にほんのみず    Water in Japan 

Earle sensei: story              Mitsuko Tashiro: photographs

P1        Wow, Look how clear the water is.  You can see the reflection of the tree in the water.

P2        The colour of the pond water is such a beautiful blue.

P3        You can see the leaves so clearly at the bottom of the pond.

P4        This scene/place looks like a painting.

P5        It appears as though the maple trees are in the river.

P6        Can you tell which sunset is the real one?

P7        How many mountains can you see?

P8        Like these pictures, there are many places in Japan where the water is this clean.

            Why do you think there are many places in Japan with such beautiful water as this?

P9        There are three secrets to this

P10      The first secret is rain.  Japan gets a lot of rain a lot during June, July, and  September.

P11      The more it rains, naturally the amount of water increases.

P12      The second secret is snow.

P13      Winter in Japan falls between December and February.  It is very cold and snows frequently.

P14      After Winter, the warmth of Spring takes over and the snow melts, becoming water, in turn becoming running streams.

P15      The third secret is in the mountains.  Although Japan is a small country, there are lots of mountains.   Altogether, there are about 18,000.

P16      The most famous mountain is of course Mt Fuji, which technically is a volcano.

P17      In fact, out of 18,000 mountains, around 100 are volcanos.

P18      It both rains and snows in these mountains.

P19      The water then soaks the earth, and many years later waterfalls are formed. It is said that the water takes a  hundred years to travel.

P20      And then, there are the trees in the mountains.

P21      The roots of the trees drink a lot of water and store it underground, creating lakes and streams.

P22      The water is natural and always running, and this makes it cleaner.

P23      So now you can understand why the water in Japan is very clean, because of the naturally occurring element of rain, snow, and mountains.                  The forces of nature are amazing, aren’t they?