“D’ya like dags?” I said to some Japanese lad waiting at the train station. “Nawh” he said, “I like bugs”. “Right, yeah” I said to him and tried to distance meself from the weirdo. Bugs, what was he on about? Who likes bugs? I asked around and apparently the lads here are mad into keeping bugs as pets. I thought it was crazy shtuff altogether, sure it’s hardly goin’ to go fetch a ball or anythin’ that a dag does generally be at. I’m fierce modern and open minded though, so I thought I should go check it out for meself and see what all the craic was with these bug boyos.
I headed out to a shop in Nakano called “Mushisha”. If you’re ever in that neck of the woods and fancy scarin’ the bejeezus out of yourself I highly recommended stickin’ your head in for a nosy.
I went in anyway and there were bugs all over the shop, on the shelves on the floor on the counters, they were in little plastic tubs though thank god. I was chattin’ with the lad behind the counter and asking him a hape of questions which I’m sure he answered but honestly I really don’t have a clue how to speak Japanese, but if I did I'm sure I would've heard him tell me that catching bugs and keeping them as pets is a big past time in Japan especially for the ladeens. There's two main types:
This lad is called a “Hercules beetle” in Britshpeak, the Japanese call it a “Kabuto-mushi”. It takes about two years to get to that shape (it starts out as a wee wormeen and when I say wee I mean you need two hands to hold it) and once it does it only lives for a few months before it keels over and dies. It costs about 500 quid for one. They can lift about 850 times their own body weight though like, so fair fucks to them for that. The lad up there is a male, the females don’t have the horns because the bais use the horns for scrappin’ over the girls.
This is the other kind of beetle that’s popular. It’s called a “Kuwagata-mushi”. These lads live for up to 8 years and hibernate during the winter. They have a massive set of jaws at the front which they use to bite and its a real shtinger. These lads are more expensive because they’re way cooler lookin’. These ones are a lot smaller than the Kabuto-mushi but all the young lads want these ones so they can fight them against their mates ones, or to try and breed the ultimate fighting beetle.
Here’s a picture of the previous lads missus. You can see that she has much smaller teeth than he does. That’s because shes a byeure and the byeures don’t mess around or throw shlaps like the lads do so they dont need the big mouth parts.
Kuwagata-mushi come in a woejus amount of different shapes and sizes. I call this lad “The Shredder”. I had to be careful with this one, the shopkeeper opened the box for me to take an aul’ shnap shnap and he came at me all fast like lookin’ to give me an aul’ shnip shnip on me fingers!
I like to call this one “Nightmare Fuel”.
This is what the little nightmares like to eat, it’s like a little tub of jelly with fruit in it.
Look at this lad! Mad for his jelly so he is! I asked him about the jelly and sure he said: “I wouldn’t be awful fond of jelly but when I do go at it, I do go at it awful very hard. I do have forty five tubs in eh in about two hours, I’ll have a packet o’ crips then and maybe an aul’ packet o’ peanuts and I’d go for probably, eh I’d have ten more anyway and then I’d get up the followin’ mornin’ and Maureen’d have the fry on and I’d go at it again, aye there’d be no fuckin’ shtoppin me I’d have the shirt off any mans back, the bastherds.”
Some people feed them little bitteens of fruit but they go mouldy and then the bugs die. The bugs are mad getting themselves killed too. One of their favourite hobbies is to climb up against their little boxeen until they flip themselves over onto their back, once they’re on their back they shpend a load of energy trying to flip back, then they waste too much and they die, and that’s the quickest way that 500 quid can kill itself.
This is a three horned Kabuto-mushi. Lads who collect these are widely considered to be try hards so I won’t go into talkin’ about them too much but suffice to say they’re shite craic and three horns is just over the top, no one wants to be seein’ that, c’mon like, bitta cop on.
In case you’re wondering, all of the bugs I shown ya so far can fly. It’s scary and I hope you never have to see it. This is the rarest lad in the whole shop. I’ve never seen one like this before, he costs upward of about two grand. Why? Well, lets take a look under the hood and I’ll show ya.
Here you can see hes fitted with a V6 twin turbo engine, Bespoke 6 speed Quaife gearbox with pneumatic paddle-activated gear shift with auto-blip, ABS brakes with Bosh traction control, Adjustable carbon-composite wing mirrors and finally, Fully-floating disc brakes with six-pot calipers front 3.60mm, rear 3.30mm.
Lookin’ at and learnin’ all about these little nasty crawlin’ things was a very eye opening experience altogether. I don’t think I’ll be getting any of these lads as pets any time soon though, I’ll just stick to me dags
They also had this really long fish. he was mighty sad lookin’ but sure there was nothin’ I could do for him, so I just left him.
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