Hi guys!
I just arrived in Kyoto and I'm loving it here.
However, I just saw something something terrible in my apartment today - a cockroach!
I know it's common for you guys living in the US / Japan, but for us Norwegians, cockroaches are something you just see in movies. And OH MY GOD they are disgusting in real life. And they can fly. Like WTH?
I live in a student dorm and asked the Chinese dudes living next to me, and they were all like "Yeah, you gotta get used to them".
Well, I don't want to get used to them.
So I just bought a whole lot of sprays and small traps called ごきぶりホイホイ or something.
Do you guys have any recommendations on how to keep these devils away?

I really don't want to go to bed now...
虫... 大嫌い...(泣)

keep your place clean. Especially your kitchen. Get some ごきぶりホイホイ and maybe invest in a cat.

if the people living around you are filthy though, it might be a lost cause.

What nadiatims said.

Also they come in different shapes as well (big ones that are relative easy to repel and the pesky little ones that are hard to get rid of once they find a place to settle down).

If it's an apartment building it's pretty much a lost cause unless you can to convince other tenants to cooperate.

I agree that keeping your place clean is useful. Clean under the stove and oven, and all the nooks and crannies you can reach, especially in the kitchen. You might be able to seal some openings here and there, as well.

Zorlee Wrote:"Yeah, you gotta get used to them".
Well, I don't want to get used to them.

LOL
I agree with what's said above, but keeping the place clean doesn't give a 100% guarantee. Try to keep kitchen and bathroom floor sinks(?) closed, get some powder that actually work on them (maybe it's the same as ごきぶりホイホイ?) and try to seal openings in walls and windows if there's any. If there's a space under your room's door, you can find some sticky rolls that you can use to seal it.

And congrats!! Enjoy Japan

Make sure you get the kind that they eat and then take back to the other roaches and poison too.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_1OhRIJ5lPsU/TJ...hachan.jpg

Ampharos64 Wrote:http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_1OhRIJ5lPsU/TJ...hachan.jpg

That disgusted me in so many ways...

If everyone in the apartment building kept their rooms clean, you would rarely see cockroaches in Kyoto. But if it's an old apartment that has gone through filthy neighbors and/or residents who came from regions where roaches are pretty normal and didn't do anything about it, the entire building may have been infested. In this case, it's a clusterfuck already and only your landlord can fix it.

Your story doesn't sound extremely good, especially the part how the Chinese dudes responded. Probably it's a lost cause, and all you can do is keep your own room clean and follow the normal anti-roach measure as nadiatims suggests. Kill all the suckers in your sight, catch every intruder with traps, leave no food for them, and always keep your room clean. Good luck.

[Zgarbas]

Right. So.
1. Go through each apartment building and say that you'd want to have a building level extermination, and ask them if they're willing to cooperate (I'm sure most people will). preferably try to call an extermination agency before this in order to tell them how much it will cost . The extermination agency is for the building hallway, elevator and basement, btw. They'd have to take care of their apartments themselves (depends on the agency, tho). Or you could just go the the building administrator or whatever for it.
2. Make sure there's no food or things that would normally get into your mouth that is out and exposed (if it's in a sealed bag it's ok. if not, put everything in the fridge). 3. 3. Clean up your house real nice. Make sure nothing's on the floor.
4. Buy the most potent bug extermination juice you can find (different countries so I can't exactly recommend anything. The stronger ones are vials of liquid rather than sprays in my experience). Fill the house with it(especially kitchen and bath areas, general corners, etc) and get the hell out, leaving the windows closed. Do this on the day of the extermination.
5. Sleep at a friend's place.
6. come back home and open the windows.
7. Sleep at a friend's place.

And voila. The bugs are gone . If you don't handle the rest of the building the problem won't be solved as they will keep coming back... However the other people will be more willing to cooperate once you've made it clear that the building-wide extermination will be happening. Why? Because if only 95% of the apartments are doing it, then all the roaches will gather in the other 5% and stay there .

Btw, if they can fly, they might be coming in through the windows, in which case you'd need to install a net. Do you have any trees right in front of your window or something?

