I eat suzumebachi for breakfast

A few weeks ago a couple of us headed down south to the deepest, darkest depths of Neba village where Matt had arranged for us to meet a few locals and partake in some delicacies. I think the photos below will explain all.



Our first job was to remove all the bees and pupae from the honeycomb.




Gently gently.



Oddly sweet once you get past the slimy bit.



Success!



Bees, half-bees and pupae.



Cooked bees, half-bees and pupae. Yum!



A quick forage in the woods turned up some delicious Shiitake mushrooms..



.. and some others ideal for miso soup.



Dessert was... er.. not what I was expecting. The Suzumebachi ("Sparrow Bee", also known as the Giant Asian Hornet or "Yak-killer") is probably one of the most frightening insects you are likely to meet in rural Japan. A sting from one of these things is rather nasty and kills dozens of people every year. Not only has the pain been described as "a hot nail being driven into the flesh", the poison itself melts your flesh. At the same time the hornet gives off a pheromone that tells all the others in the area to come and sting you. That's if you aren't dead from the first one, of course. Crunchy but sweet.

Bug City

So now Japan is starting to heat up, and it wouldn't be summer without bugs. Nowhere does giant, mutated bugs like Japan, it would seem. Although I've never really had a problem with insects in the UK, I'm starting to develop an aversion to the Japanese ones, which not only look like they could hurt, but also look like they could steal your wallet and car keys while they're at it.

Today I came home to find two big black "bee-like" things circling my front room. Thankfully the doors to it were shut, trapping them in (finding one of those on my pillow wouldn't be the best way to get to sleep at night). I managed to trap them one after the other and propel them from the window. I then double checked all small gaps in the wooden roof panelling, poking pushpins into the gaps in the hope that's where they came from.

Later in the evening I was startled by a third "bee", which seemed to materialise out of nowhere. Again, I have no problem with European bees, but these things are big and noisy! The little git refused to be caught, so I reluctantly splatted the thing with a chunk of cardboard.

I'm now going to bed in the hope that the push pins are in the right place!

*Update* Turns out the "bees"(actually just flies) are called "toilet bees" here, because they are usually found in toilets. That's just lovely. Does that mean my front room smells like a lavatory?! They are harmless though, thankfully (but that won't stop me smashing the blighters if they come back!).