After the Typhoon

The cicadas are dying and feeding the ants. Fall isn't here yet, but it's on the way. Today in the recycling room at my school, I found a ceramic bowl piled high with little brown crunchy things. I stepped closer and realized someone was collecting cicada skin shells (for lack of a better word). There must have been 30 in the bowl and when I first saw them, I gasped. Gross! But a few seconds later I decided this was really cool. At a public place in the US, the bug remains would have been tossed a long time ago, unless they were in a biology lab. Someone liked paying attention to the outside, and they collected it so the people inside could notice, and remember.

The typhoon was pretty harsh yestserday (they say the translation is "hurricane," so in a word, it was pretty darn windy), but now the sun is beating down again. Except for the leaves and twigs strewn all over the place, things are back to normal.

The idea that the Japanese are closely connected to nature seems too stereotypical. But with little AC, screaming winds, sudden rain, earthquakes, deafening cicadas, tatami that smells like grass and straw in your bedroom, poisonous centipedes on your doorstep, and views of cloud-covered Mt. Fuji from everywhere...how could you not feel close to nature? It's like the outside is not a separate place anymore. This is very different from my life in the States, or my time in Paris.

I like it.