them.
Jumping Spider. I once considered studying field biology so that I could specialize in these spiders. They make no trap webs, but wander about jumping incredible distances and using their single strand of web as lifelines. It’s always delightful to watch their coke-bottle eyes goggling at things even two meters away.
Barely two centimeters long, this butterfly’s wing color did not become apparent until I was almost standing over the butterfly and it suddenly opened its wings. I wish I knew the name of the species.
And finally, one of my favorite images. An immature female Praying Mantis among some peppermint.
Last of the winter's camellia blossoms fallen on last year's leaves, Shirayama Temple Hill, Takao, Japan
Last of the winter’s camellia blossoms fallen on last year’s leaves, Shirayama Temple Hill, Takao, Japan
Spring is in full swing, with the cherry blossoms billowing along the streets and in the parks everywhere. It happened all of a sudden, sudden because just a week ago today we still had the heater on in our apartment. Two days later the air switched dresses and the next thing you know the sun was wearing gauzy petticoats of humidity. And the dawn tiptoed in earlier, too, just before what anyone might consider a sane hour for the alarm to go off.
It was just this patting about to turn off the alarm that caused me to oversleep my Sunday wake up call meant for the day’s hike. I hadn’t gotten quite enough sleep and getting up was not a top priority, so I snoozed until about 9:00… by then too late for the longer hike I had had planned.
Without really thinking about where I would be heading I wolfed down a breakfast of tea and rice with natto (fermented soy beans… an acquired taste) and raw egg. Then I was out the door, just walking foot in front of foot, with no plans, or even a map. A bright, almost summer-like brilliance lit up the neighborhood. The sky stared down with its big ole blue eyes, unclouded by thoughts of rain and for once blinking away the usual smoggy grime. I sauntered along, and hot, stopped to remove my jacket, then continued sauntering all the way to the train station, and humming Tears for Fears’ “Call Me Mellow”, a song that I haven’t been able to get out of my head for the past three weeks.
First I headed for the train that goes downtown, from where I had a vague idea about taking the Japan Railways train fro downtown Shinjuku out to Nikko northeast of Tokyo, but while standing on the platform and eyeing all those passengers heading toward the big parks I suddenly changed my mind. Instead I tripped down the stairs and climbed back up to the opposite platform, to wait for the train there and just see where it took me.
Forty minutes later I got off at Takao station… not the usual end-of-the-line Mt. Takao Trailhead station, but the big town just before it, the one that I had gazed out at countless times on my way out to the far off mountains. So many times I had glimpsed the hills surrounding the town and wondered if it was possible to just head out of the station and follow the ridges all the way back to the bigger mountains to the west. Idle thoughts, all those times, often at the end of a weekend of grinding walks, and then too tired to do much more than wonder.
A mountain walker would scoff at the petty little stroll that the town could only offer, but today I just wanted to follow my nose and to hell with always trying to prove myself on higher ground. Why not kick along the curbside like I loved to do so much as a kid, and take time to really look at things?
It was lunchtime by the time I exited the station so I trundled over to a “Moss Burger” joint, the local MacDonald’s offshoot franchise that specializes in high quality hamburgers and salads, to sit a while and just munch on a burdock root burger and gaze out the window at the Sunday strollers. And they were out in force, families browsing the streetside stores and all heading off in the general direction of the imperial garden north of town. Half of them wore surgical masks in a futile attempt to ward off the onslaught of the hay fever epidemic that plagued Tokyo. For the first time in months fathers walked about in t-shirts while mothers wore the bright colored, long sleeve shirts that spoke of summer but warded off the harmful effects of the sun while preserving their “bihaku”= “beauty white”.
Continuing my sauntering I crossed the train tracks and took the main road toward the hills that I could see at the other end of town. Along the way I watched an old woman wearing a white sun hat and a tiny back pack and hiking boots, bend down to the curbside, grab a handful of the pink cherry-blossom petalbanks that had accumulated there, and toss it over her head like snowfall. She followed the petals with her eyes, a big smile stretching across her face, and giggled like a little girl. I stopped discretely to watch her. Her laughter echoed in my own chest.
