立秋

Autumn begins today. It will not feel like it.

立秋 falls in the first week of August, when Japan is at its worst — thick air, cicadas going like machinery, nobody outdoors who doesn't have to be. The calendar says autumn anyway. From here the light starts leaving a few minutes earlier each evening, and for about a month the country lives inside the gap between what the calendar claims and what the air is actually doing.

There is a word for that gap. That is most of what this book is: words for things you already knew but had no name for.

残暑 is heat that outstays its season: summer weather still hanging around after the calendar has moved on without it. It isn't quite a complaint. It's closer to something you say out loud to a neighbour, by way of agreeing that this is all faintly ridiculous.

Japanese keeps a lot of words like this — for weather caught between two seasons, for light at particular times of day, for the specific quiet after rain. Once you have the words you start noticing the gaps yourself, which is either a gift or a curse depending on the week.

The kana

Five sounds to start, and you already own all five.

Japanese has exactly five vowels. So does Tagalog, and they are very nearly the same five — short, clean, no sliding. An English speaker learning this has to unlearn the slide in *oh* and *ay* before they can say anything correctly. You don't. あ is the a in *bahay*. い is the i in *isa*. う is the u in *ulan*. That is not a rough approximation; it is close enough to build on.

Every other sound in the language is one of these five with a consonant in front. Learn them and you have the skeleton of the whole thing.

Two of the words below are spelled entirely with these five. Watch their romaji go quiet once you've got them — and disappear altogether once you've come back and found you still have them.