On Sagami Bay, Japan
August in Japan
The summer in Japan is a season for memory of WWII, especially Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and baseball.
Specifically August proceeds with memorial services/ceremonies for Hiroshima/Nagasaki atomic bombing victims, the end of WWII for the Empire of Japan, and the nationwide high-school baseball tournament.
This baseball event is joined by about 4,000 high schools all over Japan. Each prefecture sends their top team to the Koshien Baseball Park, west of Osaka, where high school baseball teams representing each prefecture compete for real for final victory. All the games played in Koshien are televised live all over Japan.
(Nomo, Ichiro, and other Japanese Major Baseball players have all experienced this Koshien series.)
So, August is a big month for the Japanese race, since their Buddhist tradition teaches them that spirits of their ancestors come back to their home on mid-summer days called Bon or politely O-Bon. Those working in big cities, such as Tokyo and Osaka, are expected to return to their home towns or parents' homes in local cities, towns, and villages. Most of Japanese companies set a summer vacation period for their employees at the O-Bon days.
However, decades ago, the temperature in Japan in August did not get higher than 35 degrees Celsius so often as it does today.
For sightseers to Japan, however, the summer is a chance to observe abundant paddy fields outside cities all over Japan and confirm that Japan is the Land of Vigorous Rice Plants since ancient days. Accordingly rice import to Japan is highly restricted to preserve this source of spirit and energy of the Japanese race. Rice is a kind of sacred food for Japanese, though they consume this staple less and less nowadays with diet westernization being so prevailing.
*** *** *** ***
Mat 7:24 Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock:
Mat 7:25 And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.