啓蟄

啓蟄, around the sixth of March. 啓 is *to open*, 蟄 means creatures holed up for winter. The ground softens and the things that slept in it come back up.

You have met these insects before, from the other end of the year — 虫の声 in September, the voice of them. This is where they start.

There is a specific weather event that supposedly does the waking.

The first thunder of spring has its own name, and the name says what it is for: 虫出し, *insect-bringing-out*. The thunder wakes them and they climb out of the soil.

You can read most of that phrase now. 虫 is むし from chapter seven. の is the joiner from chapter five. It is the same の as in 虫の声.

The belief is not literally true and everybody knows it. It survives because the timing is genuinely reliable — the first thunderstorms and the first insects arrive in the same fortnight, every year — and because a language that names a wind will certainly name a thunderclap.

The kana

Ten more, and with the ハ row you can finally write the drink most of the world runs on.

Two pairs to keep an eye on. **ス and ヌ** differ by one small stroke crossing at the top — ヌ has it, ス doesn't. **ラ and フ** are nearly the same shape, and you'll meet ラ in two chapters; フ is the one with nothing above it.

ノ is worth a second: one stroke, and it turns up inside several other characters as a component. Once you see it in ヌ and ネ and ラ, the shapes stop feeling arbitrary.