Today’s heat was deadly!! The rainy season can be awful, but this year’s weather seems especially hot and humid.

Today I took my art class down to the riverside for the final class of the summer. (July and August are just too hot to paint outside.) The river was so cool and inviting! The water was crystal clear with an emerald blue tint to it, visible all the way to the rocky bottom. Big and small fish were swimming in it, and herons, swallows, and other birds were flying around and splashing in the shallows. I waded in up to my feet, and it felt so nice.

More than anything else, I wished I were a Garappa today. Garappa are very similar to Kappa — closely related cousins, actually. They live on the island of Kyushu, and resemble Kappa in appearance and behavior, except that Garappa have much much longer legs and arms than Kappa. I would have loved to dive into the river head first and just drink in all that fresh mountain water.

Garappa