Not too long after we started dating, my wife and I were walking through a seaside park, hand-in-hand. The sun was shining and the mood relaxing and romantic. Just as I took a deep breath of the sweet ocean breeze, though, an insect landed on my wife’s arm, causing her to scream, recoil in horror, and practically pull my shoulder out of its socket.

And that’s how I found out she really hates bugs.

She’s not alone in that regard, either, as a recent poll of women in Japan found that more than half are too terrified to face their creepy crawly adversaries head-on, and also revealed a suave kabe-don wall pound-like move guys can do to score points with the ladies.

Summer in Japan isn’t all lightweight kimono and delicious watermelon. The soaring humidity also leads to an infestation of insects. In response, companies like Dio Chemicals are standing by with an arsenal of bug-repelling products.

Dio recently conducted a poll to gauge just how strong Japanese women’s dislike of bugs is. The 600 respondents were between the ages of 20 and 39, and all are currently single.

The responses to Dio’s first question, “How do you feel about bugs?” weren’t particularly surprising, with 79.6 percent of the women saying they flat-out hate them, and an additional 18 percent saying they dislike them pretty strongly.

Just how intense is some Japanese women’s aversion to the creatures? Well, almost all Japanese homes have balconies, usually with both glass and screen sliding doors. But while those screens keep insects outside as you let in some fresh air, they also provide a spot for those bugs to hang out. 58.5 percent of the women polled said that if they spot a bug on the screen, they’re just going to let it be, generally because they’re too frightened or disgusted to get into a territorial dispute.

▼ A screen door with a special insect-repellant patch attached to it

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Of course, just because many of them don’t feel up to the task of shooing the bugs off themselves doesn’t mean Japanese women really like having bugs lounging on their screen doors, either. So Dio asked about something the company calls the ami-ton. A variant of the kabe-don, in which a guy pounds the wall behind a girl’s head for passionate emphasis, ami-ton translates as “screen-flick,” and refers to the maneuver of chivalrously striking the screen with your fingertips to scare off any bugs there.

▼ And also make them shed tears of lonely jealously, according to this illustrated diagram.

When asked how’d they feel about being the recipient of a guy’s ami-ton service, the response from the surveyed women was overwhelmingly positive. 30.7 percent said they’d be “very happy,” 30 percent “pretty happy,” and an additional 25 percent “a little happy.”

Still, those statistics suggest that a little over 10 percent of women aren’t particularly moved by the gesture. That doesn’t necessarily mean that guys not stepping up and doing their ami-ton duties is a wise option, though. We mentioned above that 58.5 percent of the women polled were willing to cede control of their screen doors to invading bugs, but that also means that 249 of the women in the survey can find the courage to take care of the problem themselves. That’s not to say they look favorably on a guy who doesn’t volunteer for the job, though. When asked how they’d feel about a man who doesn’t take care of bugs that pop up in the home, the women didn’t mince words.

“I wouldn’t think that I could rely on him when the chips are down.”
“It’s not like household bugs are dangerous, so if he can’t touch them, he’d be a coward in my mind.”
“I’d start to worry about what kind of family environment he was raised in.”

In other words, if you’re a guy playing the percentages with a Japanese girl, man up and smack that screen.

Sources: Nari Nari, Kai-You, PR Times
Insert images: RocketNews24, PR Times