Japan's summer sounds reverberate across imagination

Entomologists, those scientific specialists who have never met a buzzing, slithering, creeping creature they haven't loved, say that in Japan, there are more than 30 varieties of semi (cicadas), incessant chirpers whose males can measure up to 4 cm long. These legendary bugs, which have turned up regularly over the centuries in Japanese art and verse, and the variations of their loud, distinctive song, are indelible symbols of summer in Japan.