35 posts tagged “summer”
For residents of Tokyo and vicinity who don't have the time and money to go to Okinawa, there's a closer, cheaper alternative. The Izu island of Niijima is an overnight ferry away, or 2.5 hours on the hydrofoil. The light is bright, the sea is blue and clear, the sand is white and the flat-roofed houses are like a Greek island. The sea is a degree or two colder than here in Shonan, but still invites swimming. The island has an aging and dwindling population, and the mood is slow and down to earth.
Among the memories we took away from a weekend in this paradise were walking and cycling along quiet streets under the baking sun, watching the sunset from the hot spring before a dinner of Izu island sushi (regular sushi lightly brushed with a savory sauce that takes the place of dipping it in soy sauce). And a magical early-morning swim in the deserted lagoon before the lifeguards came on duty.
It isn't Okinawa, but it's close.
--Julian
Getting there: Tokai Kisen (03-5472-9999) overnight ferry from Takeshiba Pier in Tokyo to Niijima, and "jet ferry" back was about 20,000 yen round trip per person;
Accomodation: free campsite with basic amenities; cheap minshuku; or "Grand Hotel" around 16,000 yen per night.
The hot spring is free; a dozen stores rent bicycles for 1,500 yen per day.
On this shining summer morning as I sit studying Japanese, there is a min min cicada in full throttle right outside the open window screen. It's competing with Erik Satie's piano works on the CD player.
Cicada wins.
(and it isn't just competing volume, but is actually music vs. music, as David implies here.)
--Julian
Firework displays are a traditional entertainment during the hot Japanese summer. The Chigasaki fireworks were last night and locals assembled on the beaches at dusk. It's crowded, but not like the better-known Enoshima or Kamakura events. There's always space to put down your mat.
Facing the crashing sea that filled our noses with ozone and drowned out the loudspeaker commentary, we popped open our beers and snacks and settled down for the 50-minute spectacle of 3,000 fireworks, a mere quarter of the number set off in Tokyo the same evening, but plenty enough for a superb show. We were lucky with the weather but not the wind which blew the smoke directly in from the sea, partly masking the later fireworks. While the explosions and the rockets delivered shock and awe on the warm summer evening far from any war zone, down the coast to the left, a just-past-full moon rose silently over Enoshima Island.
The final crescendo turned night to day, and as the thousands of us filed away in an orderly fashion, the pyrotechnicians waved red torches from their barge by the harbor, thanking us for turning out to enjoy their handiwork.
--Julian
On this glorious day the breeze-blown leaves sparkle and the air vibrates with heat and the sound of cicadas.
White clouds billow in the blue sky.
The day shines.
It is high summer.
--Julian
It's a fine summer's day with great white clouds big enough to be dark on the bottom creeping across the sky. Creeping fast enough so that, lying reading on the tatami mats by the windows, if you drift off to sleep even for a brief moment, you open your eyes and find the sky entirely changed.
It was a good weekend though I had a fight with M. Which reminded me that when we were actually a couple we spent most of the time fighting. I usually only remember the good times.
Good times don't require sunshine. The best of times can come anytime, like yesterday when I was sitting in a Chigasaki Southern Beach beach house (one of the temporary bars built on the sand for summer) with M after a swim, with mugs of beer, a packet of potato chips torn open "party-ake [-open]"-style flat along its seams, and a dish of edamame (boiled green salty soybeans in their pods). We were listening to the Southern All Stars and looking out at the rain and the grey ocean and I though--and said--life doesn't get any better than this.
I'm currently reading, with great enjoyment, Nick Hornby's High Fidelity, which is surely why I'm so first-person here. It's how we are in our heads all the time of course, but Hornby manages to write the monologue out on paper in all its venal, self-absorbed glory.
--Julian
These have been days of showers and downpours, but on Sunday the sky was blue and the cicadas were in full voice under the hot sun. A brisk wind blew the green rice plants in waves. Cycling along the coast from Enoshima toward Kamakura (you may have seen this road: the runaway boys walked down it in Ozu's Early Summer), the sea was like an animated painting, white caps moving into shore.
As the day cooled, the seething metallic cicadas of noon gave way to the high, plaintive trilling cicadas of evening. A pale crescent moon appeared, and bats swooped in the half light, hunting on the wing.
Darkness brought a cacophony of frogs in the paddies, all but drowning out a gentler sound. An owl sat on a wire over the road, a small round ball silhouetted against the night sky, blacker against black, quietly hooting.
--Julian
Breeze through the kitchen window
on a hot summer's day
returns me to the moment
Leaving the creepers
on the hedge brings a
garden full of butterflies
on a summer's afternoon;
The smell of incense
--Julian
Yesterday, the end of the rainy season was declared for the Kanto region. It was a day of extreme heat, with clouds like impressionist brush strokes.
Day by day, cicadas burrow out of the ground and climb into the trees, and the seething hiss that accompanies summer gets louder.
By day, cicadas
By night, frogs in the paddies
The sounds of summer
--Julian
A traditional matsuri festival is rooted in the local community of farmers, fisherman and businesses. By and for local households, it involves all ages from primary school children to the retired. It is a harvest festival centered upon the Shinto shrine, and is at once indelibly ancient and entirely of the moment, a happy fusion of the sacred and profane.
Last Sunday, Koshigoe, a small fishing port opposite Enoshima Island in the Sagami Bay an hour south of Tokyo, held its summer festival. At 10AM, floats and mikoshi portable shrines were slowly paraded down the main street lined with stalls selling children's toys and stir-fried noodles. Participants wore matching summer yukata robes with bright designs. Town elders rode on the roofs of the floats or walked ahead of the shrine priest who was preceded by two youths wearing lion heads upon their own. On the floats, small children banged on drums and junior high school aged boys played flutes. Walking behind, an older boy banged a taiko drum to his own beat. This discordant, exciting sound carries through the town and says "festival!" The floats paused in front of houses where tables were set out and beer and sake, soft drinks and snacks were offered.
At the front of the parade, the oldest mikoshi being carried and bounced with vigorous shouts turned left down to the beach where it was set down on trestles. Out to sea, a half-dozen fishing boats with more drummers and festival flutes clustered around the beach, beating out music. Twenty or so brawny middle-aged men stripped down to shorts or loincloths. At 11AM, the shrine was picked up again by the men and, with shouts and percussion, slowly borne into the sea, further and further off the beach until the men were up to their necks in water. The shrine was then turned once and carried back to the beach.
Down toward Enoshima Island, canned music from beach bar loudspeakers played to the bathing families, the surfers, and the couples down from Tokyo for the day. Modern life with its shallow roots, nuclear families, individualism and goods on demand shared the beach with an ancient ritual celebrating the bonds of community and the land and the sea that sustain it.
--Julian
High hissing;
A solitary rasp:
The first cicada of summer
--Julian
