September means autumn. Yesterday was August 31st, today is September 1st, and I feel a big disconnect between August and September. In terms of the flow of time, there is no division, but I feel a clear division in my consciousness. The birth of the calendar, the month, and the week must have been a change in consciousness and motivation for new initiatives as a result of marking the flow of time. Farming has long been the embodiment of this change in consciousness, and the scenery of Mt. Fuji symbolizes it.
The last Sunday in August has passed and all we can hear is the sound of the waves crashing on the beach. A low tree stretched across the grass that stretches out to the water’s edge over there and has bright red flowers on it. It’s American Daygo. It’s a sight that doesn’t change from midsummer, but it’s a lonely sight. American deigo originated in Brazil and was brought to Japan around the end of the Edo period. It is relatively cold tolerant and grows in sunny areas from the southern part of Honshu to Okinawa in winter in Japan. Flowers bloom from June to early July and from August to October. Deigo is a similar flower, but this is native to India and the Malay Peninsula, and its northern limit is said to be Okinawa. It is the prefectural flower of Okinawa Prefecture and appears in “Shima Uta”. It is said that “the more deigo flowers bloom, the more typhoons will come in the year”. Both deigos are out of sight for a while.
Rain lily is a precious flower that periodically creates a garden with brightly colored flowers during the season when there are few dead flowers in summer. Many of them are native to the tropical regions of Central and South America, and most of them overwinter outdoors. The earliest ones came to Japan in the Edo period, and have long been popular under the names of saffron-modoki and tamasudare. Moisture absorption due to periodic rainfall in the place of origin stimulates the plant to grow rapidly, and it has a habit of flowering in a short period of time. Therefore, it is called “rain lily”, but the name “rain lily” is not an official name, but is widely used as a nickname to emphasize that it blooms after rain. The official name is Zephyranthes. Each flower lasts only 2-3 days, but it blooms many times throughout the summer from June to September.
I was able to sleep without an air conditioner last night. It was so cold in the morning that I woke up. The temperature was 21°C. The tropical night that lasted until yesterday seems like a lie. The temperature rose to 33°C during the day, but the humidity was as low as 50% and the breeze blowing through the windows was refreshing. To prevent heat stroke, I used to use an air conditioner when the temperature exceeded 30 degrees Celsius, but I forgot about that, and I think I can spend the day without an air conditioner today. Freecy clouds float in the sky, and the cannas on the roadside grow tall and bloom. There are only two days left in August, and summer is almost over.
Last night, the “Naniwa Yodogawa Fireworks Festival”, which was canceled since 2019 due to the influence of the new coronavirus, was held. The “Naniwa Yodogawa Fireworks Festival” started in 1989 as a hand-made fireworks display by citizen volunteers who love the Yodo River that flows through Osaka, the city of water. The event is run by local volunteer staff and collected donations from surrounding businesses, organizations and residents. Although it is a hand-made event, it is now in its 34th year and has become one of the largest and most popular fireworks festivals in Japan as a summer tradition in Osaka. Overwhelmingly powerful fireworks that cover the entire field of vision are launched with large fireworks, and the highlight is the dramatic “synchronized fireworks” that are released in time with the music. It was a moment while watching the beautiful but ephemeral fireworks disappearing into the leaving summer night sky.
It’s been a long time since I’ve had a refreshing morning. According to the weather forecast for the week ahead, there will be days when the maximum temperature will drop below 30°C, and on some days the lowest temperature will drop below 25°C. I feel like I am finally out of the summer heat. A faint loneliness also remains. Many autumn fruits such as persimmons, chestnuts, and pears are now lined up in storefronts. Watermelon is also doing its best not to lose. I wanted to write “he no he no mo he no” and support them. “He no he no mo he ji ” is treated like standard Japanese, but it was originally “he no he no mo he no”. It originated in the Kansai region and spread throughout the country in a blink of an eye in the latter half of the Edo period. It changed to various ways of saying in the local area like a message game. In English, the y in the middle of the eye is changed to a capital letter Y to represent the eyebrows and nose, and the left and right e are the eyes. And in Spanish also, there is a play on the nose and eyes by changing the j from ojo, which means eyes, to a capital J. There is a letter game that represents the eyes. I feel like these probably originated from the Japanese “he no he no mo e no”.
There are places that I will definitely want to visit when the seasons change. It is a place called by the name of the so-called “marginal village”. In the past, mandarin orange cultivation was popular in the mountainous areas of Senshu in the southern part of Osaka Prefecture. This village was also rich in mandarin orange cultivation. Although it is a small village with a total of about 20 households, splendid houses and mandarin orange warehouses that remind us of the past still remain in an old fashioned form. Most of the inhabitants are elderly, and now at most they cultivate a small amount of land. One house in the village is the house I’m looking for. At the entrance of the splendid gate, tasteful fresh flowers are decorated every season. It is a sight rarely seen in the city. The word “marginal village” is completely unsuitable for this scene.
Wearing a jet-black dress with red rubies and black pearls, Black Pepper looks like a lady. The English name is Black Pearl. It is an ornamental red pepper and cannot be eaten. The leaves are green when young (sprouts), but gradually turn into beautiful black leaves. It branches well without trimming and forms itself naturally. The fruits are produced from the end of summer to the beginning of autumn, and come in various colors such as red, yellow, orange, black, and purple. It is native to the tropical regions of South America and North America, and is an annual plant from early summer to autumn because it is good at hot weather but not cold. The ornamental period is long from June to December, and it is a plant that can be used for various purposes such as flower beds and group planting.
I haven’t seen my grandchildren living in Shanghai, China for two and a half years because of their father’s work. In Shanghai, the lockdown that had lasted for more than two months was lifted on June 1st. As a result, with the exception of some areas, about 22.5 million people, or about 90% of the population of Shanghai, have been able to move freely, and basic public transportation services and store operations have resumed. I thought it would be able to see my grandchildren in the very summer vacation this year, but shortly after the lockdown was lifted, community-acquired infections spread in the city center, and a partial lockdown was implemented. In line with this, infected people were found one after another in Beijing and other areas, and vigilance is spreading not only in Shanghai but throughout China. Even in Japan, the “seventh wave” of the new coronavirus has spread rapidly around the time summer vacation begins, and the situation is still unpredictable. At this rate, I won’t be able to see my grandchildren for a while yet. ⌘ Promapi is projection mapping, a technique and performance that uses a projector to project an image onto a space or object, and gives various visual effects to the superimposed images.
Today is Shosho, the 14th of the twenty-four solar terms. Nijushisekki is a seasonal term that divides a year into four seasons, spring, summer, autumn and winter, and each of these is further divided into six. The Shosho period between the beginning of autumn and the white dew is said to be the time when the heat of summer stops, and it is said to be the time when the severe heat passes over the peak pass and calms down. At the same time, today is also the last day of Uchimizu Day. Since 2003, private organizations such as the Japan Water Forum (Tokyo), an NPO of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, have been holding events under the name of “Uchimizu Daisakusen”. We can lower the temperature by 2 degrees Celsius by sprinkling water on the ground.” In the summer Koshien, Sendai Ikuei brought the first championship flag to the Tohoku region. Autumn is just around the corner.