Chapter 23
shōsho
lesser heat
around 7 July
小暑
小暑 begins around the seventh of July, and the rains are ending. What replaces them is heat with all that water still in it.
The seventh is also 七夕, which is the one night of the year two stars are allowed to meet, and the one night people write down what they want.
Two stars — Vega and Altair — are a weaver and a herdsman, separated by the Milky Way and permitted to meet on one night a year, the seventh of the seventh month. If it rains they cannot cross, and have to wait another year. It rains often, because this is the tail of the 梅雨.
You write a wish on a 短冊, a narrow strip of coloured paper, and tie it to bamboo. Shopping streets and station concourses put up bamboo for the purpose and by the sixth they are thick with paper. Most of the wishes are children's, and a good number are about not having homework.
It is a festival about a delayed reunion, held during the season most likely to prevent it. Nobody finds this too sad to celebrate.
How it fits together
〜ました · 〜ませんでした
Past tense of a verb: ます becomes ました. たべます → たべました, ate. いきます → いきました, went.
Negative past: ませんでした. たべませんでした, didn't eat. It is long, and it is completely regular, which after English irregular verbs is a gift.
You have been reading ました since chapter thirteen — はるがきました, spring has come.
〜ません
Present negative: ます becomes ません. のみません, I don't drink. わかりません, I don't understand — which is the single most useful sentence in this chapter and possibly the book.
〜かったです
い-adjectives have their own past. Swap い for かった: あつい → あつかった, was hot. Add です to be polite: あつかったです.
You've used this one too, in chapter seventeen — たのしかったです, that was fun. Now you know why it looked like that.
Words
- きkiのnoうu昨日yesterday
- きょkyoうu今日today
- あaしshiたta明日tomorrow
the あした of またあした, chapter seven
- たtaんnざzaくku短冊the paper strip you write a wish on
- ねneがgaいi願いa wish
Things you can say today
- ねneがgaいiをoかkaきkiまmaしshiたtaI wrote a wish
- きkiのnoうuはhaあaつtsuかkaったttaでdeすsuyesterday was hot
- わwaかkaりriまmaせseんnI don't understandlearn this one properly. It ends more difficult conversations kindly than any other sentence in the language.
Nothing to review right now.
This chapter teaches no new characters — you have them all. Anything still fading will come back round here after a day or two away.