Japan is that country that has so many oddities that sometimes I have trouble deciding which one to turn my attention to.
There are oddities that make you smile, like the Japanese craze for putting dogs in strollers to take them out. Ah, I also saw a rabbit inside a stroller but it was such an absurd scene that for a moment I thought I had only imagined it.
Then there are the oddities that disturb you, but only at night. Like the scarecrow village where they solved the problem of the lack of inhabitants by replacing humans with well-dressed puppets. The scarecrows sit at the bus stop or on the benches in front of the house. They gather in parks and enjoy scaring those who know nothing of their existence and see them appear in the dark of night. Traffic or queues at the post office are certainly not problems to be solved in this town where silence reigns, a lot of silence, too much silence… so much so that even the omnipresent giant black crows have migrated to other shores.
Then there are the oddities that personally send a cold shiver down my spine. Like the most popular hobby among elementary school children. No, it’s not collecting Pokémon cards or even playing baseball or soccer. It is something much worse, more chilling, incomprehensible and disconcerting.
Children around age 10 are caring for a pet that is not a dog in a stroller or even a temple cat. This is the kabutomushi, an insect, I repeat a huge insect. A beetle with a frontal horn that children enjoy catching in the wild and then caring for at home.
So… I’m not a fan of insects. I know they exist and have their role in nature, but being too close to them makes me a little anxious. I don’t think I could imagine having a huge cockroach in my house complete with reddish hairs and a pointed horn. I don’t think it would make me sleep peacefully. So I appreciate the courage of Japanese children, but above all of parents who see these beasts dozing in transparent plastic cases.
However, I discovered this strange hobby when by chance we ended up in a shop that sold these giant insects. Some were so large that they cost several hundred euros. It was at that moment that I realized that by sleeping in a tent in nature, the chances of seeing one pass by free and happy were high. Yes, I admit, for a moment I considered booking a flight and leaving.
Luckily though, so far no kabutomushi has crossed our path and I must say that for a few days I started to see the positive side of this hobby. If you took care of an insect like this as a child, as an adult your legs won’t shake every time you see a spider bigger than your hand. I thought that was the goal of this activity, then I heard a scream while I was in the locker room before entering the hot tub of the onsen. A girl, a little younger than me, had let out that frightened scream because a bug had been found on her shirt. Maybe breeding beetles doesn’t exactly solve all traumas.
But let’s move on to the spicy oddities that are forbidden to minors under 18. The Japanese experience sexuality, and everything connected to it, in a very different way from ours. It is a difficult aspect to judge, especially starting from the purely Catholic mentality and culture in which we all, for better or worse, grew up. I have already mentioned previously the issue of brothels, temples with phallic totems and the purely Japanese concept of nudity.
But there is another element that is even more out in the open and that is the erotic manga that can be found and browsed in common places.
You can find them, for example, in almost all popular convenience stores. There is a section dedicated to magazines where comics for adults are also sold and it is not uncommon to see people standing around reading a few pages.
The same thing happens in many laundromats where you can kill time between a pre-wash and a spin, reading adventurous “love” stories.
Sexual comics and animated products are a pornographic genre invented in Japan and known in the West by the term “hentai”. The word actually has a derogatory meaning and for this reason it is not used in Japan where people prefer to talk about manga for adults.
Yes, we did, we browsed through some too. As long as we’ve been traveling in this country by motorbike and tent, laundromats have become an essential stop for us. In about an hour and with a cost of around €3, we wash and dry all our laundry without any particular effort.
So one morning, instead of watching the remaining time decrease on that washing machine that was roughly my age, we started looking at those comics.
First of all, which is important for following the exciting plot, Japanese comics are browsed backwards. Not that it makes much difference when you don’t understand a word that’s one of the written ones, but order is important in everything so we started turning the pages from the last one.
The covers deserve a separate discussion because they are shiny and colorful unlike the rest which is in black and white on thick and rough paper.
The stories seemed unexciting and I didn’t understand them much. They all had a common denominator, at a certain point, whether they were in the office, on the street or at the supermarket, a bed would magically appear on which the two lovers would lay down to give vent to their passions.
Can I say that certain images made me smile? Especially for the disparity in the designs. Female bodies were represented in every detail, while male bodies were almost always covered or replaced by distressing beams of light that left everything, perhaps too much, to the imagination.