Camellia blossom resting in the late afternoon sun, Shirayama Temple Hill, Takao, Japan
The road led further into the throngs of tourists visiting from all over to gawk at the cherry blossoms. Busloads began to pass me by, and the sidewalk became more and more difficult to follow, as strings of people bottlenecked at the street crossings and by the overpasses. Eventually the sidewalk led to the gate of the imperial garden, where hundreds of people stood like packed cows waiting to pay the fee to enter the garden. It was hot and I hadn’t bargained for crowds of people so I stepped out of the crowd onto a side street. No one disturbed the stillness there and the further I walked along it the more distanced from the spring fever I became. To my surprise I found a neighborhood of small gardens and old, wooden, post-war houses, many of them run down and in disrepair. Flowers bloomed everywhere: in the gardens, on the rooftops, in planters by the entrance gates, along the tops of walls, from windows, from planters hung in the branches of trees, the trees themselves. Delighted, I followed this little road around the chin of a knoll until I was out of sight of the main body of the town.
There a little river gurgled along the side of the road. Houses kneeled at the very edge of the river, some spilling stairways down to its banks, some wading out over it with small terraces and sloping lawns. Crooked cherry trees and weeping willows, still waiting to bud, and plane trees lined the banks on both sides.
It wasn’t all beauty and joy, though. All along the river plastic bags and discarded cans, rusting bicycles and tires, wads of toilet paper, some tossed out mattresses, and once even an old refrigerator marred the river’s charm. Typically Japan, this. For a people who take so much meticulous care of their bodies, they certainly are slobs when it comes to taking care of their land.
The road entered a hidden vale that only walking up to this point could have revealed. It degraded from asphalt to gravel, then to simply to dirt, dry and dusty now from more than two months of no rain. A cemetary lay just off the left side of the road, surrounded by dogwoods just budding and the air golden with the haze of pollen and strands of spidersilk. Bird songs lifted from the quiet corners and I saw my first Siberian Meadow Bunting fluting to anyone who would listen from atop a newly budding Japanese maple.
The road narrowed to a crumbling path strewn with windfallen branches and unmoving eddies of old leaves. At the end, nestled in the crook of the ravine, stood a dilapidated old house that had been abandoned long enough that the windows had cracked and splintered and a sumac tree had grown through the rear end of the roof. The timbers had rotted through and carpenter ants thronged like the cherry blossom viewers in the heat of the afternoon sun. It was so still that instinctively the tension lifted from somewhere behind me and for the first time in a very long time I was unselfconscious enough without all the overly prying eyes of Japanese curious and sometimes disapproving of a foreigner in their midst to be able to stop and take a look at things the way I love so much to: slowing to a crawl and mimicking a praying mantis with incremental steps taken with the breaths of wind and then standing still for uncounted moments while peering hard at things around me, sometimes even getting down on my belly to see things from a different perspective. I lost myself in the trickling of a tiny brooklet that had created a new path from the slope overlooking the house, watching a water strider flick wavelets across a puddle.
Behind the old house a derelict shed revealed itself. It was strangling on thickets of bamboo and two flax pants growing right up against its crumbling wooden walls. In the corners two old delivery bicycles hid in the shadows, their tires blistered away.
Derelict shed being reclaimed by the forest
I discovered paper wasps building nests under the eaves, baby orb web spiders hanging motionless in the sunlight, blue bottle flies fiercely buzzing over the roof of the house, fritillary, cabbage, and sulfur butterflies… hardy species all… protecting their little islands in the new sunlight, wolf spiders dashing up the blue painted outsides of the house, and a lone inchworm hanging from a thread more than 20 meters long from the tops of one of the surrounding trees.
A look through the broken window of the front door of the house revealed rooms abandoned with many of the former dwellers’ belongings still scattered about: a calendar of a young woman in a skimpy bikini advertising Kirin Beer, a pair of rotting slippers, a ceramic tea cup, two floor pillows covered in dust, and a sticker of Hello Kitty plastered to a paper closet door. A dank, acrid odor rose from the floor and gave the interior a slightly sinister feel, in spite of the tranquility of the area.
