June 6th- June 10th, 2026 is Summer – First stage of BOSHU (Grain beards and seeds)-25th KOU “KAMAKIRI (mantises) hatch.”
Exactly three weeks ago, I found a KMAKIRI egg ootheca. I kept going back into the bamboo thicket every week, wondering when I’d see the babies.
Two weeks after the initial discovery, on May 31st, I found something resembling molted eggshells hanging there. They were still transparent and shiny, so I thought newly hatched babies might still be around there and searched them, but found nothing!
This year, we’ve already had several days that felt like summer, and according to NAGANO Local Meteorological Office, the temperature in Nagano City in May was 1.8°C higher than average. Thinking that the hatching might have been earlier than usual, I checked the records on this blog. However, there were only two entries ^^;
The earliest I found KAMAKIRI babies was on April 25th, 2023, and the next time was on June 1st, 2022 (it was brown, so it might have been a few days after hatching). And this year, they hatched around the same time. This suggests their behavior hasn’t changed.
In other words, KAMAKIRI have managed to survive by coexisting with nature very well.
2026/05/31