A Dry Day

Today is Monday here in Japan, and in the week that I have been here, I have swum in rivers on more days than I have not. We arrived on Monday evening of last week, and I travelled down to my old stomping grounds in Nakamura on Tuesday, arriving around dinner time. On Wednesday, I went canoeing on the Shimanto. Thursday was another waterless day, and then on Friday I swam in the Kagami. On Saturday, I swam at another location on the Kagami, and yesterday I swam at an astoundingly clear point on the Niyodo. My arms ache, my legs ache from riding a bicycle too small for me, and my shoulders are just burnt enough to remind me to wear more sunscreen next time. Fortunately, it rained fit to drown a frog this morning, so I got to plead out of swimming again today.

We shall see what tomorrow brings.

It is hot and muggy here now, but still a little cooler and more bearable than Tokyo was. Mind you, it's still hot enough that riding a bicycle at noon is an exercise in dehydration, and, as if that were not enough warning, my wife's nephew's old schoolmate died of heastroke while practicing soccer last Monday. He was only 20, and no one really knows what to make of it, least of all Taka, my nephew.

In the midst of all this heat, it's also Yosakoi season. Yosakoi is an artificial tradition made up by merchants who sought to stir up businessness 150 years or so ago. They co-opted another made-up tradition about a fictional bridge in the heart of the city where a fictional monk gave a fictional hair-comb to a fictional geisha. After a hundred and fifty years of pushing this on people, however, it's become a tradition in its own right. Who's to say when the new-fangled gimmick becomes a classic, really?