After making a round of the house I started back down the road the way I had come. Earlier I had spied a side path leading up along the hill overlooking the road so I went back to find it.
This path took me up over the little vale through a cedar forest, to one of the ridges I had seen so often from the train. i was surprised that there was not another soul around. The wind blew with a moan through the trees and lent the end of the day a mournful feeling, so that when I found a glade atop the hill surrounded by a council of old chestnut and beech trees, still naked against the sky, I had to sit down and take a deep breath. I was so happy and lonely at the same time.
The trail led over the top of the hill then back around to a clearing where an ancient and grizzled old camphor tree, its trunk a mass of cracks, wrinkles, and growths, stood guard over what must once have been a shrine to the deity of the hill. The tree was so badly in need of pruning that people must have quit coming this way long ago. The trail led back down the hill from here, passing through stands of bamboo and camellia and eventually ending up behind a ancient temple so old it was housed in a protective wooden latticework house (the oldest temples in Japan used no paint and often had thatched roofs). All the artificial trappings of a usual temple had been removed except the two guardian dog statues and the stone entrance lanterns. A huge cherry tree branched out across the temple square, aching with white blossoms that no one came any more to see. Japanese often say that viewing cherry blossoms, while beautiful, is also profoundly sad, even frightening. Standing there alone in the last rays of the sun, in a place that no one had set foot in for many years, while not far away hundreds of people thronged to see cherry blossoms with more star status, I could feel the sadness and fright of being abandoned, of beauty left unnoticed, of something that must once have been loved left here to fall to ruin. Part of me rejoiced in this return to nature, but I couldn’t help but see that we weren’t following along. This was nature making a comeback, but with no respect on our part.
I bowed to the temple and also said a silent thank you to the Shinto hill deity still residing up by that old tree. Then I took the steep, broken stairs back down the hill to the level asphalt roads below, from where I slowly made my way back home, my eyes filled with silence and the heat of life persisting even through our efforts to remain immortal.
Old stovepipe protruding from the roof of the old abandoned house
Hen Spot-Billed Duck in the last moments of her life.
Hen Spot-Billed Duck in the last moments of her life.
For the first time in months the air was warm enough to go out in just a T-shirt. If I lifted my nose I could smell the perfume of flowers in the wind. Gray starlings, rufous turtle doves, and brown-eared bulbuls filled the still-bare branches of the trees and the rooftops with their chortling and cries, all getting ready for the hunkering down of spring. Grass lizards poked out of the cracks in the garden wall to sun themselves and a lone sulphur butterfly fluttered past the back door and nosed through the organic clutter of my unkempt garden, amidst the only greenery in the immediate neighborhood. The first hint of warmer months to come was getting off to a good start.
Part of the fifty strong flock of Jungle Crows awaiting their opportunity
With my diabetes acting up lately, making me feel more exhausted than usual, I opted out of my usual 10 kilometer run, and decided instead to go for a long-overdue stroll with my camera. I packed a shoulder bag with sketchbook, extra pens, my pocket notebook, a telephoto lens, a pair of binoculars, and a chocolate bar for low blood sugar emergencies. The excursion had no particular itinerary; I just wanted to get out to stretch my legs and have a looksee. Like the birds the warm wind was making me anxious to get outside and explore.
Any direction would have been fine, but almost without thinking I found myself beside the Noh River. For four years now I’d been watching its changing character, always heavily impacted by the combined encroaching of the apartment buildings and human population along its crowded and concrete-contained banks. I passed this way more out of necessity than for any abundance of natural things in the water and riverbed.
The water ran ankle deep as it does most of the year, a bare trickle. Flocks of spot-billed ducks and mallard ducks paddled in the deeper pools, keeping eyes out for people tossing bread crumbs. The smaller pintailed ducks that had wintered among the other ducks since last November had taken off for parts north, in the more comfortable climes of Siberia and Kamchatka. The vast winter flocks of the gray starlings had recently begun to break up into the smaller mating groups. Dusky thrushes still dashed along the grassy banks, though within a week or so they, too, would set off for the north. American painted slider turtles, pets that had been released from captivity after they had grown too big for their caretakers, basked on stones at the river’s edge, and huge gray carps patrolled the murky brown riverbed, lazily muscling among the dozing duck flocks.
