The hottest summer in history
2010年08月31日
Japan Meteorological Agency reported that this summer’s temperature was expected to be a record high in northern and eastern Japan and average temperature in this August was also expected to be the highest in recorded history except for Okinawa area.
Three years ago there was a severely hot summer in Japan archipelago too, but this summer’s hotness proved to be no less severe than that days.
And scorching sunshine will continue even in early September, that is to come.
Now in Japan there comes the season for catching autumn fish ‘samma’ (さんま,秋刀魚) on the sea. But so far this year fishers have seen and caught these highly popular fish much less than usual years in this decade. Not being clear whether it is an outcome of unusually high sea water temperature caused by this summer’s hotness, but much less catch of samma has caused their prices to skyrocket on retailing markets in the towns. Samma have had a reputation of a cheap but very tasty fish, and they have come to be one of cultural symbols of Japan’s autumn. Will we see, though, even samma cease to be an easy-to-get food at last?
(Oda Mitsuo, the president of Asian-curd)