Not to sound dumb here. But what is a Japanese Beetle? Specifically - what plants do they eat? I have vague recollections of catching them as kids.

You're very lucky, pixie_lou, if you haven't had experience with Japanese Beetles beyond catching them when you were a kid. The Japanese Beetle is one of our earliest imported pests (accidentally introduced in 1916), sort of a prequel to winter moths and other defoliators. The grubs eat the roots of lawn grass, with serious effects, and the adult beetles eat the leaves of something like 300 different species of plants, also with serious effects. Roses are particularly hit hard.

When people complain about grubs in their lawns, it's usually Japanese Beetle grubs.

I don't have a big problem here, for which I thank the skunks and birds for eating grubs, but I'm sure other GW members can give lurid descriptions of their experiences with Japanese Beetles.

A few good links:

UMass Extension

Morton Arboretum

Missouri Botanical Garden

Claire

I don't have grubs. Fortunately.

We used to also collect grubs as kids. We would have contests to see who could fill a coffe can full of them first. I remember my grandfather would then give each of us kids a dollar and he would dump some nasty chemical on the grubs and then throw the coffee cans in the trash. And now that I know they are nasty pests - I will mention that we would pull the wings off the Japanese Beetles. I should have known that they were nasty bugs if my grandmother let us do that. She would catch bugs and release them outside instead of killing them. But she didn't seem to mind when we tortured grubs and Japanese beetles.