My whole morning had been spent in front of the computer so it took a while for my eyes to adjust to noticing potential photographs. For the first part of the walk I mostly just drank in the fresh air. Other pedestrians, many of them sneezing incessantly from the clouds of cedar pollen that yearly invades Tokyo from the surrounding mountains, jogged and quick-walked along the footpath along the river, so I descended to the trail along the riverbank itself and waded through old dried stands of reeds. My shoes caught in the stiff bracken, sometimes tripping me up, but it was quiet here and I could stop with less self-consciousness to examine the tiny flowers and the fritillary butterflies that flashed their colors here and there.
I got so caught up in kneeling into the grass to take photographs of tiny, violet flowers, that I lost track of time. Before I knew it I had wandered a little further than I had intended and had to hurry to get back home in time to get ready for my evening job. I clambered back up to the paved footpath above and upped the pace. A chilly wind had stirred up and clouds began to close in from the west.
I was nearing the last section of the river before I had to turn away and head to my apartment when I noticed two jungle crows… the huge, raven-sized crows that have taken over Tokyo… harassing a lone, female spot-billed duck in the water. Oddly the duck refused to budge and instead sat huddled right inside the flowing water. The crows pecked at it and attempted to pull away feathers. The duck swiveled its head in weak attempts to drive off the crows, but other than that it didn’t attempt to get away.
Concerned I backtracked to the nearest emergency stairway, descended back to the river bank, and made my way over to where the duck lay two meters from the edge of the river. It was too far to reach. The duck made no attempt to flee, though normally spot-billed ducks always put at least five meters distance between themselves and me. The crows flew off to the treetops overlooking the river, joining a group of other crows peering down.
I squatted by the riverside, watching the duck and trying to figure out what I could do. She was obviously very weak; her head swayed unsteadily and when I moved she worked her bill in a silent mime of quacking, no sound coming out. Occasionally she shook her head as if trying to clear her vision or concentrate, but then she would drift off again into listlessness. I thought perhaps the white plastic bag that had wrapped around her tail feathers might be the culprit for her predicament, but the water moved it away somewhat and I realized that the duck must be sick or badly injured.
Just then the air above me erupted with the racket of a hundred or more crows cawing at me and at one another. I looked up and saw the air above the opposite bank of the river and above my head swarming with the black wings of crows. For a split second it felt as if it were me they were after and whose name they were calling. I glanced back down at the duck and a great sadness filled me. She watched me unsteadily, silently quacking at me to back away.
I didn’t know what to do. There is no animal rescue that I have ever heard of in Japan that could have been called for just this situation. Just to go home and seek the information would have taken so much time that when I got back the crows would already have done their job. I contemplated swathing the duck in my windbreaker and bringing her home, but I knew nothing about caring for a wild duck. And what if she were sick? I evaluated the water, only ankle deep, thinking that it would be so easy to just take off my shoes and wade barefoot into the water to retrieve her, but I didn’t budge. I glanced at my watch and realized that I had no more time to waste here; I had to get home and get ready for work. So I stood up and backed away from the edge of the water. Then I thought, I must do something to remember the situation and how I felt. Drawing out my camera I knelt along the bank and took two shots of the duck. She quacked at me silently.
I walked back up the emergency stairs to the promenade above.
Looking back up at the crows I justified my actions by telling myself that the crows were doing their job just as they were meant to. The duck would be dead by the next morning, her bones picked clean. The duck was too weak to survive much longer and hopefully the crows would play their role quickly. I headed home, glancing back only once. In the glare of the evening sun reflected on the surface of the river I could make out her silhouette, alone and waiting. I wasn’t there to help, and neither were her flock mates. The whole world had abandoned her.
Except the crows. They waited in the treetops as the wind picked up. Waited and cawed and watched me walk away.
