prickly water lilies

a ninja ran across on the leaves at night.

lotus flowers

bloom in early morning and open with a popping sound they say.

gate of two different styles

out of the railway ticket gate, you face a replica of a traditional gate of shukuba.

too muggy for this time of the season

my grandma was taken to a hospital by ambulance with heat stroke.
I got put on a drip for fatigue.
didn’t have a chance to write my wish on a strip of paper and hang it from bamboo branch.

a fresh start

the ceremony was held out on June 30th.
they have gone downstream in the shrine,
and we have made a fresh start over
for the second half of the year.

wash away

this strip of paper are cut into a human shape.
once you write your name (and your age) on it, it houses you.
stroke it and breathe softly onto it.
it takes away your stains, get purified and thrown down in the river.

how you proceed

you don’t pass through it just once.
you pass 4 times through the ring
as it is showed by the red line carving a figure of eight.

shinto purification

they make a ring by holding together pampas grass, and set it in shrines at the end of June.

when you pass through this, citing the the spell( waka poetry), the stains from the half of the year are believed to rub off on the ring.

July is aound the corner

fireflies are on the way out (of the season)...
the other night, it was too cool and last night was too late.
in the high season, watchers outnumber them, talking out loud.