白露

白露 means *white dew*, and it is named for something you have to get up early to see. Around the eighth of September the nights finally cool enough that water condenses on grass overnight, and for an hour after dawn everything low to the ground is beaded and pale.

It is a very Japanese way to name a season: not after the weather, but after a small thing the weather does.

This fortnight also has a sound.

Not *the sound* of insects. The **voice**. You met こえ last chapter, and it is the same word used for a person's.

In September, crickets and bell insects start up in the evenings, and in Japan this is something people deliberately listen to. It appears in poetry constantly, it turns up in weather reports, and people have kept singing insects in small cages the way other cultures keep songbirds. The season is considered to have a soundtrack, and this is it.

There's a real claim in that word choice. Insect noise isn't noise here — it's someone speaking.

The kana

The *s* row — with one character that doesn't behave.

さ, す, せ, そ are s + a, u, e, o exactly as you'd expect. But し is *shi*, not *si*. That is not an exception anyone invented to annoy you: the sound genuinely softens before an *i*, in Japanese as in English (*see* against *she*). You'll meet the same shift in ち and つ next chapter.

If you learned to type Japanese you may have seen し written *si*. The book will accept either — it just shows you *shi*, because that's closer to what you'll hear.