Female Oblong-Winged Katydid resting amidst the underbrush, White River Junction, Vermont, U.S.A., 1989
Female Oblong-Winged Katydid resting amidst the underbrush, White River Junction, Vermont, U.S.A., 1989
Spring is ratcheting by (yes, I know it’s not a real word, but it sounded so descriptive of the occasional glimpses I make out of the window… if I was a camcorder the whole world outside would pass like a time lapse film outside my window, not too different from Rod Taylor’s 1960’s “Time Machine” visions of his world fast forwarding and fast rewinding. The two zelkovas that I planted two years ago have sprung out into a surprise of light green leaves, already waving a meter above my head. I peek out the curtain between bouts at the computer, while hard at work on the last spurt of the hotel design project, and lament yet another passing of Apollo’s chariot across the rooftops.
The other parts of the connection to sunlight and green things and air living in freedom come to me in little gifts of passage while on the trains, going to and from work. I stand on the train platform of the station near my home, looking over a tree nursery of flowering dogwoods and take a few moments to hear the last rays of the sun tinkling into the corners of my eyes, seeping in like warm honey. Or I sit transfixed, staring across the breadth of the train car at the hard lavender sky building up muscles among the clouds. When no one objects I pull open the window behind me and close my eyes as balmy fingers of wind buffet my face; at times I inhale deeply, seeking traces of sweetness in the night air. Or better yet, the living room sliding door rattles open to my hand and I step out into the dawn light, mist still screening the neighboring garden, while a flock of one of my favorite birds, the Azure Winged Magpie (Cyanopica cyana) (Pica, a very interesting curiosity about this species is that they live only here in Japan, parts of southeastern China, western Spain (in the Extremadura), and in Portugal. ) keep watch in the magnolia, their long, azure tails pointing down beneath the branches.
Perhaps the most delightful moment occurred four nights ago on my way home on the train from a long day of morning at the doctor, afternoon at a design review meeting, and evening of teaching English… I was so tired that the moment I sat down I drifted off into sleep. For some reason I woke one station before my stop and opened my eyes straight into the face of a young woman staring at my… knee. My knee? My eyes followed the line of her gaze and I nearly jumped out of my seat: there, doing a pretty little pirouette, she was, a female katydid (Holochlora japonica), green as green can be. That was not something I had expected to see on a late night train, a chilly spring evening, while half-subdued from nature-deprivation. And yet there she was, saying hello, waving at me with her antennae. I thought she was delightful, though I think the woman staring at me must have felt she was witnessing the coming of the body snatchers. I reached out to grab the katydid, and she hopped to the floor. In front of everyone and just not caring what anyone thought, I leaned down and caught her, bringing her to the window, which I promptly pulled open. I stood with the wind blowing in, my back to everyone on the train and waited until the train passed through an open area where the katydid would be sure to find the company of leaves. I tossed her into the night, wishing her well, and somehow wishing I was tossing myself out with her. She disappeared into the darkness and I closed the window, sat down, and closed my eyes again.
Nature is not some foreign dreamworld that only the initiated can attend. It is all around us, every day, wild and free and vital. It may be harder to recognize it in this concrete lab experiment we’ve decided to call “good living”, but if you peer between the cracks the denizens are moving, going about their own lives. And occasionally they look up and see us, and when you’re lucky, they wave hello.
It’s supposed to be hot and sultry these days, but it seems as if the sky has taken to wearing too much sunscreen lately. It’s making for sluggish insectine culture. The paper wasps huddle on their nests, looking bored. The ants tiptoe along the asphalt, wary of incoming raindrop bombs. The damselflies flutter up half heartedly from the riverside brush, perhaps crestfallen that this summer so far has failed to show off their usual brilliant coppers and emeralds and cobalts. Even the tiger beetles, usually so intent on doing their 100 meter dashes along the baking, open stretches of earth, sit dejectedly beneath the grass stems, trying to look mean while trying to conserve calories.
Yet out there, since last night, there is one lone cricket that began singing. In the chilly air, his wing strokes lack the normal vigor of heat induced ardor, and so it is like listening to a beginner learning the violin. He plays for passion of course and if you sit and listen for a while you will notice the slow tango quality of his verses. But he is alone in the cold. Either the other musicians haven’t arrived yet, or they decided to jump ship with the few remaining lifeboats.
