Japan in the Four Seasons
This summer is also hot in Japan.
The ice capped area in the Arctic Ocean gets reportedly smaller and smaller. Indeed, the global warming is going on, though not much argument has been made in these days on CO2.
Japan has traditionally four distinct seasons: spring, summer, autumn, and winter. There is also a rainy season called Tsuyu before the summer. The season changes gradually in Japan.
When you come to Japan in August, you would suspect that Japan is just on the equator. But when you visit Japan, you will find you can ski in almost half part of Japan. But the best season in Japan is said to be the autumn. You can enjoy autumn color of leaves for weeks. This change of the environment proceeds from the south to the north of the Japanese Archipelago.
In a sense, a year of Japan starts with blossoming of cherry blossoms (called Sakura) in the early spring, following efflorescence of Japanese apricots called Ume in February.
In opposition, the season changes abruptly in most part of North America. One day, it can be like the late summer but in the night it turns to be the late autumn, and the early winter in the next morning.
The point at issue is that Japanese people have been living in this natural environment generation after generation for tens of thousands of years.
Unlike most of nations in Europe and Asia, Japan has not experienced a large scale change of residents and inhabitants through its long history. People who lived in Japan 10,000 years ago are part of direct descendants of today's Japanese.
Though various people, tribes, and clans came to Japan from the Asian Continent through Siberia, the Sea of Japan, the Korean Peninsula, the East China Sea and even Southeast Asia, they did not come to Japan to conquer it to replace old inhabitants. New comers mingled with earlier inhabitants. So, with the very original inhabitants, various tribes from overseas constituted the present Japanese race in the very special natural environment featuring the four distinct seasons.
This condition has created the unique characteristics of the Japanese people. And the sense of religion and spiritualism of the Japanese people have been formed through their long and disturbed history in the Japanese Archipelago, since Japan has never been conquered by foreign forces and never been colonized.
That is why you find Japanese are unique unlike Koreans and Chinese when you know Japan more.
And, most of Koreans and Chinese find that Japanese are unique unlike them, too, when they know Japan more.
That is why even most of Western economist of the Nobel Prize class failed to understand the Japanese economy in 1990s when Japan was suffering the lost decade and in 2000s when Japan was undergoing difficult deflation.
And now, the EU and the US look like Japan of 1990s and 2000s.
You had better respect Japan more, as Japan is the only non-European country that modernized, industrialized, and Westernized the nation to be a major power before WWII.
By the way, there is a theory that a mini ice age is to come soon. It might be a North American type of phenomenon or a Japanese type. It might come soon after the summit of the global warming or gradually eroding the atmosphere. Anyway, everything changes. Even Japanese change along with history.
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Luk 8:22 Now it came to pass on a certain day, that he went into a ship with his disciples: and he said unto them, Let us go over unto the other side of the lake. And they launched forth.