Apologies for late reply (hectic week, still no Internet), but thanks for the additional information. The pronunciation is correct for 閑 as I was able to find it in the dictionary. It was also on the show itself, so I recorded as-is, but I assume it’s something obscure, as I couldn’t find it easily on online dictionaries until I got the query just right. :-p

Thanks for the folklore too from Kansas. Good stuff.

Also, for 閑 I didn’t find the pronunciation ‘shizuka,’ but the meaning is leisure or free time. So perhaps the idea is a hot, lazy afternoon, just sitting around doing nothing while the sound of the cicadas seems powerful enough to soak into the stones. I don’t know if Japanese cicadas are actually louder than their North American counterparts, but they seem to be. By the way, in Kansas City, we called them locusts. And the local lore suggested that when you hear the locusts, it is ‘six weeks ’til frost.’