Current Status Report20250622
Added 2025-06-22 04:54:55 +0000 UTCHi, This is muchi.
The other day, I went shopping at Costco with a friend.
On the way there, we stopped by a small café standing all alone in the middle of a wide stretch of rice fields and had their morning set.
In the region where I live, there's a local tradition at cafés: when you order a drink in the morning, they give you free toast and a boiled egg (or sometimes something entirely different).
At this café, fruit was included too, and you could even put anko (a sweet red bean paste, kind of like a jam made from azuki beans) on the toast. That, too, is a regional custom.
After finishing the meal, completely satisfied, I happened to glance out at the rice fields…
And—this is a bit gross, so fair warning…
There were countless bright pink bumps scattered everywhere.
These are the eggs of an invasive species of snail commonly known as the "jumbo apple snail," which has been rapidly spreading throughout Japan due to recent high temperatures.
It’s really shocking when you see them in person.
They’re quite a serious problem, but…
Somehow, those pink eggs made me think of something you'd see in a tentacle hentai manga.
Or maybe those monochrome doujinshi where only the tentacles, slime, or bodily fluids are colored pink… Yeah, it gave me that kind of flashback.
N-not that I got turned on or anything!!!
Comments
You're probably right—Japanese Costcos are likely smaller than the ones in the US. But I think the products are pretty much the same! Because Japan has limited land, invasive species tend to have a bigger impact here. It's kind of like how every time a new Costco opens, the surrounding traffic infrastructure goes into chaos...!
atyumuti
2025-06-29 05:02:22 +0000 UTCI wonder what a Japanese Costco is like compared to a US one. I hope you all have cheap rotisserie chickens too. Those are always a great deal at American Costcos! I didn't know apple snails were invasive in Japan. I see them commonly around and its even easy to mistake their eggs for raspberries. I remember reading one time that due to a popular children's anime in the 1970s, Japan imported a bunch of American raccoons as pets but discovered they were too difficult to keep as pets and released into the wild where they became an invasive species. What a wild story that was.
Pyrohawk
2025-06-22 19:45:28 +0000 UTC
