Heat Wave Continues in Japan
It's a heat-island come true here in Japan. The mercury soared as high as 39.95 centigrade a week ago in Gifu, Central Japan, and Kyoto is having a hot-air bath on for twelve days in a row.
Something is happening to nature by way of rising temperature, frequent floods and tornadoes. Out in the sea, things are taking place utterly rare and unusual. On August 11, a popular sea-bathing resort facing the Bay of Kagoshima was closed up as a shark was found hunting for prey 50 meters offshore. A bike rider had spotted the shark, 1.5 meters long, and rushed a report to local authorities.
A week previously up in Ibaraki, northeast of Tokyo, a fleet of 16 sharks were spotted cruising also 50 meters offshore for three days in a row. Local authorities, however, decided to carefully net the sea bathing site and open for public.
Farther up north in Aomori, it was a 1-meter-long black bear that thought it fun to swim in the sea. A 31-year-old holiday angular happened to find a black bear 100 meters off the mouth of River Oirase swimming back to the shore. The angular phoned 110 (emergency number), a policeman rushed to the scene, but the bear was nowhere to be found. Nobody hurt.
Now, the sharks might have had their reasons to swim the way they did, but why on earth a bear had to swim in the sea the way he did? Nobody can account for the phenomenon, but everybody seems to be in agreement: Japan is too hot even for bears to walk on....?
