Elderly exterminator vs. giant Japanese hornets
September 3rd, 2009 by James
78-year-old Kakusaburo Arakawa is a true badass. While other elderly people spend their days playing gate ball, Arakawa is busy sucking thousands of vicious giant hornets into a vacuum cleaner. Arakawa was featured on NTV’s “Real Time News” the other day to remind viewers that hornets are very dangerous and their extermination should be left to cool old dudes wearing protective suits:
His vacuum isn’t quite as impressive as the vacuum hunter I posted about back in October, but it is still impressive to see him climb up and do battle with the hornets. The hive he defeats in the video clip is supposedly the largest he has ever encountered.
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Wow…that guy is my hero.
Young Japanese herbivore men could learn a thing or two from this old dude.
Yeah! All the wussie kids need to go out and EAT the wasps!
These giant hornets, called ‘Suzume Bachi’ (sparrow bee) are only a problem for children and whimpy, over-sensitive Japanese.
Most Japanese people have the odd idea that warps and hornets are as lethal as cobras. Sure few rare people can have near-death allergic reaction to stings, but for most people a hornet sting is a very minor nuisance. In my Japanese office, only a gaijin would ever “brave” swatting one of these wasps. Even the salarymen would scream like schoolgirls at the sight a hornet. Weird.
Once in my office I caught on these Japanese giant hornets, Vespa mandarinia, and let it sting me much to horror of the OLs who claimed it would kill me. The string was EXACTLY what I expected—It was about 2-3 times stronger than a regular wasp sting (since it was 2-3 times larger than a regular wasp sting). In other words, it was no big deal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_giant_hornet
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/10/1025_021025_GiantHornets_2.html
Well aren’t you the manly guy in your office.
All the sissy Japanese men must be in awe of your gaijin masculinity!
But you must not be aware of the aggregation pheromones in the sting venom which tends to attract other hornets in the area to come swarm you and sting the hell out of you as well.
One hornet may not be much of a threat, but as the article you linked points out, the venom in large doses is more toxic than other species of bees and can be lethal even to people without allergic reactions.
Personally, that’s enough to freak me out.
“Once in my office I caught on these Japanese giant hornets, Vespa mandarinia, and let it sting me”
…
why the hell would you do that? feels a lot more like a fail in intelligence than a win in masculinity.
That’s one tough ojiisan. What’s scarier; suzumebachi or kumabachi? I’ve seen both in my office during summer. I was afraid of piddly wee wasps back home. Insects in Japan scare the crap out of me.
Wow, that’s indeed quite a big nest they removed there.
Funny, in Germany hornets are under wildlife protection, along with wasps, but in Japan they suck them into vacuum cleaners. Maybe they could send them to Germany afterwards? Would make the treehuggers quite happy. ^^