Long Dark Night of the Slipper

This blog has been brought to you with the help of Japan’s many-legged poisonous friend, the mukade.

A couple of days ago, S found one in our apartment. Now, maybe it was the muggy rain outside or the workmen leaving the door open while delivering parts for our new shower that brought it in: but we couldn’t be sure that we didn’t have some bad-tempered, non-rent-paying occupants living in the tatami.

Three thoughts flashed through my mind:

• 1. Mukade travel in pairs.
• 2. If you get bitten by one then you need to go to the hospital…
• 3. …I don’t have health insurance.

We actually had to bug-bomb the apartment, but until we could do that, we spent the next couple of nights sleeping in shifts. So it was, in the quietly ticking hours of the dawn, during a lonely mukade watch/patrol, that this blog was born.