Yamakagashi!

It's a well-known fact that approximately 95% of Australia's snake population is poisonous. Most of them deadly. It's also a well-known fact that snakes, in general, are shy creatures that would rather flee than fight. Put these two things together and what you get is the simple conclusion that it's pretty rare to actually come across a snake in the wild, but when you do, and you're Australian, you're very, very cautious. Unless you're Steve Irwin, but that guy was Not Normal. Anyway, throw into this mix the false belief that Japan does not have snakes, and you have a recipe for one extremely amazed and slightly freaked out gaijin.

We went to Kanukiyama (the local mountain) again yesterday for something to do. As we walked along the path, I heard a bit of rustling in the ditch on the side. Wondering what interesting creature I might be able to spot, I paused for a moment. This is what I saw.



A snake. With a frog in its mouth. A snake! Right here on the side of the path where hundreds of people have undoubtedly walked today? In Japan?? A snake??! So I made quite a few loud "ooh-ahh-woah-wow" kind of noises. We stopped for a while to take some photos and video, and thought the people coming along the path behind us would be equally impressed. One man stopped to have a brief look and informed us that it was a yamakagashi (I later looked it up and found out that its common English name is Tiger Keelback and it is actually poisonous), but didn't feel the need to stick around and admire it the way we were. I could hardly believe that anyone would be so casual about such a spectacle -- after all it was in the process of eating a frog -- but there were more people coming up the path and I thought we could interest them instead. One woman took a millisecond glance and said "eww, yamakagashi" and kept walking. Others didn't even stop to look.

I don't think I shall ever understand the culture of this nation. (When we got to the top of the mountain we saw a man up there in a tracksuit, with a towel draped around his neck, vigorously performing squats and toe-touching exercises, who later sat down and smoked two cigarettes in a row. I'm sure it's related somehow.)