WHAT Kamakiri?, or Dragonfly Sci-Fi

Erina chan ambled into the teacher's room during recess today holding her elbow. It was skinned and covered in dirt. The nurse Kawato sensei asked her what happened.
"Kamakiri wa watashi o hitsukamimashita": The Praying Mantis grabbed me.

4th grader Kasumi chan's eyes went wide.
"DONNA kamakiri?!" WHAT mantis?
As Kasumi pictured a gigantic green insect the size of the jungle gym pouncing on little weirdo Erina chan with enormous pinchers and teeth, Erina replied
"Te-i-ra sensei no kamakiri da ya." It was Taylor-sensei Kamakiri.
* * *

The bugs in Okayama may not be big enough to grab a kid, but they are the hugest insects I have ever seen.

Today in the 2nd grade classroom at lunch I saw a giant 蜻蛉(tonbo), dragonfly. Bright green with translucent wings, black and bright red features on its face and thorax. When the 7 year olds picked it up in its cage, the dragonfly would flap its wings intensely, like some kind of caged extraterrestrial, making an amazingly loud whirring sound like an electric motor.

I noticed last night when I was looking at the fluorescent-stained "brainbow" neurons from Harvard, how much molecular biology looks futuristic- like a sci fi landscape, a high-tech city on some alien planet, or technicolor robotics. The rainbow neurons reminded me of the animation in Cowboy Bebop or Akira- the way the artists imagine transparent pods suspended over undulating train-tubes and elevated landing docks, beneath the toxic clouds of Venus or above Jupiter's icy moon Ganymede. As I looked at the tonbo today, I had the same thought: Its face and bright-colored carapace looked most like an alien lifeform or a robotic helicopter. Maybe a futuristic form of flying transport directed by an artificial intelligence. Or better yet, driven remotely by a human brain in Kyoto or a monkey in North Carolina. The dragonfly's shiny green thorax-plates, bright red sidemarkings and rapid-flapping, broad black wings looked positively militaristic-- like some form of unmanned flying tank or missile device. I could imagine a U.S. Army colonel with his brain wired to a hi-tech helmet, looking at a video screen with inputs from the dragonfly's eyes, guiding it by thought through Afghanistan: "Turn left. Go straight to the entrance of the cave. Fly up and wait for the target to appear." 'Simstim', as Gibson calls it in Neuromancer-- Simulation + stimulation.

At the hoikoens (pre-schools) last month, I saw plastic cages with giant black beetles in them (甲虫, kabutomushi), fighting over food with their pincers and massive black jaws. There were semi, too (蝉)-- Cicadas, chirping loud enough to interrupt a lesson. Also, enormous black, brown or green grasshoppers (端, bata、or キリギリス, kirigirisu). These also look robotic, with their sleek exoskeletons, shiny as if made of steel, polished in a secret factory somewhere.

Today on the playground, 5th grader Yuka chan brought me a gigantic crawfish that she found in the little paddy-drainage moat around the school. It was flailing its menacing looking but tiny claws uselessly, as she turned it upside down in her hand, then dropped it in the dirt. The crawfish came up with its brown back speckled with white itchy-looking sand.

The kamakiri (蟷螂, praying mantises), my favorite Okayama mushi, are the most gigantic and beautiful of all. They come in a vivid emerald green, but also a camouflaged brown. I joke with my friend Iima that since Claire and Iima's girlfriend Xiao are both in med-school now, cutting corpses, both of us are dating kamakiri girls. Or, as Iima says, "Dr. S." Sadist mantis ladies.

I saw one of these guerilla warriors at the Yakage station ekki one night as I waited for the Ibara-sen about 8:30. In the lamplight by the edge of the tracks she seemed to be waiting for a train too. A mercenary job, I imagined-- the tools in her face and hands ready to dismember some unlucky guy. Dr. S. Kamakiri, MD.

*** The "brainbow" mouse neurons each express two of four colored fluorescent-protein genes from jellyfish and deep-sea coral. Green Fluorescent Protein, the first of these, was discovered in jellyfish in 1962, by Japanese chemist Osamu Shimomura (GFP, or 緑色蛍光単発　ryokusyoku koukei tanpakushitsu- literally "green-color firefly-light protein." Gorgeous science word huh?). Shimomura won the Nobel prize this year for finding GFP protein and explaining the genetic mechanism of its fluorescence, which is used now all the time in molecular biology to label cells. The distinct combo of firefly-colors expressed by each neuron, as in a TV screen, creates a rainbow of discretely labeled neurons whose axons and dendrites can be tracked over the course of brain development, making it possible for the first time to study the connections between many neurons over time. The images also happen to be fantastically gorgeous.