Eat ALL The Bugs

Hey, look! A stand selling local honey! Do you think it’s made from the shibazakura flowers this park is famous for? Let’s get some to bring back to Tokyo as a souvenir! Hmm, should we get a big jar or a…

Wait. What’s that in the…? No. NO. Please tell me it’s not…

…the biggest-ass bumblebee you ever saw, RIGHT IN THE HONEY!

Aieee, what is this, AUSTRALIA? I mean, what if you got up in the morning and snagged your bread from the toaster before you’d had your coffee and when you went to take your first bite, there was a giant BEE LEG staring right up at you? Or, even worse, what if you were deleting your spam while you ate and didn’t notice all the insect parts on your breakfast and you took a bite and it was CRUNCHY? Like, crunchy in NOT A TOAST-LIKE WAY?

You can gauge my level of horror at this dead bee honey by the fact that it wasn’t until I got home and looked at my pictures that I noticed the enormous brown cow-dookie-shaped things in the background. I zoomed in and, just as I feared, they’re the…

…evil honeycombs of doom where giant hairy bees are spawned O_O

If you’d like to buy some scary insect-riddled honey yourself, they sell it at the festival next to the otherwise otherwise quite gorgeous shibazakura fields at Hitsujiyama (in Chichibu), from the middle of April to the middle of May. A map is on my website, The Tokyo Guide I Wish I’d Had.

Jonelle Patrick is the author of the Only In Tokyo mystery series,  published by Penguin/Intermix.