I had a couple of interviews and wanted to know what I’m getting myself in to. I was hoping to get placed in a warmer area. Here in Florida, we have some pretty crazy wildlife where insects and small animals get in to the house. I just started hearing things like the cockroaches are massive and they fly, the giant hornets are deadly, and the centipedes sting like crazy. We have these animals enter the house all the time, but they aren’t as big or dangerous. Are these things as common and enter the house as much? Should I be prepared?
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Cockroaches, huntsman spiders, house centipedes, and mukade (the big aggressive centipedes) are all pretty common guests. Only the mukade is actually dangerous. It won’t kill you but it is painful.
As a fellow Floridian moving to Japan sometime in the near future, I will be monitoring this thread with great interest.
IME, living in multi-story or high-rise buildings in Tokyo, never on the ground floor, there are virtually no bugs. I’m sure your experience will vary depending on the type of building and location.
As stated above, mukade are the only inside visitors you have be wary of (I.e. the only ones which can cause harm). Cockroaches, house centipedes (not like the mukade but much uglier, however harmless) and huntsman spiders are all other potential house guests, particularly roaches which are large and can fly (however the bigger the better as the large ones are just outside wanderers and don’t mean an infestation, it’s a smaller ones which you have to be wary of most). The harmless ones can be worth keeping around if you see them as they will eat the worse creepy crawlies – namely, the mukade. However, the up side is that the amount of (and strength of) different choices for pest control/killing sprays and powders are on another level and can be brought virtually everywhere. Plus if you only have an issue with certain pests, they have specific sprays or powders which work best on certain bugs.
I live in a 2nd floor apartment (old building, but recently renovated) in Tokyo, right next to a park. We get tiny, adorable spiders, occasional mosquitos and one cockroach every few months. Nothing at all scary or hard to handle.
Living in a 4th floor inner-city apartment for almost 7 years. All i get are the occasional tiny black spiders that do little 1cm hops when disturbed.
In my second year, i got a single one of those giant black roaches. Murdered it immediately. Never seen one inside since.
Countryside living is a different story.
Unless you’re in the countryside, don’t expect many insects. We live on the first floor and still the only insects we get are tiny spiders. Great entertainment for the cats.
I’m in a suburban area. In a leopalace 2nd floor apartment. Don’t keep it particularly tidy to my shame.
Outside? Tons of spiders (I’m arachnophobic!) and other bugs.
Inside? Besides fruit flys, nothing really.
If you are from the American South or Australia nothing will surprise you except monkeys.
Well, I had to kill a huntsman spider at 3am last night, with about a 10cm legspan. Noticed him because when he **sprinted** across the shoji behind me, I could very clearly hear every footstep as he ran. Sounded like miniature drums. Good times.
(Wanted to try and catch him to release him outdoors but the b*stard ran so fast I couldn’t get a net on him. Plus I didn’t really want to experience him charging up the handle at me if he got *onto* the net but not *into* it. Sorry, spidey.)