The cockroach or 'gokiburi' is Japan's unofficial national animal. They're friggin everywhere! When I first got here they terrified me (those of you who've read my cockroach story will know my trauma). When I was a kid I hated spiders, but spiders have nothing on cockroaches. Compared to cockroaches I love spiders! However as time passed my fear faded but not my disgust. I still gotta kill 'em when I see them in the house, but nowadays I don't need a huge pile of toilet paper to pick them up, nor do I have that lingering feeling of dread for hours after. My current house is something like 50 years old so of course it's a haven for them. I've heard that for every cockroach you see, there are another 30 or so that you can't see. Using that logic there must be around three thousand cockroaches in the walls and cracks here because I've seen about a hundred this year alone. Just the other night I woke up around 2am, had to use the washroom. When I went down stairs and turned on the lights there were about 30 cockroaches, ranging from small to medium, milling around the sink, floor and counter, having a damn cockroach party or something. Thats when my can of bug spray really comes in handy as you can see in the righthand picture: 'the last thing a cockroach ever sees before going to the great garbage dump in the sky'. The stuff kills in seconds, and would probably kill me too if I inhaled too much of it. A week later, came down again at night and a different group was going at it. Now I'm starting to run out of spray, so we've put some of those poison trap thingys around the house. I've come down a few more times but the last time I only found two. Either I'm winning the war or the cockroaches are getting smarter. Most likely they're getting smarter....

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