Animals I have seen

here in the wilds of Tottori there are many animals, mostly skulking in between the nasty local trees as they wait to ambush passing life forms with great and disgusting bursts of cancerous pollen. I feel I should post briefly on the variety of fauna I have encountered over the last few weeks, excluding Hotaru (creatures so magical that they get their own post, lucky little things). This post fits very nicely between that on Taiko (since it was at Taiko that I saw one particularly cool beasty) and Hotaru (which are the highlight of my animalian adventures so far).

Animals I have seen so far include:

• stink bugs by the million, mostly a lurid green which makes them a little like very stinky snot balls. Japan has a diversity of insects which would boggle the mind of the average Australian, being used as he or she is to funnel webs, blowflies and mosquitoes. The stink bugs come in to the fifth floor of my residence through open windows, and lurk about the sink waiting to befoul one`s dishes as one washes them
• butterflies, many of them beautiful and very large (there was one the size of a small bat in Hiroshima)
• every possible form of dangerous flying insect you can imagine, on steroids. This includes hornets the size of jet planes, bumble bees capable of carrying helicopters (and twice as noisy) and about 80 varieties of wasp all possessed of stingers so large the locals use them as a kind of durable drinking straw
• frogs and turtles, which abound in every pond and puddle everywhere
• herons and cranes, which stand sentinel over every rice paddy
• a Tanuki!!! This Japanese raccoon dog of legend was hiding in a culvert near the Taiko, and Mr. Hiroki and I disturbed it while waiting for Kaori-san to meet us. The Tanuki is a little bigger than a cat, fat like a wombat, covered in spiky tufts of fur, and has big dog-like eyes that look startled. It ran away, but it was very cute
• A fox!!!! This fox was running across the road in ordinary suburban tottori as I walked home from Mr. Hiroki`s house. It was carrying a mouse and running with that dainty long-legged prance which distinguishes foxes from more doggy members of the animal kingdom. It was maybe a bit skinny and scrawny but still very pretty. And before anyone feels the need to comment that they`re pests - being a pest doesn`t make you any less beautiful.
• Kittens! There are a million feral cats on the university, waiting to feast on the remains of foreigners who collapse from allergy-related head explosions, and in June they give birth to millions of tiny cute feral kittens. These cats are of the hard-arsed "I`ll scratch your eyes out if you even look sideways at me" variety, and they are armed, usually with chunks of wood they have salvaged from rubbish piles around the uni, so you can`t get too close to them, but sometimes they meow at you when you are eating. I think when they grow up the kittens join the Yakuza, but when they are little they are very cute.

Life in Tottori is lived very close to a ring of thickly forested mountains, and I think within half an hours` drive of my home there are bears. Frog season and the season of singing insects (suzumushi) is still to come, so stay tuned for further adventures with mysterious japanese creatures.