This summer almost all normal days came back here. July and August are terms of summer vacation for children in Japan. Japanese business people don’t have long summer vacations, but you can get some days off.
As for me, I have one coworker who helped me in my previous workplace. He was a very good coworker and he turned 60 years old. I needed to congratulate him somehow, and I had a promise with him that we would go to camp together. Namely, it's a party for him. Therefore, we decided to realize that plan.
We went to the campsite placed within mountains around 500 meters high last weekend. We had only two days off but we enjoyed camping one night. We tent each other and each stayed at each tent, and enjoyed barbecue.
In Japan, since the pandemic, the so-called “solo camp” has been popular. “Solo camp” means to tent by oneself, even if you go to camp with someone. As for us, my coworker and I did the same thing called “solo Camp”.
That place was a very calm one. At night you could not see any light around you. We drank and drank around the fire, spending a long time.
It’s summer. Crazy sunshine is falling here today. Here in Japan, speaking of insects in summer, it’s cicadas.
When I get up in the morning, I don’t want to go to work if cicadas are chirping in front of my house. They are very loud. I always want to shout whenever I listen to their voice, “Shut up”.
It seems that there are countries which no cicadas live in. I heard it for the first time this year. Well I want to live in such a region.
This is a very famous Japanese Haiku. Japanese short poem. This poem is written by most famous Haiku poet Basho Matsuo. Basho was traveling all over Japan during Edo period. One day, when he was taking a rest, cicadas were chirping. It was very noisy. But he noticed. It seems that cicadas’ chirping is seeping into the rock in front of him. And, it's very noisy around him but his soul was in a quiet peaceful world.
Amazing. He had a beautiful artistic sense, different from me. Please taste this poem.
しずけさや
岩にしみいる
蝉の声
Silent time now—-
Seeping into the rock,
Cicada's voice.
Yesterday, on Sunday, I worked at my company’s supermarket. I served food for tasting to customers. It was pasta. In Japan, we like frozen foods because they're easy to cook by microwave. So I served frozen pasta, and they are Japanese seasoned ones. One is called “Napolitan” but this is not from Italy. This is an original type of Japan. And another is flavored with tomato sauce and cream. I served them to customers while I was standing at the end of the commodities shelves. Yesterday it was so hot in Japan, therefore customers didn’t like to eat it. Og my God!
