*BAD JOKE ALERT!* A Walk That Didn't Bug Me *BAD JOKE ALERT OVER*

A short walk in my neighborhood, nothing wrong with that. Sure, I know I said I’d only do some groceries and spend the rest of my day relaxing but what’s wrong with a casual stroll through Kashihara. What’s wrong? I’ll tell you what’s wrong! These damn maps that make everything look so close and, thus, a casual stroll turns into a three-hour walk to something you thought would be much, much bigger. The Kashihara City Insect Museum, not much literature on this place but the one photo I had presented this place to be a really interesting looking building. And it is. I can’t blight the architecture. The place looks like an insect in itself, or a crown but I am banking more on it looking like an insect because the place isn’t called the Kashihara City King’s Crown Museum. My problem is in photographic representation being extremely proportionately manipulative. I went out to this crown-bug-thing expecting a Hummer and what I got was a VW Beetle. Well, it IS an insect museum. Very apt that this museum bug me so. The walk there, however, did not…much…well maybe a little. I really have to learn to add another hour or so to every destination to compensate for inadequate cartography. I had just completed one of those Office Days that I get so often but this is only the second one that did not send me to another class to teach. I used it by heading off to the school closest to me early and spent the morning planning my week’s lessons. Then there was a knock at the door. In walked a fellow teacher who also had an office day. Ah, there was some of that conversation I was talking about the other day. I almost didn’t want to see the bug-crown-like museum as I could have spent the entire day shooting the shit with this guy. He has been here in Japan for over three years and has always given me some interesting hike ideas. He had lesson plans to get to, though, and I had a bug museum to try to find so I packed up my things and left him to it. It was another beautiful day in the prefecture of Nara.

The museum is out by one of the tree area mountains, remember, two of them being thought of as males and one of them as female. This one was near the female mountain. Lots of nice homes on the way although lots of highway road as well. It must be a popular spot because there were English road signs. I stopped briefly at the Fujiwara palace site again. The trees had grown out some since the last time I was here. There was somebody playing guitar on the small mound near the lantern remains of the palace. He reminded me of the other night leaving Tenri, another Eliminator ran, when, in front of the train station I sang a few tunes with some of the guitar players there. The area in front of Tenri station attracts two types of entertainment: guitar players and break dancers (an entirely separate post, my friends). Usually they are singing tunes in Japanese but this guy was strummnig a guitar rendition of Billy Joel’s Just The Way You Are and he new the words. There are usually more than one group of guitar players here, this evening there were three. I had sat with two of them earlier trying to get some English tunes out of them and they knew Tears in Heaven by Clapton but not the words. This guy playing the Billy Joel sang along…sang along off key but he still sang along. It is always great to have this guitar players here at the station after work to sit with and listen to after a strenuous day of child insanity. I didn’t stop to listen to the palace mound guitarist, though. There was a bug museum to find.

Again, not much to look at on the way but a few farms, some statues, land in need of some rain (some spots out here look like the Arizona wastelands), a few really rich looking homes and lots, and I mean lots, of spider webs! The eight-legged ones are coming out in droves, I see. I ran into one in my kitchen last night. This was a brave little beast and slightly larger then those back home. It saw me. I saw it. The spider stood its ground, even advanced upon me slowly as though to frighten me off. I had a secret weapon maybe the spider didn’t see. I had a can of deodorant and a shoe. One heavy blast from the can and a drop of a sneaker and the standoff was over. Man defeats spider. I just hope all of these webs didn’t belong to his buddies out for revenge. Yikes!

I though I had managed to get myself lost again but found myself on the right track when I came across a series of paintings on the fence bars of a bridge. These paintings created an optical illusion. They were insects, you see, painted at just the angle that as you are walking towards them you see them perfectly but when you reach them they are just a series of meaningless lines. A very interesting effect. The museum is located in front of a large cemetery and although not even close to the amount of graves found at Koya-san this lot for the dead is the second largest I have seen. What an odd place to choose to erect a large crown looking, bug looking museum. I didn’t have much information about this place, as I had said, only a picture. The internet search turns up this blurb about the museum: “There is a specimen exhibition room where you can learn about insects through panels, specimens and audio-visual aids, the habitat exhibition room where you can experience the habitat of insects and the butterfly hothouse where you can observe butterflies flying about looking for nectar.” I had no interest in butterflies in search of nectar, although I was mildly curious about a butterfly hothouse. Sound sexy! I hadn’t come here to go in. Nope, I was out for architectural photography and though the place was much smaller then I had thought it still looked really damn cool. I mean, come on, cross a beetle with a king’s crown, make it see through so the creepy crawlies get some nice sun and then turn it into a medium sized glass structure in the middle of nowhere Kashihara City and you get this insectarium. From outside you could see the bugs congregated in the windows or in the natural habitat (natural meaning lots of trees and dirt inside a king’s crown, in this case). If you have an insect phobias, folks, do not come this way. The sun was against me again today, my greatest photographic advisory, and there were no real good angles from which to shoot until I walked up the hill and into the cemetery which was kind of creepy. Seriously, why would they put a museum nearly on top of this massive graveyard? Maybe all the people here died from bug bites and bee stings.

On the second go round of circling this place for good angles I noticed the large beetles (fake people, they were fake), four of them attached to the building. Four of them. Four beetles. I figured I would give them a name but what to name four beetles. Think. Think. Think. I got it! Groucho, Harpo, Zeppo and Ringo. I was nearly tempted to go in despite my disinterest in whatever freaky looking bugs they had in there. I mean, I had walked all this way and everything. But, I decided that a nice shower and some diner would make for a better evening then studying the mating patterns of the Japanese dung beetle. So long Groucho, Harpo, Zeppo and Ringo, maybe I would have stayed yesterday, but here comes the sun and it is sinking fast taking me into a hard day’s night and I really should get back to the long and winding road because right now I’m in the middle of nowhere, man, and though I could purchase a ticket to ride the train back I think I will just let it be and walk because I feel fine, from me to you ,and (do you want to know a secret?) I really am just a day tripper across the universe trying to act naturally. Well, obla-di-obla-da…