Hazardous Bees

I’ve been asked many barely intelligible questions since I first reported for my tour of duty in the Japanese Elementary school system, on a range of bizarre and surreal topics. But one of the first – and still one of the best – came from a fifth grade boy.

He said to me, with utter sincerity in his eyes, ‘Do you know bee o’ hazard?’

At least, that’s what I heard.

‘Holy Jesus,' I replied. ‘Are the bees here considered a hazard?!’ Then, because this sentence made for some complicated English, I mimed a bee buzzing its way towards me, stinging my face and then my head exploding.

It was some of my best “bridging the gap” work.

'RRRRUUUAAAAaaaaahhh!'

‘No, no, no.’ The boy is shaking his head. ‘Bee-oh-hazard. Bee-oh-hazard,’ he enunciates unhelpfully. Then his friends decide to help out by chanting the exact same thing as him. ‘Bee-Oh-Hazard! BEE-OH-HAZARD!’ Was it that my body odour was so intense they were concerned for their safety? I was starting to worry, but it turned out six boys screaming nonsense at me was exactly what my addled brain needed. Something clicked.

‘Oh!’ I yelped with a little too much enthusiasm for a grown man. ‘BIOhazard!’

‘Yes.’ The boy looks at me with that look that says, “I just said that 18 times and you are a retard.” Like when you have to explain a joke, he has lost all enthusiasm for the topic by this point but WHO CARES! I know that Biohazard is the Japanese name for a series of video games known as Resident Evil in English-speaking countries. It’s not my fault that the peculiarities of Japanese language turned the word Biohazard into some kind of pirate warning.

‘Yar, ‘twas the bee o’ hazard what done us in. ‘m sure of it.’

This kid made the fatal mistake of talking about Biohazard with someone who’d been playing Biohazard since before he was even born and goddam if we weren’t going to have a conversation about it in broken Nihonglish.

The beautiful dance of words went like this:

Kid: Do you like Biohazard 1?

BMJ: Hai!

Kid: Do you like Biohazard 2?

BMJ: Hai! Sugoi, ne!

Kid: Do you like Biohazard 3?

BMJ: Iie! It’s balls.

Kid: … Do you like Biohazard 4?

BMJ: Hai!

Kid: Do you like Biohazard 5?

BMJ: Hai!

Kid: Ok. Bye bye!

BMJ: We are best friends now.

He didn’t even ask about Code Veronica. Do your research, kid. (It’s a ‘hai’ if you were wondering.)

That conversation, like any conversation you have that’s completely amazing, got me to thinking. Biohazard is insanely popular in Japan, especially considering the number of creatures appearing in the games that aren’t cute enough to make a soft toy or keychain from. I mean, these are games about a virus that turns any living creature into a zombified killing machine. Even the monkeys! So what’s the appeal? Aside from zombie monkeys.

I think it comes down to this: obviously the country that gave us The Ring enjoys pissing its pants as a recreational activity.

'That’s… gonna be hard to sponge out of the tatami.'

Every game in the Biohazard series has three basic enemies. They occur early on in the game, so even if you suck at not getting eaten by zombies, fighting giant snakes or being a master of unlocking you will still probably meet them.

'I was almost a Jill sandwich!' 'Ahaha, yeah, I should have left you in there to die!'

These three basic enemy types are analogues of very real fears close to the hearts and minds of the Japanese people. Behold!

Zombie Person.

RE zombie person

Actual zombie person

The zombie person is your bread and butter in the Resident Evil games. In the real Japan, you only need to try and catch any evening train to see actual zombies in action. Overwork makes the salaryman shuffle about aimlessly and, for some reason thirst for braaaaains. That may be artistic license on my part.

Zombie Dog

RE Zombie Dog

Actual Zombie Dog (Also maybe Satan)

On the left side you will see a godless demonic beast rending the flesh from a human corpse. On the right you will see the Satanic Dog that I encountered one moonless night that wanted to rend the flesh from my corpse. If it’s not Satan then it’s making a fantastic effort to be like him with the dastardly red cape and all.

Japanese people love to take little dogs and put them in little outfits like this. But deep down in their souls they know that you can’t put any living creature in a fluffy frog suit and not expect retribution. There is a price, an eternal, horrible price. And they fear what will happen when the legion of tiny demoralized dogs wake up and smell the coppery tang of our blood.

Murderous Raven

Actual Raven

RE Raven

This one is pretty self explanatory. Ravens are bloody terrifying. The ones in Biohazard aren’t even necessarily scarier than real Japanese ravens; I’m utterly convinced that both want to eat my eyeballs like grapes. The only real question is, will they spit out the skin in the Japanese fashion or will they swallow the whole thing?