Protests and Cicadas

Hi Everybody,

Usually the protests that go by are just trucks with loudspeakers, but that time there were the loudspeakers and the marchers were holding signs.

This was the view from Elder Chandler's office window of the protest group marching down the main street.  The Japanese are very quiet people except when it comes to protesting against China over some disputed islands.  This protest went on for quite a long time. They also like to drive by the Chinese residential area which is by our Church with their loudspeakers loudly yelling something in Japanese.  Many times on Sundays we have had to pause Sunday School until they go by as they are very loud.                               

We also told you about our typhoon, Phonfone,  last week and we felt very fortunate that we didn't have the terrible winds and damage here in Tokyo.    Now we're awaiting Vongfong, which is another typhoon and which just passed over Okinawa with 84 hour winds, although it is now forecast that it is weakening should be down to 69 mile an hour winds when it gets here, so we should be fine.  There will be lots of rain and they forecast lots of flooding in some areas as the typhoon moves along.  The heavy rains should begin tomorrow here in Tokyo.

We haven't taken many photos lately as we have been busy and we also haven't ventured out to do very much.  We continue to host the missionaries with their investigators and so we spend a lot of time cooking meals and buying food to cook meals and walking to go shop to buy food to cook meals. We calculate that we will walk 255 miles walking back and forth just to go and buy food before we leave!  Not to mention the "weight-lifting" involved to carry home the groceries!  We love it, though!  Last night we had over the Sister Missionaries with their sweet investigator, Sarah.  Today, we will have the Elders with a new member named Taka.  He is excited to go on a mission and he will be counting the days until he is eligible to apply.  His mother is not a member but she came to church today for the first time, and after church, she was the one telling her son that he should go on a mission!               We did recently go out to visit another English speaking ward to check up on one of our friends, Louie, who is from the Philippines to see how he was doing.  After Church, as we were walking to the subway station, we passed by the Tokyo hospital and had to take a photo of it because of all the vines that they are growing just a few feet in front of the hospital.  Interesting, huh?  The subway station was actually located sort of inside the hospital. 

Okay, that's all the news we have, so would like to learn a little bit about our famous Japanese Cicadas?  Cicadas live underground as nymphs for most of their lives.  Cicadas can live underground for as long as seventeen years.  They stay busy during that time digging and feasting on tree roots, sap and xylem.  After that time they construct a tunnel to the surface and emerge.  They then molt (shed their skins) on a plant and are then very loud adults.  The exoskelton that they shed stays on the tree.  After mating, the female makes a slit in the bark of twigs and deposits her eggs there, sometimes laying as much as several hundred eggs.  When the eggs hatch, these new nymphs drop to the ground and they burrow into the ground for 2 to 5 years or 13 years or 17 years or however long their particular type stays underground. And the adults live for only a few weeks.  There is a different group of new cicadas that emerge from the ground every summer, though.

This is before shedding.To see the process click on this: molting

This is after. Some are a little hard to see on the tree bark. Every time we go to the park in the summer, the noise of the cicadas is super loud! Would you also like to hear what we hear every time we go there? This isn't something that I recorded but this is what we hear.  Turn your volume up really loud so you can hear as we hear.  Click on this: Lovely music of the cicadas

So sweet; they even make wall hangings to look like them!

Or maybe you would like to eat one?  Some people do, you know. Of course they eat almost anything here! Here cicadas mean summer and people are excited when they first start to hear them because that means it's summer. 

Here's a Japanese poem dedicated to the cicadas.  I'm not so sure exactly what the meaning is, though.

Yes, the sound is so loud that I think that at times.

If you can't beat it, join it?

Lovely, huh?

I don't think the dog is a predator, I read that the predators are the praying mantis and the cicada killer wasp. I don't recall seeing either one of those insects here, though, hence the huge number of cicadas!

In case you are wondering how they make their noise, I also read that male cicadas have a noisemaker called a tymbal below each side of the anterior abdominal region. The tymbals are structures of the exoskeleton formed into complex membranes with thin, membranous portions and thickened ribs. Contraction of internal muscles buckles the tymbals inwards, producing a click; on relaxation of the muscles the tymbals return to their original position, producing another click. The male abdomen is largely hollow, and acts as a sound box.  By rapidly vibrating these membranes a cicada combines the clicks into apparently continuous notes, and enlarged chambers derived from the trachea as resonance chambers with which it amplifies the sound. Did you get all of that?  Maybe you could explain it to me!  It's almost a little sad as the sound is getting quieter each day when we go to the park which is a signal that summer is almost over.

Here's one last poem as an ode to the cicada!

All shrilling together,
the multitudinous semi make,
with their ceaseless clamor,
even the mountain move.

Actually, let's end this post with a beautiful night photo of the Tokyo temple!   Also, if you weren't able to hear the prophet and apostles speak, you can watch the videos of conference anytime.  Just click on this link:  General Conference and then click on "general conference".  Have a great week, everybody!