July 31, 2019
Summer festival season arrives, but Japanese urged to guard against heatstroke
The summer festival season has come to Japan, and main characters at the festivals are usually children. This was the case with a summer harvest festival held at a community square in Tachiarai Town, Fukuoka Prefecture, southwestern Japan, on a weekend late July.
The harvest event featured locally grown "edamame" soybeans. Organizers were seen selling bags with two bunches of edamame beans at 300 yen apiece at the site, but far more exiting was the "suikawari" watermelon splitting game mainly for kids.
Blindfolded players with a bamboo stick moved slowly toward a watermelon placed on the board ahead. They were groping for the target while listening to various voices from the gallery, "No, right!," or "Straight ahead," or "Hit, now."
The split watermelon was cut into pieces and served to children who stood on the line for the cool desert. Tachiarai's edamame is brand-named Yukata Musume (yukata-clad girl). The harvest of the edamame in the town comes to a peak in late July.
As the edamame bean is a favorite to beer lovers, the one is recommended to slightly boil the juicy, sweet bean with salt water.This year's "tsuyu" rainy season came to an end late July in most parts of Japan. This was quickly followed with dangerously hot days, with the mercury climbing far above 30 degrees centigrade.
Weathermen call for maximum caution against the danger of heatstroke, warning people must take in water and use air conditioning appropriately, not just while working or playing outside but also inside.
Water pools and showers, set up at the festival site, were seen enliven and refresh small children.
