August is a great month to be in Japan if you like fireworks. In last Sunday’s newspaper, there was a beautiful photo taken from a helicopter of the Nagara River Fireworks Festival in Gifu City. Some of the best fireworks festivals are held around Japan in August. I’d really like to see the fireworks at Nagaoka in Niigata Prefecture and at Kumano in Mie Prefecture. The other day, my granddaughter put on a yukata and went to see fireworks at Inuyama, a city near Nagoya. I asked for a photo, but she sent me a video instead. I really enjoyed it! The fireworks started low, just over the river, but by the end of the show, large rockets were going up and bursting into huge balls of fire high in the night sky.  (133 words)

The Olympic Games in Paris have ended. I like watching the Olympics because I discover new sports and new athletes. Last Saturday, I watched the women’s sport climbing finals for the first time. I didn’t watch the first part of the competition, but in the second part, Mori Ai was amazing! She is one of the smallest climbers, and she has to compete against women with longer arms and longer legs. Even so, she got to the top of the wall, and she had the best score. There were three women after her. None of them did as well as Mori did in the second part, but they were much better in the first part. Mori didn’t get a medal, but she made a fan out of me.   (128 words)

Judo comes from Japan, but Japan didn’t get the gold medal in the mixed-team judo event. It went to the French team. That’s not so surprising. There are four times as many people doing judo in France as in Japan now. Fencing is a European sport with roots in Italy and France, but the Japan men’s team beat the Italian men’s team and won the gold medal in the men’s fencing foil. They also got the silver medal in the men’s epee. Sports are no longer national. They have become international, and that is probably because of the Olympics. Fencing has been an Olympic sport for more than 100 years, and judo became an Olympic sport in 1964 when Tokyo had its first Olympics. (124 words)

Yesterday, as I was driving around Nagoya, I kept seeing police cars. It wasn’t a zero day, so why were so many police officers patrolling the city? Was there some kind of emergency? It was 39 degrees in Nagoya, so I told my wife that the air conditioners in the police departments were probably not working. The police officers were driving around in their cars to keep cool. Of course I was joking, but I might be right about the weather. There are many people in the hospital now because of the heat. Maybe the police were patrolling the streets to make sure that no one was dying of heat stroke.　　　（111 words）

When I camped in my car a week ago, we stayed near Fujimidai. Fujimidai means a place where you can see Mt. Fuji. I was lucky because the evening rain cleared the air. When I walked up to Fujimidai the next morning, I could see Mt. Fuji far away just above the Southern Alps. Then, as I was driving down the mountain later that morning, I passed a car coming up the narrow road. There were cameras on the roof of the car. It was a Google Street View car, and it was taking photos of everything! I was excited at first, but then I thought, “Is there anywhere that Google hasn’t been? Traveling is no longer an adventure because you can see every place online before you go there.”  (130 words)