The Stink of Spring

I don't want to alarm you, but it seems that the stink bug season will be upon us soon.
The Asian brown marmorated stink bug has invaded the US and is about to descend in Biblical proportions on delicious US crops, devouring all in its path and laying waste to the landscape, turning once fertile fields into windblown, desert desolation.
OK, it's not THAT bad, but the nasty bugs do pose a threat to US crops, and 2013 is looking to be a bad year. Not only do they feast on a wide variety of crops, but they are very difficult to eradicate. Even swatting them with a magazine or a slipper leaves a bad smell behind which is itself very difficult to remove.
Being "Asian" stink bugs, we have them here in Japan, of course, and have suffered from the "over-wintering" problem in our house. They sneak into the crooks and crannies of the walls and hibernate, then when warmer spring weather arrives, they come out in their masses, looking for dates. They crowd around on the windows and walls, checking each other out, often pairing off and ... well... this IS a family blog... you can imagine what they do.
We vacuum them up, but that leaves a very bad smell – true to their name – in the vacuum exhaust.
In the US, they are experimenting with various ways of eliminating this destructive pest. They have tested pheromones to lure the stinky creatures into traps, but these have not proven to deal with the large numbers of bugs around. Chemical solutions have been tried as well, but the sprays they use must go on the fruits and vegetables which humans also eat, so the risk of toxicity to consumers is also a concern. There is a small parasitic wasp that lays its eggs among stink bug eggs. The wasp eggs hatch and eat up the stink bug eggs around them. The trouble with using a non-native species of wasp is that nobody knows what other side effects it might have. Non-native species can be unexpectedly dangerous. The inadvertent introduction of the brown snake in Guam, for example, almost obliterated the native bird population. Similar disastrous effects have been shown in New Zealand as well; mammals brought in from outside killed off a lot of the native birds which had evolved to become flightless for lack of predators, making them easy prey.
What can be done about the stink bugs?
First of all it's important to relate to them in their own language. These ARE Asian stink bugs after all, and most – if not all – of them probably understand Japanese. So we should look to Japan to see what they do to deal with these pests.
In Japan, cracking down on social problems such as criminal gangs and the like is done by flying large banners that say things like, "Stop Idling" or "Stop Old People Traffic Accidents", "Stop Motorcycle Rough Riders", or even "Stop Gangs".  This same strategy also applies to stink bugs.
Yes, they fly banners in the fields saying "Stop Stink Bugs". These red banners make the stink bugs feel unwelcome and encourage them to move along and not eat up the tender stalks of rice. Most of them probably go to the US.
The US needs to buy these banners and fly them in its fields and orchards to make the stink bugs move to another place. Some of the stink bugs may have adapted to American life, so it would not be a bad idea to have banners in both Japanese and English, just in case.
If we can continue this program, eventually we can convince the stinky insects that they all must move to Canada or some other inhospitably cold place where they will "overwinter" for their whole lives, never coming out in spring.

Like Nobody's "Business"

photo attribution below

Today we are going to be sophisticated and talk about cross-cultural communication issues. If you can't handle this level of conversation, go do something else... pat a cat or something. 

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For the sophisticated rest of you, this picture on the left here is of a old-style, Japanese toilet, the humble "squat pot".  That's what I call it.
In Japanese it's called 便所 (benjo), a word which is actually rarely in use today.
Why?
The word itself makes you want to crinkle your nose in a kind of Pavlovian reaction to imagined smells and icky incrustations.

In days of yore, many of these were not flush toilets – as this rather modern, spiffy one is – but rather "drop pots" where the day's "passings" would be collected in a large tank under the floor.  In addition, public toilets were often messy. People would miss, especially on moving trains and while drunk on their ways home in the dark.
The use of this toilet is straightforward. You enter the toilet cubicle, putting on the toilet slippers (yes, there are separate slippers for the toilet in Japan, but not in public toilets). You face the raised, rounded part at the end nearest the toilet paper in the picture. You pull down your pants and squat over the long part with the hole in it to do your "business". Yes, you do need to be able to squat all the way down. 
Apparently this is a very healthy way to relieve yourself, preventing such scary events as defecation syncope (fainting while pooping) and even death due to cardiovascular complications.
Who knew?!
Everyone in Japan knows how to use toilets like these, especially back when these toilets were more common. 
Everyone, no exceptions.
Nowadays the toilets with "bells and whistles" prevail, but in the old days these humble "squat pots" were more widespread. You can still find them in rural areas: in small out-of-the-way parks, old railroad stations, remote ski areas, and traditional Japanese inns. 
Which brings me to the cultural conundrum. 
Years ago we visited Naruko, a regionally famous hot spring village near Sendai. It was a typical rural, hot spring community – a little worn and funky, but still retaining some old-time charm. The inn where we stayed was one of the cheaper ones, offering more rustic facilities, including a shared toilet – like the one pictured above – at the end of the hall. Very few foreigners came to that inn and no other foreigners were there when we checked in. Our room was a traditional Japanese inn-room with tatami mat floors, a low table with sitting cushions on the floor, and roll out bedding to sleep on.
The morning after our arrival, I went down the hall to the toilet, rattled open the sliding door and went in, only to discover that someone had been in there before me and had used the toilet in such a way so as to leave a rather large poo, decorating the round, upraised part of the potty (see picture above). 
There is only one way to make this happen and that is to use the toilet incorrectly.
To accomplish this, you need to squat, facing the wrong way.  Next you have to not get into a full-squat position because of the upraised round part below you (don't try this at home kids). Basically, what we are talking about here is something NOBODY would do!
I could hear the brain-workings of the inn-staff member when she discovered this poo. 
It does have a compelling logic.
1. Clearly no Japanese would do this.  ↩
2. Duh. ↩
3. A foreigner would do this. ↩
4. Those foreigners in room #2 (us) are the only foreigners around. ↩
5. Therefore, they did it. 
So we were faced with a difficult choice. We could report it or not report it. (Cleaning it up never occurred to us that early in the morning.) If we didn't report it, obviously the staff would conclude that we did it (see logic above). If we DID report it, the staff might still conclude that we did it and were trying to cover our tracks (so to speak) by reporting it "innocently".
We decided on the latter approach and reported to the staff that someone had used the toilet improperly.
They are probably still laughing about it, "Remember those foreigners who came in here and pooped ON the toilet instead of IN it?"
"Yes! Ha ha ha! And that huge guy also used the sitting cushions to make his bedding longer. I bet HE did it. I have never seen such a big poo before!"
"Yeah! Those foreigners...!"
"Hee hee hee hee!" 

Which just goes to show that even if "when in Rome you 'do' as the Romans 'do'", you can still get caught with your pants down (so to speak).

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 The image above is a Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons image from the user Chris 73 and is freely available at //commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:JapaneseSquatToilet.jpg under the creative commons cc-by-sa 3.0 license.