He saw one cockroach. I don't think we need to assume there is an infestation problem just yet. If you can make it through an entire summer without a cockroach in your house then I would say you are extremely lucky no matter what you do. I think the Chinese guy probably said, "You gotta get used to them." because cockroaches are no big deal to him. We have cockroaches where I'm from in America but they are pretty tiny. The ones in Japan are about twice the size and I've heard roaches in China are twice the size of the ones in Japan though I don't really know.

Whenever someone mentions a bug bomb I always see those gloomy pictures.

@Zorlee: In Kazahstan we used Calcium carbid with water (have a try and see how it reacts lol) to get rid of cock roaches. Not sure if you can get the powder in Japan, but I doubt it. It was nice killing cock roaches like that （爆竹ｗ）

poor little cockroaches

i would pick them up and put them outside when i find them. They are a bit ugly and gross, but it's not like they can help it...

IceCream Wrote:poor little cockroaches

i would pick them up and put them outside when i find them. They are a bit ugly and gross, but it's not like they can help it...

Certainly. It must be so cruel to be a cockroach.

Thank you guys so much for the answers
I freaked out today when I sprayed the sink with ゴキブリがいなくなるスプレー (Yeah, that's actually the name of the spray!) when around 10-15 small cockroaches appeared under the sink in order to get air. It was too late for them though and all of them died.
I then talked to my landlord about it and he gave me a room on the second floor (the one I had was on the first floor, right next to the bathroom/kitchen).
Now I've sprayed my new room with different sprays, have 24 of the ブラックキャップ traps lying around and a ゴキジェットプロ spray right next to me at all times.
I'll see how things go this week. If this continues I'll definitely move out of here...

You show those dirty f*ckers that it's wash day and we viking descendants aren't playing around!

IceCream Wrote:poor little cockroaches

i would pick them up and put them outside when i find them. They are a bit ugly and gross, but it's not like they can help it...

I don't think we're talking about the same monster here. I once stayed in a cockroach infested apartment in Arizona for three months, and it was nothing to me. But Japanese black cockroaches are different.

You see the enemy in your house, and the entire family is in scramble mode. Only the bravest of your family can fight back. It's too fast to "pick up." You spray it, and the monster is tough enough. Your man corners the cockroach, and it flies. Children scream. Ladies pass out. Grandma already died of a heart attack 30 minutes ago. God sent them to punish the Japanese, or they're Satan's creation.

It's the only exception to Rule thir...,

Ampharos64 Wrote:http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_1OhRIJ5lPsU/TJ...hachan.jpg

...never mind. The internet is really vast and infinite.

On a more serious note, I think cockroaches are hated mostly because they're the sign of filthy environment and harder to get rid of. Another reason is that the typical kind of large cockroach in Japan runs incredibly fast (Wikipedia says 5 feet per second), and they fly. They even come at you with their incredible speed and flying ability if you attack them. If you're easily scared of large bugs, you will literally panic. If they were less aggressive and moved at half the speed, cockroach sprays and traps wouldn't sell that well.

The Japanese cockroaches remind me of what they call "palmetto bugs" in Florida; they're bigger and they can fly. I only had 1 in my apartment in Tochigi but they keep showing up in my Tokyo apartment; I find that the ホイホイ work fairly well and I have a spray for if I see one.

Cleaning can help but they sometimes show up even in a clean place; you can't find every crumb.

delta Wrote:

IceCream Wrote:poor little cockroaches

i would pick them up and put them outside when i find them. They are a bit ugly and gross, but it's not like they can help it...

Certainly. It must be so cruel to be a cockroach.

All the better reason to put the little buggers out of their misery, and pray for a more auspicious rebirth.

blackbrich Wrote:That disgusted me in so many ways...

You mean you don't want to watch the anime...?

Sorry, couldn't resist. XD Japan anthropomorphises everything.

Zorlee Wrote:I then talked to my landlord about it and he gave me a room on the second floor (the one I had was on the first floor, right next to the bathroom/kitchen).

Very good!

magamo Wrote:If they were less aggressive and moved at half the speed, cockroach sprays and traps wouldn't sell that well.

You make it sound like they've been genetically engineered by some devious mega-corp simply in order to boost sales! :O

http://www.nathangibbs.com/2007/07/23/ki...oric-acid/

http://tipnut.com/how-to-get-rid-of-cock...ll-recipe/