Oh my goodness! Not again.

Get in the car, we are off to the Totoro House.

After a quick stop at the drug store to buy insecticide bombs, an idea given to us by good friend Chieko, we set off with a packed car, two kids and a cat for the big push to repair. We planned on spending the first night in a hotel as we were arriving late in the evening with no electric and futons that hadn’t seen daylight for about 10 months.

We rounded the corner at around 6 pm thinking we would saunter in the house and set off a few bombs. Not a chance! The jungle had reappeared and there were loads of hornets.

We broke in through a window, leaving the kids in a sealed car because of the sheer number of hornets. The kids immediately wanted out of the car. A combination of the 4 hour drive and excitement at seeing the place where they could get really filthy investigating new things brought them to a crescendo .
With the back drop of high pitched protests from our two-year old son and the constant explanations about why he was protesting from our precocious four-year old ( “He want to get out daddy, daddy he wants to get out” ) we ignited the cockroach, flea and dust mite killer bombs. We dumped the cat in the warehouse for the night and decided to head to the nearest home centre. We purchased a brush cutter and all the necessary things it required – great advice from Eric at My corner of Japan.

Get to sleep it’s going to be a long day.

We tried to encourage the kids to sleep early but after being stuck in a car for half a day they decided jumping on the beds was more fun than sleeping in them. After taking advantage of the bath in the hotel we finally all got to sleep (the worries of no water). The Tohoku electric engineer was arriving at 9 am to connect us and we needed a path! We fell asleep feeling a bit dismayed at the kudzu, the water and the idea that Tohoku electric may decide not to connect us.
We arrived at the house by 7:30 am and the kids yet again were stuck in the car till a path was cut. These brush cutting machines are great! Noisy but great. We had a path to the house by 8 am.
The hornets were certainly Giant Asian Hornets. We found three nests on the barn door. One was definitely active, fortunately we picked up some killer spray at the home centre when we bought the brush cutter.
After we sprayed it the neighbour, who was really welcoming, advised us to get up at 6 am and do it again to ensure we exterminated them all. We spent the first day clearing the Jungle and dusting the room we were sleeping in that night. The mosquito nets gave us piece of mind while we fell shattered into futons l’eau de mothball. We really should have hung them in the searing heat.