Week 15: mushrooms and fireworks!

This week I learned something amazing: the English slang "skosh" (as in "I'll have a skosh more pie") comes from the Japanese word "sukoshi" (a little)!! I had previously noticed the similarity, but I dismissed it as coincidence because, really, how many Japanese-derived words do we have in English? But I did some googling and the etymology is legit. Exciting!

I also learned my second Japanese joke!! Here are the two jokes I know in Japanese:

Q: What's ichi (one) plus go (five)?

A: ichigo (strawberry)

My friend's daughter told me this one and I thought it was hilarious. 

Q: Watashi no kutsu wa, nan-sai desu ka? (How old [nan-sai] are my shoes?)

A: Kusai (smelly). Hahahahaha! This one works because to make a number an age, you said the suffix -sai, and kyu is nine, so ku-sai SOUNDS like a number, but it means smelly. This one is my favourite.

Anyhoo, on Saturday I was riding my bike down the tree-lined path into the research station when I saw something so exciting that I literally leapt off of my bike in excitement:

MUSHROOMS!!! At first I thought they were Amanita pantherina, an excitingly poisonous mushroom, but now I'm not so sure... maybe they are Amanita regalis? They really do look like pantherina..

 On Sunday I saw some more pretty mushrooms:

I'm pretty sure these are actually the incredibly delicious Amanita caesareoides (also known as Amanita hemibapha), but I really don't consider myself remotely good enough at mushroom identification to even think about eating wild mushrooms (so don't worry, Mom). They look a little similar to my very favourite mushroom, Amanita muscaria (so named because it is often surrounded by a ring of dead flies!).

One last mushroom: I think this is Tremella fuciformis, yet another commonly-eaten mushroom!

I have been meaning to look for a field guide to the mushrooms of Hokkaido, so now that it's just beginning to be mushroom season I guess I'd better go to the book store!

Anyway, after my amazing mushroom adventure on Saturday I fell asleep at like 6 pm (because I only slept for one hour on Friday night...), but I was awoken by the sound of fireworks!! I went to check them out with my neighbours.

In terms of my critter sightings: this week I mainly saw enormous bugs. I saw the biggest spider in the history of the world on Thursday ;__; It was bigger than Aragog! I was only able to get a terrible cell phone picture where you can't really judge the size, but here it is anyway. 

My friend said that the spider looks photoshopped in. Alas, how I wish that was the case!!

I pointed it out to one of my Japanese labmates and he was like "Oh yeah, there are lots of those around. Didn't you wonder what had been making webs that are literally > 1m in size and that are strong enough to trap multiple dragonflies?" The answer is that yes, it had occurred to me that there must be something afoot, but I really hadn't wanted to think about it. I haven't had the guts to google "giant spiders of Hokkaido" (I have enough spider-related nightmares as it is), but my friend in Toronto did, and he thinks that it was probably one of these beasts (click at your own risk, obviously). Blargh!!

I also caught a cricket the size of a VW beetle in my room. He wasn't scary, but he was big enough that I had to use a tupperware container instead of a drinking glass to catch him because he was THAT big. I really, really want to catch one of the feral cats (or maybe a tanuki!!!!) to deal with my bug woes.

Finally, I noticed a great sign on my way home from the grocery store:

Have a drink and a perm at the beauty saloon!