MITSUAKI KOJIMA

　A lone rose provides Yoriko Tashiro companionship during the rainy season in Kagoshima. Early summer rains have been heavy in southern Kyushu and flowers have had a hard time blooming. In northern Japan the skies have been clearer, writes Tatsuko Toshima.

　Sagami Matsuda percolates fresh coffee every morning while composing haiku. Monsoon weather makes the brewing coffee smell even more enticing. In between rain showers, Masako Yamada enjoys a stroll in the woods near Tezukayama Gakuin University in Osaka-Sayama.

　Being pent up during the start of the rainy season in Niigata inspired Yutaka Kitajima to dream of foreign travel. Satoru Kanematsu says he would love to travel abroad, but for the moment he prefers to take care of his elderly mother in Nagoya.

　Earlier this spring the streets in Nagoya were completely covered by kosa, yellow sands, that blow in from China. This year the sands seemed heavier than usual says Barbara Casterline who laments that even the air smelled strange.
　The yellow sands are an environmental issue in Niigata, too, writes Yutaka Kitajima.
　Birds suffer from the unwelcome visitor that flies over the Japan Sea.

　Charlie Smith suffers from allergies each spring because of the thick yellow pollen that blows off the huge oak trees in Raleigh, North Carolina.

　Edward McFadden enjoys translating haiku composed by Yosa Buson. His translations, penned in Providence, Rhode Island, have been published in the Kyoto Journal.

Want to try composing haiku ?

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The next issue of the Asahi Haikuist Network will appear on June 17. Readers are invited to mail haiku, contest announcements and haiku anthologies for review to David McMurray at the International Herald Tribune/The Asahi Shimbun, 5-3-2 Tsukiji, Chuo-ku, Tokyo 104-8011 or fax 03-5541-8539.