Shaved ice is the perfect snack on a hot summer day. When you are very hot, the ice makes you feel cool. I used to take my family to a shaved ice shop with tables outside. They had shaved ice in many different flavors: strawberry, lemon, blue Hawaii, melon, matcha, and clear syrup. You could get shaved ice with sweet beans, too. Unfortunately, the shop closed. These days, you can get much fancier shaved ice at coffee shops. Fancy shaved ice looks delicious, but my wife and I don’t like to eat shaved ice in an air-conditioned room. We get too cold. Last year, we decided to buy our own shaved ice maker. We can make it at home anytime and enjoy it without air conditioning.    (126 words) You can send me a comment or your own story at jaremaga@gmail.com

There is a national election in Japan next Sunday. People from Hokkaido to Okinawa are going to vote and choose people for seats in the House of Councillors. My granddaughter can vote for the first time because she has turned 18. My wife has already voted. She doesn’t like to wait in line on election day, so she goes to the ward office on a weekday to vote. I can’t vote because I am not a Japanese citizen. The election campaign in Japan only lasts two weeks, and the rules about campaign posters are very strict. Posters must be put up on special boards. There are several boards near my house, and I can see the faces of many men and women, young and old, smiling at me.    (128 words) You can send me a comment or your own story at jaremaga@gmail.com

If you go to a park with trees now, you will probably see a lot of holes in the ground. Holes are usually made by living things, so what made these holes? Cicadas! These insects spend two or three years underground, and they come out at the end of the rainy season. When they come out of the ground, they are still nymphs, and they don’t have wings. They go up a tree and get out of their shells. Now they have wings, and they can fly. They start to chirp. The parks are no longer quiet. They are filled with sound. You can hear cicadas chirping from the morning to the evening. This is the sound of summer in Japan.     (121 words) You can send me a comment or your own story at jaremaga@gmail.com

Today is one of the biggest holidays in France. The French just call it July 14, but in English we call it Bastille Day. On July 14, 1789, the people of Paris were angry. King Louis XVI and his government were powerful, but they were not good, so the people attacked a prison called the Bastille, and they freed the prisoners. That was at the beginning of the French Revolution. After the French Revolution, France was a very different country. July 14 became a holiday 100 years later in 1880. These days, there are free concerts, people have picnics, and there are fireworks, but the biggest event is the military parade along the Champs-Elysees, Paris’s widest street.   (116 words) You can send me a comment or your own story at jaremaga@gmail.com

I was leaving the dining room to go to bed last night when I heard a mechanical sound. It wasn’t very loud. It was coming from the dining table. There was nothing on the table that would make that noise. I looked under the table, but I couldn’t see anything there, either. Finally, I looked up at the wall. The clock was going crazy. The second hand wasn’t moving, but the minute hand was moving very fast. I remembered this happening before. We have a radio-controlled clock. Sometimes it stops, but it starts again and goes to the correct time. It must have stopped last night, and I saw it correcting itself. When I got up this morning, it was back to normal.   (123 words) You can send me a comment or your own story at jaremaga@gmail.com