Wee Kev's Blog

Today was yet another moving day in my 3 month tenure in Japan.  This is the 4th place I’ve lived in the last 8 weeks.  I found it online, and it fit all the needed requirements… reasonable rent, good location, internet and the ability to have guests without paying some sort of obscene guest surcharge.  I’d normally check a place out before committing to a months stay, but I didn’t want to pay the 1000 yen train fare to come down and I thought, how bad could it be?  Well, I’m in the heart of osaka (Namba/Shinsaibashi), though actually it feels like I’m in Korea as everyone around here is Korean.  As I stumbled along trying to find this place in the absurdly hot August sun, toting an overstuffed suitcase and an external monitor in a grocery shopping bag, I realized that I’m far less discriminated against by the Japanese police/gov’t than your average Korean/Chinese gaijin.  The cops were out in full force checking everyones id cards who were walking by and from what I could tell, writing slews of tickets.  Ah those trouble causing Koreans overstaying their visas trying to make a living providing Japanese people their most favorite of dishes (yakiniku).  The good part is, that the tickets help to inflate the foreigner caused crimes stat that the anti-gaijin political party likes to use so much in their quest to eradicate anybody/anything non-japanese.  I being the most obvious Gaijin in the area, was not even looked at.  Guess they’re only worried about foreigners who blend in?

Anyway, so I got to my place…. tried to get online… couldn’t… panicked a bit (sad I know), then decided to just pass out and sort it out when I woke up.  Looking forward to a solid 8 hours, I laid down and within an hour I was promptly awoken by the phone from a girlfriend who lives on a normal schedule and expects me to be on one too.  She wants to hang out… alright, I’m way tired, but whatever, maybe she can help me unpack, and I’m really sick of eating instant Ramen.  So my 8 hours turned into a little over 1, but at least now I’m un-packed and fed.  Now fully awake and determined to make the internet work, I look over and guess who’s asleep on the floor…  Looking past her into the kitchen is a 2 inch GAENORMOUS cockroach scurrying across the floor.  THAT’S WHERE I SLEEP!!! I don’t normally pay them much attention, but now that I’m sharing bed space with their playground I’m a little more concerned. 

Which brings me to the point of my post today, I’m going to start blogging about what I’ve learned each day, and today happens to be cockroach study.  We don’t have them much in Colorado, so I’m basically a noob at dealing with them, so I needed the basics.  Here’s what I learned…  They need 4 things (in order of importance) Water, Food, A place to crash/nest/sex, and warm humid climate.  So first and foremost removing these as much as possible is mostly important.
Then a solution of 1pFlour/1pCocoa powder/2pBorax and dust everywhere you think they live.  It has to stay dry, so keep that in mind when you placing the power The borax causes them to dehydrate and die, and they bring it back to the nest and get it all over the other ones, so they all die too. Though in humid environments this is a bit more tricky as the dehydration time is slower.  Or if making a powder and a dusting seems like a pain, a probably better slightly more costly solution is bait/gels with Fipronil that contain a chemical that kills them and also spreads from one to the rest.  The chemical is excreted in their feces and the babies have no teeth so they can only eat the feces of the mother, then the mother and babies die and the others eat their decaying bodies, which then infects all the ones that eat them, and this continues on for up to 10 generations.  Crazyness, just apply a Fipronil gel or bait trap to where ever the cockroaches roam.  Gels are a little better than hard baits, because immature non-toothed buggers can eat them too.
Places to put traps/bait/gel
  * Refrigerator - Between refrigerator and nearby appliance, such as the dishwasher.
  * Sink - Alongside pipe collar where drainpipe enters the wall
  * Cupboards - Flush mounted against. an upper corner
  * Other appliances - Behind microwave, toaster, blender, coffee maker, etc.
  * Floor placements - underneath dishwasher and/or oven
Don’t know where their coming from? ... sticky traps are good for determining where they are coming plus it gives me a little piece of mind while I’m sleeping on the floor.

Well, tomorrow I’ll have to try and find Fipronil gel, I wonder what that is in Japanese?  Fipuroniru? 

-kev