Violence! Stabbings! Poison! Murder!

It has taken me until now to come to terms with the events that occurred on the weekend of June 3rd so traumatic they were. The memory alone still sends chills down my spine. The week itself had been a busy one- dinner at Wakaba on Monday with Nao-chan, conversation class on Tuesday, watching an orchestra rehearsal on Wednesday with Fukushima sensei, Joyfull in Takahashi with NP on Thursday and dinner at Nao-chan's on Friday night- and I recall feeling tired when Saturday morning arrived, perhaps indeed feeling a bit tense. Saturday was to be our last group Villa trip of the year and it was taking place at the villa in Fukiya village, Takahashi- a converted soy sauce factory in a village in the middle of nowhere it seemed. So we all set off on what seemed like an endless journey to get there.

I met Vicki in Takahashi and the two of us followed the simple guide- drive up the 180, turn left and it's a few minutes drive away. But this was no ordinary few minutes drive. It ended up taking around an hour and 20 minutes on a road that was laden with maps, none of which bore the legend "You Are Here" in Japanese or English. But eventually after careening along cliff-top roads and trundling over rickety bridges we were finally in the small village of Fukiya.

Fukiya itself is a very pretty town, and an area that made its name manufacturing iron sulphate. Perhaps because of this most of the buildings are coloured a reddish-brown, and souvenir shops sell papers coloured with red pigment as well as the usual Japanese gifts- wooden shoes, sweets and dried squid. And with an hour before we could check in the assembled group of Amy, Bob, Jess, Danielle, Bec, Steve, Vicki and I wandered around to look at things and take pictures.

Our first surprise was waiting for us when we finally entered the villa. A mukade, a poisonous Japanese centipede was waiting in the doorway. Mukade are large, have a very strong and painful bite and can kill children and pensioners, neither of which were we but we were still keen to get rid of it. So we set to boiling water to throw over it, and 10 minutes later one was boiling in a pan dancing in death with the bubbling of the water. Boiling water is the recommended way to kill these things as it destroys their eggs too.

Given the horror, and the fact that we were hungry, Amy and I realised that we didn't have enough rice to go with dinner, so we went shopping. Only for the first shop not to sell rice but to point us to another shop where the shop owner had possibly been eaten by mukade and failed to make an appearance whereby the owner of a souvenir shop came into that second shop to tell us to come to his shop even though we told him we wanted rice which he didn't sell. So after 35 minutes of looking round his shop he asked us how much rice we wanted, then disappeared and 15 minutes later came back with a plastic bag of rice. It appeared that this rice had been commandeered from someone's personal stash, but we were grateful and at 400 yen it seemed like a snip. So we thanked him profusely and he gave us guides to Fukiya and gave us lots of information in Japanese about the area and the sights to see. We should have asked about Mukade killing now I think about it...

Soon Adam, Ashley, Ilana and Amy had arrived and we began cooking the evening meal, a wild variety of foods- curries, lasagne, shepherd's pie and tacos to name a few. Only to be interrupted by more mukade. This time the pans were full, so I set to them with a handy coal scuttle. And as if they weren't enough, during the after dinner games (which involved swearing, charades and lots of loud singing) we were set upon by giant spiders.

Even going to bed became an ordeal as rooms had to be thoroughly checked for mukade. Indeed, three more were flung through the windows before the lights went out. And as I lay in my bed I felt something shimmying up my arm. BABY IN MY BED! Without waking Adam and Bob I managed to eject it but it seemed none of us were to sleep well and we awoke at 7 o'clock to another predator by the door... Murder is not the best way to start the day. And as Steve filled the onsen bath it seems we'd unintentionally killed another one, although the lukewarm water wasn't letting this one dance away.

After we checked out of the monster pit/ villa on Sunday we headed to what is apparently the oldest school in use in Japan (made of wood and held together by good wishes it would seem) and introduced the Aussie and American contingent among us to the wonderful British game of rounders before splitting up and heading home (or to Nickname Pending's in my case).

The nightmares are getting less and less, but sometimes when the curtains move in the evening breeze and the CD player misfires I think I can hear the death screams of those murderous mukade. And then I realise I can't because possibly only dogs and Mariah Carey can hear sounds as high pitched as those.