One brave cricket named Cassanova. Here’s a toast to languid summer heat and long, breathless nights under your grassy bower!
My afternoon run took me along my usual route along the Noh River near my apartment. As I ran atop the walkway that follows both sides of the river, the flattened reeds and rushes that had been standing higher than my head a week ago indicated how high the flood waters had raged through the channel during the deluge last Thusday. I wish I could have made it down to the river that night, wearing the Barbour waxed jacket I bought so many years ago in London, but which has always been too hot or cold for Japan, and gazing at the waters roiling beneath the bridge, while the rain crashed down.
I took the first emergency stairs down to the reedy embankment and ran over the wet grasses. All the flattened reeds lay downriver, in the direction of the flow of water. Dead fish, silvery grey creatures about the length of my index finger, lay scattered about amidst the browning grass stems where they had become trapped.
The tops of my white and grey running shoes dashed through the wet detritus, turning dark grey from soaking up moisture. I could feel the chill of the water soaking through to my socks. And I passed through a series of zones…
First the dead fish zone. Followed by the grey dragonfly zone (Orthtrum triangulare) where they raced a knee level ahead of me, one after another, popping onto grass stems and flying up again at my approach. This was followed by a zone of pigeons feeding along the banks, a whole chortling flock of them, exploding into the air as I pounded by. As I made my u-turn across the river, to run along the embankment on the opposite side and return home, I passed into the silent, elfin zone of dark, victorian-matriarch-like damselflies (Calopteryx atrata) the large kind that beat their black wings like mute, slow-motion helicopters and flash their slim, cobalt blue abdomens between wing beats. They rose up from the path in dark droves, a mysterious flock of insectine birds. And on into the zone of fluttering white cabbage butterflies, dancing around me like tufts of tissue paper. A zone of spot-billed ducks, resting upon the shallow river water in the afternoon breeze. One mother trundled along the bank just by the water’s edge, herding her flock of seven ducklings. The final zone appeared overhead, with the silhouettes of a hundred jungle crows crouching along the telephone lines, keeping watch on the bridge below. Their harsh cries filled the grey air with the same wild abandon as the wind itself.
Of course I didn’t have my camera with me. I never have my camera with me when I see the best pictures. Perhaps that ought to tell me something about awareness and participation.
Beech trees along the ridge of the Hakone Mountains, 1993
Beech trees along the ridge of the Hakone Mountains, 1993
Today definitely has the feel of the oncoming monsoon here. Cool and grey, the air is laden with potential precipitation. While most Japanese dislike this season, since everything gets covered in white mold and clothing is impossible to hang out to dry, I actually love it. It’s warm enough walk along with just a t-shirt, and cool enough to avoid the hair-plastering-to-your forehead perspiration that will undoubtedly follow next month. I love walking along the Nogawa River nearby (really just a glorified sewer now, as most Japanese rivers are) while drenched in warm rain and watching little egrets tiptoeing along the river bed and barn swallows cavorting in the grey, watery air. And outside the city the mountains are shrouded in mystery. As you make your way along the winding paths, the way ahead is hidden in the mists, and it is a matter of making your way to each succeeding vantage point to glimpse a new part of the whole canvas…
I’m glad to report that Mission: Angry Hornet was a success. Last night at about 2 a.m. I ventured out into the garden outside my apartment to relocate the hornet nest. I placed a flood lamp on the window sill near the drain pipe to which I would attach the nest and then, looping a length of thread, I caught up the horn of the nest and carried it gingerly over to the drain pipe. Mother Hornet was furious. Though she was lethargic, she still managed to rev her wings, causing the nest to spin around like a top at the end of the thread.When through with that, she viciously attacked the thread, trying to dislodge it.
