Japanese Fauna

Although most of my time is spent in the city, I still see a fair number of animals every day. Of course there are pigeons and the cicadas call all day long, but there is lots of other wildlife too. One thing I have noticed though is a seeming lack of squirrels. I could've sworn they had squirrels here but I haven't seen one.

I thought it would be fun to post a few pictures of animals in Japan. I'm leaving out dogs and cats, just wild animals for now. A couple will already be familiar, since I've posted pictures of them before. For instance, temple gardens and parks almost always have koi (carp).



And turles are a common sight there too. I've seen several types, but the most common ones look nearly identical to our American painted turtles.



If you go out back of the temples and look in the cemetary (something I virtually always do), you can often find little lizards with bright blue tails. Don't let their tiny legs fool you: these things are fast! This picture actually came from the top of a mountain in Hiroshima prefecture, which I visited this past weekend with Tatsuguchi Sensei.



If a temple has a water garden, and many do, then dragonflies can be a common sight. Some of them are huge, larger than any I've seen in the USA. This one was sitting on a giant lotus in a large pond planted with thousands of lotuses. The pond is supposed to be a vision of the Pure Land, I think, though I never thought about whether there would be bugs in the Buddhist Western Paradise. The scriptures say that no one is born there as an animal, but then again, they also say that the Pure Land is full of birds with beautiful Dharma songs.



And speaking of birds, there are certainly plenty of them around. The most common are gigantic black crows. Little song birds flit about all over the place too, as well as sparrows. On Miyajima, an island in Hiroshima prefecture, I saw some interested shore birds by the sea. One was a large heron on the ferry dock.



Another was a small egret who, along with several friends, was picking at crabs and other creatures exposed by the low tide.



In Japan, deer are considered the messengers of the gods, and at many shrines they live peacefully without disruption by humans. In fact, they tend to be semi-tame and regularly eat out of the hands of visitors. The whole island of Miyajima is a sanctuary for deer.



On my trip to Hiroshima, Miyajima, and Yamaguchi, I stayed overnight at Tatsuguchi Sensei's temple. In the morning, the grounds were full of tiny little toads hopping about. They're well camoflauged and you'd hardly notice them if they didn't move.



Back to bugs, of which Japan has an abundance in the summertime. The butterflies here are amazing. They seem to often be larger and more beautiful than American ones.



At the same time, there are moths who opt for the opposite approach, preferring camoflauge to osentation.



There are many large, brillantly colored beetles, too, as well as several species of bright flying insects whose name I don't know. This is actually the drabbest beetle I've seen so far, but he's the only one who stayed put long enough to photograph.



Finally, with all the insects around you know there have to be some hungry spiders nearby. The most interesting ones spin webs with concentric rings that really stand out.



This last one is another species of spider, a big one that I saw in the shade of a temple.