Rain, rain, go away...
Currently we are enjoying the pleasures of the rainy season here on the san-in coast. The rainy season, or tsuyu as it is called locally, is about a month long and is supposed to come as regular as clockwork near the end of June. Last year it just didn't come at all, so I am glad to experience it properly this year. It certainly did arrive on time in the last week of June, and since then it has rained pretty much every day except for a block of 3 days early on. The temperature has dropped, so you can't even really believe it is summer, but the humidity has gone crazy. Also, some days it buckets down for half the day and then turns stinking hot for the other half of the day. Today, however, it is just cold, and the rain is coming down in periodic squalls with high wind.
Washing clothes, going out, and even getting too and from work become a rather complicated task in this weather. In fact, washing clothes is almost impossible since they won't dry even inside, although I suppose they would if I turned on the heaters. The weather is completely untrustworthy too, so if you do anything on the assumption it will remain sunny or rainy for more than an hour you are surely going to come undone.
Overall though, tsuyu is nice. It's only a month long, which is handy, and coming from Sydney it really is hard to be anything but happy at the sight of teeming rain, flowing rivers and constant cloud. Also, the clouds are low and wispy, and they shroud the hills around my house in a very romantic fashion. Sleeping in of a Sunday morning while the wind and rain batters the windows is always a nice experience, if you don't have anywhere to go... which, mostly, we don't.
Today is going to turn less pleasant, however, because we have a typhoon incoming. The wind is picking up, and the rain is squalling, and apparently from 9pm tonight things are going to get thoroughly nasty. For me though the nastiest thing about the typhoon is what it forebodes - the end of tsuyu, and the imminent arrival of the furnace that is Japanese summer. No season here has its ending that is not a mixed blessing...
Washing clothes, going out, and even getting too and from work become a rather complicated task in this weather. In fact, washing clothes is almost impossible since they won't dry even inside, although I suppose they would if I turned on the heaters. The weather is completely untrustworthy too, so if you do anything on the assumption it will remain sunny or rainy for more than an hour you are surely going to come undone.
Overall though, tsuyu is nice. It's only a month long, which is handy, and coming from Sydney it really is hard to be anything but happy at the sight of teeming rain, flowing rivers and constant cloud. Also, the clouds are low and wispy, and they shroud the hills around my house in a very romantic fashion. Sleeping in of a Sunday morning while the wind and rain batters the windows is always a nice experience, if you don't have anywhere to go... which, mostly, we don't.
Today is going to turn less pleasant, however, because we have a typhoon incoming. The wind is picking up, and the rain is squalling, and apparently from 9pm tonight things are going to get thoroughly nasty. For me though the nastiest thing about the typhoon is what it forebodes - the end of tsuyu, and the imminent arrival of the furnace that is Japanese summer. No season here has its ending that is not a mixed blessing...
posted by Sir S at 3:04 PM
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