"Sometimes stores will have lotteries where kids can pay a few yen for a raffle ticket and try their luck in winning a more pricey beetle," she told me. Kids definitely still want these bugs – Suzuki says that her son begged for one – and stores find a way to cater to them. Bargain Beetle Shopping Source: Curious Expeditions Fortunately, for kids and cheapskates, there are other ways. In fact, the more expensive beetles are geared less toward kids than to adults who are beetle otaku (of course there are beetle otaku, are you even surprised? There are so many kinds of otaku). Putting a pricey beetle like that in a fight would be like putting your brand new sports car in a demolition derby – and even a thirty dollar bug probably isn't something you're going to throw into a cage match. They go for prices like ¥50,000 (500 USD) and ¥98,000 (980 USD) – and no, I am not accidentally adding extra zeros to those prices. There are also a few on that website, which I presume are rarities that only a specialist would appreciate. ![]() But the majority are in ¥3,000-¥8,000 range (30-80 USD), and you'll see similar prices at this pet shop in Osaka: Source: Anne Evans As I write this, the prices for stag beetles that are in stock, for example, include a few at a low ¥1,000 (10 USD). There are even pet stores dedicated entirely to them, like the one above I photographed in Tokyo.Īnd if you want to know what Suzuki means by nice, expensive beetles, you can check out the prices for adult beetles at this online store. So a whole industry has sprung up selling beetles and supplies. Nowadays, though, people who live in cities and can't go out to collect their beetles for free apparently haven't lost the urge to keep them. These beetles were traditionally caught in the wild, like an American kid might catch a firefly and put it in a jar. Beetles are Big Business Source: Linda Lombardi That comment introduced me to the world of modern beetle keeping which, of course, in a modern capitalist society, turns out to involve a whole lot of shopping. The really nice beetles are expensive and I would not think kids would want to damage them," she said. I spoke to my friend Evangela Suzuki, who has experience of both pet beetles and small boys: together with her son, she kept both kinds of beetles at her home in Ibaraki Prefecture.ĭespite my concern for animal welfare (and yes, bugs are animals), I was disappointed when Suzuki said she'd only seen the beetle fights on Japanese TV herself, and didn't know of any kids that fought them. So when I wanted to know more about beetle-keeping, my first question, of course, was whether kids still have bug fights. If you've ever heard of these beetles it's probably in the context of these fights, since it's one of those weird only-in-Japan things that the media loves. ![]() Source: fuiīoth beetles can get to be two to three inches long and, with their big horns, you can imagine that the first small boy to stumble across them had the obvious thought: BUG FIGHT! So it's no surprise that this was the traditional way to play with pet beetles. They're named for their double horn, which again, made English speakers think of another animal and reminded the Japanese of a type of samurai helmet. The other is the kuwagata or Stag Beetle. ![]() The Japanese name means "helmet bug," apparently from the imagined resemblance to a samurai helmet. The English name obviously comes from their single giant horn. ![]() One is the kabutomushi, called Rhinoceros Beetle in English. But there's one big difference: in Japan there's a long tradition of keeping pet insects, especially two kinds of very large beetles. Americans and Japanese mostly have similar opinions about what makes a good pet – in both countries, cute and cuddly creatures like cats and dogs top the list.
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