It's just after dark and you hear a rumble coming from above. It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a North Korean missile! Well, close. You see a large black cloud in the distance and it seems to be moving your way. It IS moving your way -- and it's aimed right at you! Anyone who has lived through a rainy season in Japan can easily identify this cloud as the 101st Airborne Termite Division -- or, to give it a more modern twist, Operation Termite Swarm.
While Japanese people like to characterize the rainy season with drawings of cute little snails crawling on leaves of pastel-blue "ajisai" (hydrangea) flowers, it's quite easy for us foreigners to not even see those natural wonders as we run for our lives to escape the onslaught of flying termites. As a matter of fact, I think every picture of a snail on an ajisai should come with a warning: "Can only be seen by Japanese people."
The rainy season is a season when all of Japan's insects, from termites to centipedes, get together and attack innocent civilians. The other day, I was with a friend of mine when he received an emergency call on his cell phone from his panicked wife, who was being attacked by termites inside her house. Why she was calling her husband, I don't know. She should have called the SWAT team.