Thanks Bill! Good to see you posting again; thought you'd disappeared.

I never had the chance to herp around Iwakuni, but I would like to give it a try one of these days. It's really not far from my inlaws house, I just need to make a point of going there.

As for the rural attitudes toward snakes, my observations are pretty much limited to the rice farmers. I've never witnessed anyone killing a snake, and for that matter, I've never seen a dead snake along a rice paddy. Generally, quadrivirgata and Rhabdophis tigrinus are common/abundant in the rice fields.....easy to see as well. As far as I can tell, most of the farmers pay them no attention at all. I did run into one farmer who appeared to be in his early 50s say that he didn't like snakes, and he was acting like a little girl when he watched me pick up a quad, but that was the exception.

My guess is that mamushi, for obvious reasons, meet a swift fate when they are discovered. Of course Rhabdophis can also be deadly, but not really dangerous unless you give it some effort. My best guess is that since there is only one snake on the main islands worth really worrying about, most of the farmers know well enough to differentiate.

I speak enough Japanese to get drawn into a conversation that I won't be able to follow, so I don't ask a lot of questions when I'm herping there. On the few occasions that my wife has gone herping with me, we didn't run into any farmers, so I've never been able to take advantage of a translator while herping.

I have a few other anecdotes that I'll post on the field forum when I finish the full report.....two years in the making now, lol.

Shane
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