A Little Omiyage from Aya

Almost everyday, Aya brings something home from the daycare. Kids from her class always do – may it be colored illustrations, works of origami, or anything they picked up from the park like stones and stuffs. They call them omiyage, which means souvenir. They bring home their omiyage to show their parents like prized possessions.

When we picked up Aya from the daycare yesterday, she proudly held two plastics – one was holding a colored liquid (mizu iro = colored water), and the other a collection of cast-off skins of cicadas. She told us that they call them semi no nukegara in Japanese. Semi = cicada, nukegara = cast-off or shed skin

Cicadas? Eww.

Aya’s little omiyage is a collection of shed skins of cicadas. Shudder!

There’s one subject in science that I kinda dislike, and that’s Biology. I hate tinkering around remains of things that used to be alive. I shudder at the sight of frogs and cats giving you a lifelike stare whilst swimming in formaldehyde. My cousin, when she was still a medical intern at a hospital, once showed me a picture of their class dissecting a human corpse on a table. The thought of dissecting a human made me sick. I swore that I’d never become a medical doctor, ever.

I digress.

Anyway, what amused me to no end was the fact that Aya would actually pick up a cicada’s skin, when she would jump up in fear of small insects that would occasionally visit us at home. Anyway, I jumped at the opportunity to explain to her that some insects shed off their old skins. It’s almost the same as changing old clothes as we humans do. But hey, I do know some people who would love to shed off their old skin in a heartbeat, given the possibility, haha. 😀

Well howdydo! Ever wondered why aliens in sci-fi flicks are almost always designed with insect-like attributes?

10 thoughts on “A Little Omiyage from Aya

  1. i clicked your link in blogroll to check out what’s the latest with you… and i saw this! ewww! i even have to scroll down while typing this comment so i don’t see ’em! hahaha!

    cool post anyway, i’m really amused that your daughter isn’t scared or grossed out. i somehow envy her for her lack of fear but i’m also glad i don’t get to touch those insects!

    🙂

  2. ahh biology!

    in high school, while we are dissecting a frog, a friend naughtily put a frog at the back of my neck, as i was caught off-guard by the frog’s cold feet/hands, i grabbed it and instinct told me to throw it away, very far like outside the room.

    ang di ko alam me mga estudyanteng babae sa pinagtapunan ko at nagtaka pa ako bakit sila nagsigawan hehehe.

  3. lol @ Frances
    Sorry if the pics freaked you out. 🙂

    Know what, seems like everybody in her class took the same things home to their parents. I’m guessing that my daughter just followed what the rest of her classmates did in order to not feel left out. Now that’s peer pressure in action, haha.

    It’s quite amusing for me too, because I’ve certainly not handled something like these when I was a kid in school. 🙂

  4. lol @ zherwin
    Poor froggie! Was it alive or half-dissected already? hihi 😀

    I guess that’s one reason why I don’t have the heart for Biology – I just pity the poor animals. Oh well.

  5. Cicadas … that sound poetic. Sound of cicadas .. can it be romantic? Anyway, I digress too hahaha. as to your question — can it be because they’re a low lif form and fly … ooh not good enough … why nga ba?

  6. Hmm..insects are not too bad..its rodents I dislike. Just weird at the way they shed their skin..talagang buong-buo! Imagine kung ganun din mag-shed ang rodents..ngiiii…

  7. dude.. those bugs freaked out the hella out of me when i woke up this morning. and they were still on the table when i got back! bleh. 😛

  8. Anna, my guess is that if insects are any larger than us, they’d be considered as more powerful and more advanced. Imagine what you can do with six or more appendages! And those zillions of eyes…hehe 🙂

  9. Looks like you still haven’t gotten over your Ratatouille experience, Gypsy, lol. 😀

    Definitely weird – I noticed that the “shells” were open at the middle of the backs – that must have been where the insects crawled out of when they shed their skin.

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