I remember the first time I came to Japan during the summer. It was August, the season of Obon. My husband’s biological father had passed away the year before, and we came for Hatsubon — the first Obon after a death. I had no idea what I was in for.
My mother-in-law still lived in the old house then, before it was torn down — an old wood-and-tatami structure with an outhouse-style toilet and a concrete-floored kitchen. There was one old air conditioner, in the main tatami room. Every other room had a rusty fan whirring in the corner, dust clinging to the blades and blowing loose in the breeze as it rocked left to right.
The whole village seemed to wilt in the August heat. I’d lived on a tropical island most of my life, but the heat in this tiny village was different. It seared my nostrils. My clothes stuck to me, sweat ran down my arms and legs, but it didn’t cool me — it felt like every drop evaporated slowly into steam. The heat made my head spin, and I had to fight waves of nausea despite drinking glasses of cold tea. That first summer was not a vacation. Hatsubon meant cooking, serving, cleaning.
The tiny concrete kitchen had a large window with a stainless steel shelf running the length of it beneath — the kind common in old Japanese homes, though in the really old ones the shelf is wood instead. It’s meant to be a drainboard and drying rack and storage all at once, and it was crammed full, pots and pans and every kind of cooking utensil stacked and hung wherever they’d fit. The window faced the afternoon sun, and the steel reflected the blazing light straight back into the room. Not that much breeze could have gotten through anyway, packed as it was — there must have been seven women crammed in there, no space, a few squatted in front of portable gas stoves set right on the floor, pots boiling away. We were elbow to sweaty elbow. My head spun, sweat blinded me as I tried to understand the instructions I was being given. It had to be a hundred degrees in that kitchen, and opening the window did nothing. There was no breeze anyway.
I could hear laughter from the tatami room, where the men sat on zabuton around the low Japanese tables. Every so often someone reached into the bucket of ice for another bottle of beer, and I could hear the ice shifting and clinking. I imagined plunging my hands into it. I almost cried.
I came up with a little plan. I volunteered to carry the cooked food into the tatami room, and I lingered in the air conditioning as long as I could — until I heard my mother-in-law calling me back to the kitchen.
After we’d finished in the kitchen, I watched my mother-in-law carry a bamboo bucket and a ladle outside. She filled the bucket with water and splashed it across the street in front of the house, over the little concrete walkways, and on the stone walkway.
I’d never seen anyone do that before.
Later, I learned it was called uchimizu (打ち水), an old way of cooling the ground and the air with water.
Welcome to a Japan summer!
There were a few more summers before we retired and moved here for good, each one as hot, humid and mind-melting as the last. Somewhere along the way, I figured out how to survive. I ended up with a stack of cooling towels and a little pump spray bottle filled with water that was never far from reach. Nobody told me what to do. I simply watched and copied what everyone else already knew.
When we first arrived, we rented an old traditional Japanese house — my brother-in-law’s wife’s parents’ home, recently left empty after they passed away. It had an engawa and a garden, and was mostly tatami except for the kitchen, bedroom, toilet, and shower room.
It was a charming old house, but I had to learn how to live in it. Charming doesn’t equal comfort.
There was only one old air conditioner, in the main tatami room. We installed another in the bedroom, which made sleeping possible, because Japanese summer nights are nettaiya (熱帯夜) — tropical nights that never really cool down.
The old house had no insulation. We tried everything we could think of: cooling mattress covers, cooling pillowcases, and sudare hung over the bedroom windows to join the ones already shading the rest of the house. Even then, we still needed a fan running alongside the air conditioner just to make it through the night.
Old Japanese homes were built to allow airflow, because of the tatami, woven straw floor mats found in traditional Japanese rooms — soft underfoot, faintly grassy-smelling when new, but vulnerable to moisture. Trapped humidity breeds mold and mildew underneath them, so the houses were built to let air move through and keep the mats dry — which also meant the windows weren’t quite sealed, and that meant little critters like mosquitoes could get in. And mukade- poisonous centipedes the likes of which I’d never seen before.
Luckily, I’d been gifted a little clay pig, a cute invention made to hold katori senko — mosquito coils. A cute little decorative item with a purpose!
Mukade, that was another story. We had no idea that there seemed to be nests of them somewhere underneath the tatami. They come out mostly at night during the summer. They crawl into futons, along the ceiling and then drop down on you. They crawl up you while you are just trying to relax around the Japanese table with a cold drink, the fan squeaking in the corner. And they sting you. I’m speaking from experience.
Keeping them out is a battle.
I drank gallons of mugicha, cold barley tea, standard fare in a Japanese summer. I learned to love its earthy, smoky flavor. If I was particularly stressed out about the mukade, I drank a cold beer.
Just like my mother-in-law’s old house, we bought fans for every corner. After a couple of months they also squeaked perfectly. Just like hers did.
I had a kit I took out to the garden with me: a very wide-brimmed hat with a long flap at the back to protect my neck from the sun, a little round tin clipped to my garden apron where I could tuck a lit mosquito coil and special cooling neck towels. These days, plastic neck rings filled with liquid you freeze first are popular. I’d also tuck cool wipes — hiyahiya shiito, menthol body sheets — into my apron pocket. Those were great for a quick wipe-down and cool-off.
We collected dozens of hand-held fans, tucked into an old vase and set on the floor by the tokonoma. I always kept a few in my purse and in the car’s glove compartment.
As soon as Daiso brought out sudare each year, I’d buy several to replace last year’s. Sudare are bamboo blinds, hung outside windows to keep the sun from blaring in. They only last about a year, so I’d replace them each season.
I learned about furin, wind chimes — the sound is supposed to psychologically cool you down. I don’t know if it works, but they’re cute, and very much a summer thing to buy. I hung several in the windows and enjoyed the tinkling sound while sitting on the stoop and holding a cold drink to my forehead.
