{"id":3174,"date":"2026-08-24T20:11:48","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T11:11:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.itaba.com\/?p=3174"},"modified":"2026-08-24T20:12:49","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T11:12:49","slug":"20260824","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itaba.com\/en\/blog\/20260824\/","title":{"rendered":"Cicadas and Summer"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is something I find myself noticing every summer since I began living in Korea.<\/p>\n

Cicadas.<\/p>\n

When the rainy season ends and the temperature suddenly begins to rise, the sound of cicadas can be heard here and there throughout the residential neighborhoods.<\/p>\n

When I was a child growing up in my hometown, hearing cicadas was simply a part of summer.<\/p>\n

The sky I would look up at while listening to their calls was an endless blue, with towering summer clouds floating against it, their edges sharply defined.<\/p>\n

Whenever I hear the cicadas and see those towering clouds, scenes from the summers of my childhood in my hometown suddenly come back to me.<\/p>\n

I never paid much attention to it before, but over the past few years, it seems to me that there have been far more cicadas.<\/p>\n

I wonder if it has something to do with global warming.<\/p>\n

At the beginning of this summer, a cicada came to me in a rather unusual way.<\/p>\n

On my way home, I felt something strange around my neck, as if something was touching it.<\/p>\n

When I got home and reached up to touch it, I discovered that it was a cicada.<\/p>\n

For a moment, I was startled.<\/p>\n

“Why is there a cicada on my neck…?”<\/p>\n

But it was probably a cicada that had only just emerged from its shell.<\/p>\n

Perhaps, after emerging in the darkness, it simply grabbed onto the nearest thing it could find.<\/p>\n

And by chance, that happened to be my neck.<\/p>\n

I gently moved it outside the window, and after a while, it flew away somewhere.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/center><\/p>\n

Even though it was only a cicada, I had never experienced anything like that before, so the encounter has stayed with me.<\/p>\n

I sometimes find myself wondering whether the cicada that happened to cross paths with me that day went on to have a good summer.<\/p>\n

For some reason, I can’t help but think about it from time to time.<\/p>\n

Although it varies by species, cicadas spend most of their lives as nymphs underground.<\/p>\n

For years, they live in the darkness of the soil, feeding on sap from tree roots, until finally emerging above ground.<\/p>\n

And then, they emerge from their shells.<\/p>\n

After spending so many years underground, they have only a few weeks to live above ground.<\/p>\n

They wait for years, finally emerge into the world above, and yet the time they have left is surprisingly short.<\/p>\n

They climb a tree, emerge from their shells, dry their wings, and take flight.<\/p>\n

And then, they sing.<\/p>\n

When you think about it, even that incredibly loud chorus lasts for only a brief period of their lives.<\/p>\n

Perhaps that is why they sing with such determination.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/center><\/p>\n

As I spent my days thinking about such things, summer has already entered its final stretch.<\/p>\n

And still, I can hear the cicadas.<\/p>\n

There is only a little of this summer left.<\/p>\n

Listening to the cicadas, I think I’ll enjoy this summer just a little longer.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/center><\/p>\n
<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is something I find myself noticing every summer since I began living in Korea. Cicadas. When the rainy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3167,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_locale":"en_US","_original_post":"https:\/\/www.itaba.com\/?p=3162","_lightning_design_setting":{"layout":"default"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","en-US"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itaba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itaba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itaba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itaba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itaba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3174"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.itaba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3176,"href":"https:\/\/www.itaba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3174\/revisions\/3176"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itaba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itaba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itaba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itaba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}