The great Japanese poet Basho said the song of the cicada can melt stone. I think he's right. Japan is at the peak of a 5-year cicada cyle this summer, and I've never heard anything so loud. They sing, or whatever it is they're really doing, both as a mating call and a warning. As you walk through a garden it's like an auditory version of The Wave. Your presence sets them off and they're loudest right where you are, fading as you walk by. They're also over 2" long. The one that flew into me at night in the ryokan gave me a complete and instantaneous understanding of Mothra.

My friend Kazue Kimura has apparently written a lovely haiku about cicadas -- not these, but the smaller and sweeter-voiced autumn cicadas, more like crickets -- but like most haiku it seems to be untranslatable. Kazue is the wife of Jiro Kimura, and I'm visiting them in Kanazawa. Jiro is Mr. Noir in English/Japanese translation, the editor of anthologies of American crime stories translated into Japanese and an editor at Japanese Eleery Queen. He took me on a very intrepid walking tour of Kanazawa's geisha and temple quarters -- very close to each pother, as it happens -- in the pouring rain. Very atmospheric, and very damp. Then we went to a teahouse, sat on the floor, and drank cappucino.