Sometimes I Touch Things.

Wow. I am completely stunned that Blogger actually remembered my language preferences this time. You see, each time I go to log in, it reverts me to the Japanese version and it takes exactly 10 seconds to change it back to English, which is completely unacceptable. Perhaps I won't kill Blogger just yet...

I'd like to talk about some things that I have touched over the past week. For some reason, I cannot just leave things alone and whenever I find something novel (ESPECIALLY if it's some sort of animal), I must touch it. This includes unsuitably hot things, cold things, all things relating to water, gross things, things that do not need to be touched in order to ascertain their nature, but that I want to touch anyway. I do this... just because. You know that one scene in My Neighbor Totoro where Mei touches the huge sleeping Totoro by stepping up to it and moving her hand palm flat downward? Yeah, I like that scene, and feel it is a very Asian way to touch animals as I have seen my mom pet cats like that.

Anyhoo, some things that I have touched in the past week:

1. A Sea Turtle -- The station that I am staying out is about 20m from the ocean which I often swim in after chasing monkeys in the forest all day. Surprisingly, I am the only one that does this as the Japanese researchers always look at me quizzically (read: why?) whenever I mention a swim. Apparently, the only reason the other researchers ever go to this much too convenient beach is in order to see the sea turtles come to lay their eggs in the summer... which is now! So I went out in the evening to find me a big birthing sea turtle, and I found two. And I touched one of them. And she felt like a well-loved old leather bag. Except for her shell. Which was hard.

Seeing the sea turtles lay their eggs was completely awesome and I highly recommend it to anyone who has a chance to see them outside of the aquarium setting. And in typical Japanese fashion, a volunteer (clad all in white) from some turtle conservation town council happened upon me and my turtle in the night, and set about identifying my turtle, measuring its shell, counting its eggs, then FLIPPING THE WHOLE TURTLE OVER and measuring the length of its underbelly. It was all very business-like, if not leaving the turtle a bit disoriented. But luckily I was there to accompany it back to the sea, touching it the entire length of the sandbar all the way to the ocean. I couldn't resist.

2. A Jellyfish -- I did not want to touch this one, but it happened anyway. I was swimming out a little too far in the ocean when I felt stingy-stings on my inner left leg and turned around to see a cluster of white-watery things near the surface. This is a piss poor description of my attacker which could describe many ocean creatures, but I wasn't going to swim around and gaze at it when I had sustained some type of injury. I swam to shore and immediately gathered my things to set home. En route I met a toothless old Japanese woman with essential tremor who pointed to my leg and inquired:

Obaachan: "Kaipoejo deifowja ka?"
Me: "I Japanese no good, many sorries." (in Japanese)
Obaachan: "轡."

I should've taken her picture; I bet her face would have felt just like the sea turtle's flipper did. And my leg swelled up for a time but its now fine.

3. Forest Crabs -- Whenever it rains in the forest (and this is quite often as it is rainy season), these cute little crabs come out of their hiding places and generally scuttle about threatening twigs and bark with their tiny non-threatening claws outstretched ("Well aren't you strong! Yes you're soooo big! Who's my little princess?"). So in between collecting monkey excrement, I like to mess with these little guys because I feel like they become incredibly offended by it. For some reason, I imagine crabs as being rather proud creatures and I generally like to crush the proud feelings of any animal/person/thing by fucking with them. I have collected two of them and they now live in my scooter basket:

I will eventually add some leaf litter and sticks, you know, to simulate their natural environment.

I gave him some rice, because I'm crazy like that. And I like to share. Natch.

And those are some of the things I touched this week.