Adventures in Japan

What you may have missed

The weather today was absolutely gorgeous! Reasonably cool and a bit breezy, not oppressively sweltery hot like every day for the past four months. I guess maybe that means summer is over. A bit sooner than I expected. Probably too good to be true.

In honour of the changing of the season (hopefully) I present to you the essence of a Japanese summer:


Watermelon and yukata (yukata being a cotton bathrobe-type garment you can wear out on the street without people looking at you funny).


Ice cream, usually served soft and in a cone. Another popular way to stay cool: kakigori (fancy Japanese talk for shaved ice & syrup). Unnaturally coloured and powerfully sweet. Like a Slush Puppie, but not.


I swear, there's a festival every day in this country. At least during the summer. Crowds of people dressed up and deep fried food. Did I mention the crowds?


And what's a festival without fireworks?


The other thing we saw a lot of was kids catching cicadas, either with nets or with little plastic boxes. Bugs seem to be very popular with the kids here. Especially big ugly ones. The kind you can battle against each other in a combination of a collectible card game and rock, paper, scissors...


I mean, look at that thing. It's big and horrible and ugly and loud. Loud before 5 AM. But at least they don't bite.

And of course there's the humidity. But we didn't take any pictures of that.