蒸し暑い !

These recent sultry, humid days in Wakayama-shi have seen me instigating a new dress code for dinner. I hunch at this very desk wearing only boxer shorts and a hat. The hat lends the occasion a sense of dignity, I feel.
A large fan is trained constantly on my back. One day soon, I shall turn it on. The chopsticks slip all too predictably up and down in my useless, sweaty fingers. I groan periodically.
When smoking, I am unable to tell if the cigarette is lit, and it feels like I'm simply breathing through a straw.

I Googled 'sweat'.

Many, many pages. I learned of the different types of sweat (yes! more than one!!), of the bacteria that cause body odour, and of the various kinds of surgical procedures available to stop a person sweating. Can this be healthy? I would have thought some sensible advice such as 'stop running' would be just as helpful. Definitely cheaper.

And the cicada are amok. 'Min-min' is what they trill, if you're Japanese. I can hear it too though, it's the first Japanese onamatopaeic word I've been able to really appreciate. In September, the cicada are different. A smaller species which keens 'Suku suku bosh'. I don't understand this one. Because I'm not fluent.

I wonder, because I didn't ask, if there is a Japanese word for the god-awful screaming sound cicada make at around 8:00 on a Sunday morning when elementary school kids catch them and stick them in tiny cages? To me it sounds exactly like 'Arggghhhh! Noooo! Geeettttt. Theeeee. Fuckkkkkk. Offffffffff. Meeeeeeee!' but I'm not sure if it's how Basho would have described it. Which is a shame because it's exactly seven syllables.

So I wrote a haiku. About cicada. Difficult, because 'cicada' is a word greedy with the syllables. So I used the Japanese word instead. Also, I prescribe to Masaoka Shiki's 1892 reform of the haiku style. Hope that's ok.

Semi, in grass, hum.
Arggghhh! Noooo! Geettttt Theeeee Fuckkkkk Offfffff Meeeeeee!
Evil kid grins wide.

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As I break new ground in poetry, my brother is several thousand feet in the air. Perhaps over Russia. In a plane.
I hope, in a way opposite to past sibling rivalries concerning whole roast chicken for dinner, that he didn't get a wing. Siberia looks cool. For the first 10 minutes.

The next week and a half will no doubt see me showing off to my brother, by demonstrating my ability to gesture wildly and speak English really...very...slowly...in....a...slightly...RAISED...VOICE in a way he could never master. Such is my command of Japanese.