Getting the thread to pass behind the drain pipe clamp proved to be quite a process, since I couldn’t get my fingers close enough to pull the thread through, lest I be stung by Mother Hornet. Luckily Mother Hornet’s instincts to remain with her nest proved strong enough to keep her from flying out toward the flood light. If she had she would have lost contact with the nest, which, in her mind, still existed near the old attachment point. In the dark I wouldn’t have been able to get her to find the nest again if I had replaced it where it was earlier.
I finally managed to pull the thread taut and the nest was fixed. One more twist of the thread and it was secure. I backed away as quietly as I could to let Mother Hornet settle down. She seemed disconcerted by the thread, but no longer angry.
This morning I went out to check on her. There she was dozing under the hanging nest, settled again with her little growing city.
Paper wasps resting on their small nest at the side of a mountain trail.
Paper wasps resting on their small nest at the side of a mountain trail.
Out in the garden this afternoon I was clearing away some wild strawberry and dokudami (also referred to as “jyuuyaku”, meaning “Ten Medicines”, or chamelon plant: Dokudami ) when I nearly upset a young queen paper hornet minding her yet newly built paper nest. Since the nest was located right behind the storm shutter next to our back door, I sadly decided that I would have to move the nest to prevent the chance of being stung later in the summer when the nest would probably be seething with a hundred or more citizens.
When the queen turned away to tend to one of her young, I flipped my hand gently over the nest, knocking it to the ground. Naturally mother hornet was terribly upset and confused and, in that uncanny way of bees and wasps wherein they remember the exact spot of something that is no longer there, she hovered around the now vacant point where the nest had been attached.
Reaching down to the ground I picked up the nest and turned it over to examine the family. The nest was about 3 cm in diameter and about 2.5 cm thick, with a tiny horn jutting out from the top like the base of an upturned wine glass. This horn is what attaches to the surface of the point to which the nest is attached. It is quite an unlikely attachment point, being so small and flimsy looking, but never-the-less it manages to hold up quite enormous bulks of nests.
The nest is made of chewed cellulose, glued together with the saliva of the hornets, and this combination creates a substance not unlike papier mache. The result is a brownish-grey, paper-thin wall that is variegated with brown hues, depending on the wood sources that the hornets gathered the material from. The nest is as light as a feather and makes a dry, rasping sound when scratched.
To house the eggs and the growing larvae, a series of round paper tubes fan out from the attachment point, the largest and oldest tubes in the center and gradually tapering to still unbuilt tubes at the outer edge of the nest. When viewed from straight on, the openings to the tubes resemble the face of a honey bee comb, with similar, hexagonal sides and three-point joints. The queen, which lives out the whole winter after having been fertilized early in the autumn of the previous year, lays her eggs from the center out, and as the larvae hatch and grow, she builds up the tubes around them, until the oldest larvae are encased in the oldest, longest tubes, and the unhatched eggs occupy the tiny, shallow, outer tubes. The oldest larvae then go through their metamorphal stage, turning into dormant pupae and having their tube papered over with a cap. When they transform into full-winged adults they emerge from the tube and begin the business of helping the queen care for the nest.
In my hand this afternoon were about eight larvae with yellow button heads and white wriggling bodies. Six of the older tubes were capped over, the young adults soon to emerge. Along the periphery of the nest was a ring of tiny, pure white eggs, planted right in the center of each tube.
I placed the dislodged nest on top of a trellis near the spot where the nest was attached before, close enough for the queen to find it again. What I would do would be to wait until nightfall, when the queen would be sluggish in the cool air, and wrap a thread around the attachment point of the nest. I would carry the nest over to the back of the garden, where no one would chance blundering into, (including the children next door who often climb over the fence into my garden) and tie the nest to a new attachment point on a drain pipe at the side of the building. Here the hornets would rework the severed attachment point and make it stronger.
Last year the same thing happened and after the move a nest about 12 centimeters long was built by the citizenry. I still have the old nest sitting on my desk.
Most people fear wasps and hornets because they don’t understand them and don’t know how to move around them. In general, hornets will do no harm if you don’t scare them. Move slow, never jerk away from them or wave your arms wildly, and in most cases you will be fine. When observed from close up they are graceful and beautiful. They’ve had millions of years to develop and it shows. They even invented paper long before we did!
Laughing Knees 