20 June 2007: Get your knickers onto the roof

Japan, which experiences 20 percent of the world's major earthquakes, prides itself on its disaster planning. It has one of the world's most sophisticated technological systems to predict disasters, but still feels there is room for help from the animal kingdom. So Japan's Disaster Management Agency has collected together hundreds of folk beliefs associated with calamities in the disaster-prone nation.

Some make a degree of sense. These include "a swarm of ants climbing trees spells major flooding" and "if bees make their nests low, violent winds will hit."

Other sayings are more puzzling. Try "when pheasants cry, a quake will come".

Or how about SaintFM's favourite: "a woman's underwear on the roof saves the house from thunderbolts"?