I was just about to step outside for an apertif, and

Egad! I was accosted by the biggest spider web I've ever seen -- three feet across and right in front of the sliding glass door. Smack dab in the middle was the most horrifying spider I have personally laid eyes upon. It, like most insects I've encountered in Nippon, was a full three times bigger than anything back home and had body armor and the steely-eyed resolve of something that will never be afraid of you. As I squealed like a little girl and ran for the camera, my new Australian roommate, Joel, who was sitting at the kitchen table, asked, "What, you don't have spiders like that in the U.S.?"

goddamnit no, we don't!

What do spiders like that eat? I just watched a show on National Geographic about spiders, and some of those things can suck down a field mouse -- just liquefy the organs with some venom, and tada! Joel said that he used to live in house where tiny spiders that could kill you with one bite were regular guests. He also lived in a different house where the backyard was infested with funneltrap spiders. I guess there were literally hundreds of spider holes. The landlord told him to avoid going in the backyard after dark! If this has taught me anything, it's that I've gotta toughen up for the next ice age or for the next comet that strikes the earth. Americans, especially those of us on the Coasts, are some of the biggest pussies! And why not? All we have to worry about are a few species of rattlesnake, the black widow, and the brown recluse -- and when was the last time you saw one of those? And our summers are a walk in the park compared with the free, 24 hour, oxygen-deprived sauna that passes for June-August in Japan.

However...

The Japanese culture is so about convenience. If you're hankering for hot bowl of curry and rice and a cold beer at 3 a.m. you can take a jaunt down the street and buy them both out of the same vending machine. This reliance on convenience could pose quite a problem in the event a major catastrophe destroys civilization as we know it; in fact, since some single Japanese men may starve to death if this occurs, and we may have a shortage of men to repopulate the earth. But I also heard that some Japanese scientists created an embryo out of two different female mouse ova, so maybe there's hope.