Next year, I’m going to be traveling across Tōhoku, Japan. I’m American and it’s my first time going overseas, so I was hoping to look for some interesting creatures. Does anyone here have some Japanese organisms that they like, or know of any dangerous ones that I should be careful around? I would like to know what I should look for. Thank you!
And also, this is my first time using a forum like this, so I’m sorry if I’m using it incorrectly. I will try to delete or fix this if that is the case.
Welcome! There are a few iconic species you might be able to find, but it will depend on the time of year you will be there and how far you’ll be traveling. My shortlist would include the Japanese Giant Salamander (you won’t find this one wild most likely, but you may be able to visit the Salamander center in Akame). I’d also want to see the japanese serow, the snow monkeys, the tanuki, and the bears in Hokkaido if you plan on hopping north. Also worth it to see the giant cedars along the old Tokaido highway.
Edit: Almost forgot! Kyoto is beautiful in the fall when the maple leaves turn red (Hokkaido also has many nice places for fall colors), and in the Spring you will almost definitely want to go to one of the many hanami spots across the country to see the sakura blossoms. There’s a few iconic spots for flower viewing including the Philosopher’s walk in Kyoto, Mt Yoshino in Nara prefecture, and Himeji Castle in Hyougo prefecture.
With regard to “be a regular iNat user so that you’re more known among the community”, the ID-a-thon is coming up, and this could be a good opportunity for you to hit what I call “The Studer Ratio”:
A number of IDs for others that is at least 1.25 your number of observations
A number of annotations that is at least 1.25 your number of IDs
Thank you! I mainly photograph bugs, but sometimes I like to photograph fungi as well. Most of what I’ll be packing is for work, so I can’t take much gear, so I’ll take pictures with a phone and maybe buy some gloves and boots when I get there. But I’ll have to be pretty frugal.
Thank you for the advice! I’d like to do ID’s, but I’m not professional and I get all my information from whatever books I can find in the library and online. Is it still OK for me to try to ID things?
That tour sounds awesome, I’m definitely going to check that out. As for when I’m leaving, I’m planning on March but I’ll be there for almost 2 years so I’ll be able to experience all the seasons! I’m most interested in seeing bugs and fungi, but I love all organisms Thank you so much for your answer!
Definitely! You could start from organisms you know a little about, and try to identify from there. I consistently identify Collembola, which originally just started from a fascination with them. Thanks to the helpful iNat community, I can identify a decent amount of species, so I recommend you reach out to regular identifiers, who I’m sure would be willing to give some advice. :)
If you’re a bug lover, then Summertime is probably best (though it can be miserably hot/humid and monsoons are a thing in Japan). Cicadas are a sign of the season. Japan is also home to a number of large beetles (stag and rhinoceros) and even has something of a culture around beetle fighting as a spectator sport (no deaths, just whichever beetle manages to flip its opponent or knock it off a branch wins).
There are some other threads with a lot more discussion and ideas for how beginners can help ID, but in brief: no, you don’t need to be an expert. If you are an active observer in your area, there are probably a few species that you know well and can help with. You also don’t have to provide species-level IDs to be useful. Lots of observations get entered with no ID or only with broad IDs. If you can refine these IDs – say, from kingdom to order or order to family – you will be helping the observations get seen by experts.
Since it appears you are interested in arthropods, a note here that many arthropod groups are difficult and it is a good idea to be cautious when making IDs (i.e., do consult resources; don’t just pick CV suggestions that “look right”; if in doubt, choose a broader ID). It looks like you already do this when IDing your own observations, so you are probably good to go, but every so often someone will start enthusiastically IDing observations of a difficult group without recognizing the limitations of their knowledge and this tends to turn into a very unhappy situation both for the well-meaning user who is trying to help and for the taxon specialists who are faced with a flood of questionable IDs.
Thank you so much for your answer!