August
Through sweltering heat, long lines of cars crowd the mountain roads and highways.
Usually calm fields, mountains and streams echo with the clicking calls of cicada and gleeful shouts of children scurrying to catch them in their nets.
Feeling dizzy from the relentless sun, I join in to splash in a stream and pick some peanut bush, inkberry and onidokoro growing along the bank, arrange them in a glass vase and set it on a rock projecting above the stream's surface.
The sunlight flickering on the water and the vase dazzles the eyes.
After the obon festival, we begin to feel a cool breeze in the morning and evening, a sign that autumn is on the way.
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