cicadas

Tokyo is not exactly a nature lover's paradise. The trees are almost entirely of the variety planted in a man-made container of some sort (or left in a green space that suits our purposes). The rivers are teeming with fish but are contained to inaccessible sleeves of concrete built into high walls, and the water itself is usually a noxious milky grey. And the birdlife essentially consists of weatherbeaten crows and the odd starling.

But in its insect life, Tokyo offers the visitor a wide variety of beetles to step on, mosquitos to feed, mantises and stag beetles to buy, and cockroaches to startle. And it's got cicadas.

Of all of Tokyo's wildlife, I like the cicadas. The city seems to have both flavours: the type I remember from my childhood in southern Ontario that makes a long whirrrrrrrr sound; and a type I'd never experienced before coming here. These latter are called semi and after four years I still delight in them. They fly badly, they make a loud ullulating sound like a small cooling fan on its last hour, and they tend to drop from high places when you're not expecting them. They're like the clumsy nerds of the insect world.

But they're also a distinctive element of Summertime in the city, and as such I love 'em. And now there's an added benefit—today I was able to bring one into the apartment to show my young son. At eighteen months, he's at the perfect age for it: too young to want to touch (these things make him a bit nervous) and far too old to want to put it in his mouth.

P.S. Today my little website passed 2.7 million pageviews. By my reckoning that's a little under 700 pageviews a day, which is a lot of visitors.