On July 7th, all bad insects left our island. How do I know? I threw them out myself, along with 40 other islanders.

I was looking forward to this event, called "mushi okuri" (sending off of the insects) because I was interested in seeing exactly how they'd throw them out. I'd never kicked an insect off an island before.

I've always annihilated the insects on our island in my own way: by swatting, squashing, decapitating or spraying them with insecticide. But this is not the Buddhist way. Buddhists don't like to kill anything, not even insects, so instead, we merely see them off and hope we can convince them to stay away.