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There\u2019s something missing from Japan\u2019s summer soundscape<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n While \u201chot\u201d and \u201chumid\u201d are often the first words used to describe summer in Japan, there\u2019s a special soundscape to the season as well. The gentle ring of a windchime, the clink of a spoon against a shaved ice dish, or the sound of fireworks, either bursting overhead at a festival or echoing from the next town over, are all ways you ears will tell you that you\u2019re in the middle of a Japanese summer.<\/p>\n This year, though, there\u2019s an audio cue that\u2019s missing, and it might be the most iconic of them all. You can\u2019t hear the cicadas<\/strong>.<\/p>\n In both cultural and meteorological senses, Japan divides summer into two parts. First comes the \u201crainy season,\u201d which starts around mid-June and usually lasts for about two to three weeks. Then comes the rest of summer, which is when the cicadas usually start singing.<\/p>\n \u25bc Technically, cicadas make this sound by (in simplified terms) rapidly flexing and relaxing their abdomen, but in Japanese they\u2019re still said to naku<\/em> (\u201csing\u201d\/\u201ccry\u201d).<\/p>\n\n Through the video above shows a series of heavily forested areas, at this time of year you can usually hear cicadas anywhere has trees, including suburban parks and even tree-lined streets in urban areas.<\/p>\n So why isn\u2019t Japan hearing many cicadas this summer?<\/strong> Well, cicadas spend most of their lives burrowed into the ground, and while they don\u2019t come out and start singing until the weather gets warmer and drier after the rainy season ends, this year the second part of summer has been too hot, and the preceding rainy season wasn\u2019t rainy enough<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Starting with the temperature problem, cicadas\u2019 ideal temperatures are somewhere in the Celsius low 30s. This summer, though, many parts of Japan have seen the mercury rise to or past 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit), at which point the cicadas say \u201cYeah, that\u2019s too hot. We\u2019re gonna stay underground,\u201d<\/strong> just like we humans are more likely to stay indoors when it\u2019s that scorching outside.<\/p>\n And while the cicadas don\u2019t come out until after the rainy season ends, that doesn\u2019t mean they\u2019re OK with no rainy season at all. While in the ground, they rely on tree sap for sustenance<\/strong>, but with Japan having had a short, and not all that wet, rainy season this year, trees haven\u2019t been producing as much sap as they ordinarily would. The weeks right before emergence are a critical development time for cicadas, and malnourishment may also be a factor in why they\u2019re not singing. Less rain also means more hard-packed earth<\/strong>, which can be more difficult for cicadas to crawl out of than soil that\u2019s been softened by extended rainfall.<\/p>\n However, just because this year\u2019s cicadas haven\u2019t shown up yet doesn\u2019t mean they\u2019re going to skip this summer entirely. While they only live for a few days after emerging, cicadas spend five or so years in the ground, so a few weeks\u2019 delay is something they can deal with, provided they do eventually get the conditions they need.<\/p>\n For those unaccustomed to it, the sound of cicadas can be extremely irritating, and even for those used to life in Japan, being woken up at 5 in the morning by an energetic cicadas singing right outside your bedroom window isn\u2019t a very pleasant way to start the day. Still, overall, most people in Japan have pretty positive sentiments towards their song<\/a>, and would argue it doesn\u2019t really feel like summer until it sounds like summer too.<\/p>\n Source: TBS News Dig<\/a>, FNN Prime Online<\/a><\/em> There\u2019s something missing from Japan\u2019s summer soundscape. While \u201chot\u201d and \u201chumid\u201d are often the first words used to describe summer in Japan, there\u2019s a special soundscape to the season as…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1434\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nTop image: Pakutaso<\/a> (edited by SoraNews24)<\/em>
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