Speaking of sounds — in my life, I’d never heard anything as deafening as Japanese semi, cicadas. Their cries seemed to rise and fall with the heat. The neighborhood kids would run around collecting nukegara, dried cicada shells clinging to tree trunks, walls, wherever they could be found. I remember one little girl made a necklace out of them and proudly showed it to me. I was a bit repulsed, but I smiled and told her it was lovely.
Insects are a big part of a Japanese summer, but not just the pesky ones like mosquitoes and mukade. I remember when I first saw kabuto-mushi, Japanese stag beetles, being sold for about 4,000 yen in the stores! They come complete in a little plastic cage with a handle. You can buy little jelly-cups that they like to eat. They make very popular summer pets. My step-father-in-law went into the forest to catch them for the kids instead — he could have sold them for a pretty penny.
Have you ever seen a Japanese stag beetle? The first time I experienced one was quite by accident. We were visiting my in-laws. My husband had gone somewhere, and my in-laws had left for their karaoke club. I was alone in the tatami room, reading, when I heard it — a scratching sound, faint but unmistakable. I tried to ignore it. Impossible. It kept coming, small and dry and persistent, and I found myself setting the book down, ears tuned, tiptoeing around the room trying to trace where it was coming from. Every time I got close, it seemed to stop, then start again. I decided to move to another room to read. I was sure — absolutely sure — there had to be a mouse in the house, or something worse.
As soon as my in-laws came home, I reported the possible intruder. Laughing, my father-in-law opened a box to show me a scary-looking bug with huge pincers! My mother in law beamed and said- isn’t it cute? Cute?! Gah!
My husband explained it all to me later on. He tried to tell me cute stories from his childhood and catching kabuto-mushi during summer vacation. No cute story was going to endear them to me. Although once, I actually saw one fly past when I was in the garden! It was really kind of amazing. They fly upright!
Now that we’re in our own home, which thankfully has insulation, summer heat indoors isn’t much of a problem. Our tiny 730-square-foot house is easy to keep cool. I still buy sudare for the windows, and I still light katori senko in my clay pig and set it outside the genkan, the front entrance. I don’t need hand fans indoors anymore and my clothes don’t stick to me.
However, I still keep hand fans in my purse. I have a summer kit I always take with me — hand fans, cooling wipes, a UV parasol, a cool neck towel, and a little pump bottle of water I can use to mist my face or arms. I also carry handkerchiefs for wiping sweaty arms or necks. They are also useful to rinse under a cold tap and then pat your face!
When I’m walking around the rice fields I sometimes take off my shoes and socks so I can dangle my feet in the cool water of the irrigation canal. I’m not really sure if that’s totally acceptable, but it’s fun!
Sometimes we head up to Hikosan mountain and hike to the river. The water on the mountain is pure and cold!
Summer meals have switched over to mostly cold fare — something I wasn’t really used to at first, but have now grown to love!
Here are some of our favorites.
Somen, thin, cold noodles dipped into a cold sauce. Added to the sauce are: chopped chives, grated ginger and perhaps wasabi.
Cold buckwheat noodles and vegetable tempura with a dipping sauce.
Hiyayakko: cold tofu with ginger and katsuobushi-thin shavings of smoked dried fish.
Unagi on the Doyo no Ushi no Hi (midsummer ox day) — the whole cultural logic of eating something fortifying in the worst heat of summer.
Salted chilled edamame or cold cucumber with miso paste. Chilled tomato slices with a bit of salt.
A large plate assembled with thin slices of lean boiled pork, parboiled bean sprouts, enoki and shiitake mushrooms, hakusai (Chinese cabbage) and tofu. We create a dipping sauce and it’s kind of like a cold shabu-shabu (hot-pot).
And of course dessert!
Huge chunks of iced watermelon are perfect. Sometimes we make kakigori — shaved ice with a splash of syrup.
There are always pots of pickled plums — umeboshi — which are used for salt and electrolytes replacement during the hot weather.
Not everything is cold, though. Japanese-style BBQ is very much part of summer too — little grills loaded with mini wieners, shrimp, tiny corn cobs, potato wedges wrapped in foil, and grilled rice balls, char marks and all-and of course BBQ salted river fish!
And no Japanese summer is complete without hanabi — fireworks. The big displays draw crowds to the riverbank, the boom arriving a beat after the light blooms overhead. But it’s the small ones I love best — senko hanabi, the little handheld sparklers, sitting on the engawa in the dark, watching the spark hiss and curl and finally drop, and lighting another one before the night’s really over.
Years ago many people dressed in yukata — light cotton robes similar to kimono, but simpler: unlined, no formal obi layers underneath, easy to slip on and move in. Now mostly I see cute little girls in colorful yukata, hair full of bows. Teenage girls and young women dressed up in ladylike fashion, bright colors on patterned yukata with pretty hairdos to match. Their wooden geta clapping along the sidewalk. Older women don’t really wear them much anymore, which is too bad — I always thought they added such a festive flair.
And then there’s Obon — mid-August, the biggest event of the summer around here, though I’ve since learned it’s not observed with equal weight everywhere in Japan.
Here in Tagawa though, the old customs are still very much alive. For now I’ll just say this: it’s the one part of natsu that isn’t about escaping the heat. It’s about sitting inside it, together, on purpose.
It’s a long way from that first sweltering afternoon in my mother-in-law’s kitchen to the woman who now carries a whole cooling kit in her purse without a second thought. But some things haven’t changed — the cicadas still rise and fall with the heat, and I still reach for cold mugicha before anything else.
That’s natsu.
Stay cool, friends — and see you soon for Obon.
