クモ
 

=|
i have kind of a weird question for people who live in Japan (recently or your whole life it doesn't matter)

I am a MASSIVE arachnophobiac and now some idiot has told me that there are a lot of spiders in Japan like.. everywhere

and there's really only one evil beastie to worry about where i live (apart from the really tiny ones =p)

to make it worse i found this site on japanese spiders with all these colourful and BIG spiders and it's basically driving me crazy for a couple of days now :rolleyes:

is it really that bad?

There are quite a few spiders and other bugs in Japan, and they do get quite big, but they aren't so common that you need to worry about it.

If you live out in the countryside, you can run into quite a few of them (among other nasty critters), but in the city it's not really bad. I found a huntsman spider on my screen door once (leg span was nearly the size of my hand), but they are rather timid and rarely bite.

Ok Samurai007's answer made me feel a lot better
but seriously.. :P huntsman spider
you named the spider I am most scared of! you even got lucky it was the size of your hand, they can grow MUCH larger?! xP
If i'd ever run into one of those inside my house i'd.. i'd have to just move to another house ='|

I was trapped inside a room for over 3 hours once coz there was a garden spider (2 cm.. :rolleyes: ) next to the door. I didn't go any closer than 4 meters, can you imagine what i'd do when i see one of those huntsman beasties :eek:

anyway thanks for the replies, i'll just have to try and get over it i guess ;P

... o___o
I hate... hate spiders. I'd freak out and scream if there was a spider as big as my hand.
Oh boy, I didn't even think about that when it came to Japan.

Yeah I know T_T
I wish no one had ever mentioned it then at least I would already be there when I'd find out the spiders there are friggin monsters =p
but at least we have the luck that it isn't common in the city!
I was also planning to work as an intern next year in Australia but I saw a documentary about huntsmans in Australia, how they are able to pop up from ANYWHERE so I decided not to go =( those things are going to give me a heart attack one day!
Biggest spider you can get near you where I live is no bigger than 7 to 10 cm (barn funnel weavers) and they already scare the life right out of me ='3 and they're babies compared to those others!

I'm going to have quite a few hair raising moments, then. I want to live somewhere outside the city.

Ah, where I live the biggest spider is a daddy long leg. At least, that's what I think it's called. Too afraid to look it up. Pictures. :eek:

And those aren -- Oh boy, I look up and there's one up there. T.T;;

If you think Japanese spiders are big, wait until you see the lizards!



:eek:

Seriously though, when I was living in Japan, a neighbor once came pounding on my door, shouting that there was a lizard in her apartment. I went over and sure enough, it was a cute little guy, maybe 2 inches long. She was terrified of it though, so I caught it (it was fast!) and took it outside for her.

Daddy long legs are not spiders. They just look like them. :D
They have no fangs and no silk glands - and no way to hurt you. They`re also omnivorous and will eat plant material just as readily as insects.

I don`t like bugs in general, but for some reason like those guys. They really are totally harmless, and kind of cute (to me) with that tiny little body and long awkward legs.

I have yet to see a single one of them in Japan - but supposedly there are types of them living here.

I have seen some pretty scary spiders though - and I`m not really afraid of them unless they`re freaking huge. I even LIKE the ones with webs outside our place - cuts down the number of bugs that get in. But if it`s the size of my hand, I`m pretty likely to scream. :D

As for the little lizards, I love them. They are incredibly cute. They`re actually a type of gecko, and are also totally harmless. The in-laws have tons of them inside during the fall and winter (they don`t like the cold), and I`ve even had one fall on me from the ceiling.
I usually catch them (with my bare hands) and put them outside. Their jaws are small and weak, so even though they often try to bite me in defense, it`s like a very weak pinch with zero pain involved.

Oh we had a massive amount of daddy long legs in our old apartment =| it was horrid, and they always choose corners to crawl up in? luckily now not anymore but with the garden we have in this house we got all those big fat black domestic spiders :|
It's probably coz of my mom, someone once told me that children who see their parents get really freaked out about something they can take over that behaviour of fear =p and my mom used to petrify when she saw spiders

Whats weird is that I am much less scared of tarantula type spiders?! probably coz they look more like furry animals? if I had to choose what kind of spider to hold i'd go for those =p it's the boney, evil man-eating looking creeps I'm afraid of

Lizards I am not afraid of AT ALLLL =D I even worked at a local snake/lizard/amphibean (<- spelling? :P) museum where I had to deal with huge iguana's and really big snakes and stuff, i loved it :p and gecko's and such are reallly cute

There's this guy in our zoo who helps people with their spider phobia's so I might try that one day.. problem is that you have to look at them and touch them =| why can't I just hit it with a long stick? it wouldn't help but hey one less spider :D !

Well, I certainly learned something today. :p

Brave, lady! I've tried that whole "name it, have it be your pet, be friends" smidge. My little Dorothy ran away. :rolleyes:

Then having to see three corner my bed ( which rests against a corner in itself) got me scared of those little buggers all over again.

Oh, lizards... reminds me of when I was little, lifting up logs to find little salamanders skitter away. Childhood.


- - - - -

Heh~ I think my mom got me scared of spiders, too.

I'll hear that word of wisdom ring "They're more scared of you, than you are of them". Bull. :mtongue:
They're not the ones running away. I am. They're the ones creeping down from the ceiling in front of my face.

I`m certainly not naming them and keeping them as pets... But they`re still cute. I don`t hurt them, they don`t hurt me, and I just do my best to keep them out of harms way. I do not like them in the house, so I put them outside. But there is no terror or horror involved. They just don`t belong inside.

The geckos are incredibly cute though. Seriously. Plus they provide the greatest ever way to explain away bumps and scurrying sounds in the night. It`s not a spider the size of my face - it`s just a cute little gecko I hear!

There are spiders everywhere in Japan, and I do mean "everywhere". They are especially large and common in the late-summer, early-autumn months. When hiking in the hills (or even walking through parks) I carry a stick which I used to wave up and down in front of me so I don't get webs (or spiders) on my face.

There are few poisonous spiders in Japan, and your odds of getting bitten by any kind of spider are smaller than winning the powerball lottery.

One of the few positive things about winter in Japan is that there are no spiders (or insects) to bother you. Personally, I dislike the mosquitoes here far more than I dislike the spiders.

This brings back the memories of when I was a kid, and there was a spider in the bathrub. I used to scream and yell and run for my mom, and she would just walk in there, pick it up and throw it out XD Nowadays, to me, they're just kinda there. I dont like touching them but I honestly dont even notice them, Much less care. Though occasionally I do see those cute ones sitting, waiting in the middle of their webs and I can't help but stop and watch em for a few minutes :) I remember once I saw a.. Ugh, what are those things called :P Those small black ones with the red hourglass on their abdomens, I didnt really even think anything, though I dont even know if I had realized that it could kill me from a little bite XD I was young, so dont blame me :P

Nope, no coincidence. It was a girl from New Zealand, one of the other ALTs in my town. There were 3 of us living in the same apartment complex... me, her, and a guy from Texas named Luke. We'd get together for movies, pot-luck dinners, etc. And when she found critters in her apartment, she'd run over to my apartment, pound on my door, and ask me to get rid of it for her, LOL. And with the metal doors commonly found on apartments in Japan, you could certainly hear the frantic knocking!

If it makes you feel better, I'm terrified of spiders and cockroaches and bugs of any kind (as in, I will spray them to death from afar and then put a towel over them and make someone else pick them up), so I had this mental image of me in my dorm room with little towels covering the floor where I killed bugs but was too afraid to pick them up. xD

Though I'm going to live in Tokyo, so I don't know if that makes it better or worse...