It has all of a sudden started to pour down rain outside, which I can hear even though my ears are covered with headphones piping in some noisy John Zorn via Winamp. So I figure this is as good a time as any for a “rain post” I’ve written in my head a few times.
The rain is an indication that, despite it just having turned July 30, the season known as tsuyu, or “rainy season,” is still upon us. I don’t have the exact date, but tsuyu should have ended a long time ago. Certainly last year I don’t remember it extending into July, let alone August, which it is bordering on now. I heard the other day that last July, there were something like 25 days where the temperature in the Tokyo area topped 30°C. This year, there have only been 2 or 3 days over the 30° mark. nanka okashii naa (“hmmn, something strange is going on”).
When I mention to Naoko how weird it is, she always comes back with “global warming,” and I come back with my tired “well, if it’s global warming, then why is it still relatively cool.” (I have to admit that my knowledge about Global Warming is woefully inadequate, not extending much beyond knowing that the U.S. was one of the few countries not to sign the Kyoto Protocol.)
Whatever the reason for the strange weather patterns, I’m sure this will all come back to haunt us, and at any moment around the corner a big fat stinking hot and humid summer will emerge to exact its revenge. But for now, I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth. I am simply loving this weather. I still need to bring my sweat-hanky with me to work, because while the typical summer humidity isn’t as bad as it was last year, it hasn’t entirely disappated either. And I’ve changed my wardrobe to thin short-sleeve shirts and thin slacks. But, still, when I wake up in the morning and see that it is grey outside, as it has seemed to be every morning this summer, I do a little jig inside. And if it’s raining, I’m all the more happier.
While I’m sure others in Japan are pleased that so far the heat has been kept at bay, I sadly suspect that I’m one of the few people in Japan who is very happy at how much rain we’ve had this summer. I’ve tried of late to refrain from making sweeping generalizations about large groups of folk, but I’m going to go out on a limb here and generalize that almost to a person, the Japanese can’t stand rain. At least, I have yet to meet one who said he/she liked it, or at the very least, that the rain didn’t bother him/her one way or the other. (Naturally I haven’t done any scientific polling on this, but I do meet a lot of Japanese people through my job, and weather comes up in conversation with just about all of them — I’m an English teacher in case you didn’t know).
When I try to determine the reasons behind this aversion, the reason most often put forth runs something like “Because my clothes will get wet, and I don’t like the feeling of wet clothes sticking to my body.” Fair enough I suppose, although personally I can’t see the big deal, and anyway, if you’re carrying an umbrella, how wet can your clothes possibly get? Speaking of carrying an umbrella, this is one thing that no Japanese seems to leave home without. (There’s a lot of money to be made by a raincoat manufacturer if they could convince the conformist Japanese female consumer that such an accessory was fashionable). And they do silly things with them, like ride their bikes with one hand on the handlebars and one hand holding an umbrella aloft over their heads. (Not sure if it’s true, but someone told me this was illegal, but you could’ve fooled me, as just about everyone does it).
Naoko says that if I grew up in a place that had so much rain, I wouldn’t like it either. But I remind her that I grew up in a valley in Honolulu (Nuuanu Valley), and that in said valley it rained just about every day, or such is my memory of it. At any rate, I got more than my fair share of rain, more than my fair share of rain-caused inconveniences, and more than my fair share of sticky wet clothes, growing up.
So, whether it’s the sticky clothes or some other reasoning I’m not privy to, their ain’t no singin’ in the rain here in Japan. This morning, I thought I would let Kaika experience rain for the first time, to see what his reaction would be, so I took him outside. It was only the lightest of a drizzle, and only about 5 seconds of it at that, but he was decidedly non-plussed about it, although his eyes did dart up at one moment as if to find out “where the hell did that come from?” However, later when recalling this to my mother-in-law, her response was that ubiquitous Japanese utterance of pity, kawaisou (“The poor thing”). Sigh.
I think the English might top the Japanese in complaining about the rain–at least if my father-in-law is an example. His grumblings were so bad during our visit this summer, that I took to saying whenever it rained, “Cool! Rain! I looove this weather.”
We haven’t had a good rain in about 6 weeks here in Austin, Texas. Rain is such a welcome event here that when it starts, we run out on the porch to feel the cool underlying breeze and smell the inimitable scent of rain hitting cracked, dry earth. (Rain on dusty, hot tar is also a great summer scent.)
We call it “global warming” as shorthand, but the larger issue is a recognition that the global climate is only metastable, i.e. there are multiple configurations that climate can settle into, for hundreds or thousands of years at a time.
That human intervention in the biosphere has triggered a shift between these configurations is debatable, but I sure do believe it. At any rate, one of the plausible results of a few degrees’ increase in the annual average surface temperature is a sudden, irreversible switch into a climate regime which is on average much cooler than the one we’ve gotten used to these last two or three thousand years. Counter-intuitive, but true.
My experience concurs with your own – nobody likes wearing damp clothes! Laundry is their another concern. Everyone I talk to speaks of an aversion to that damp moldy aroma that clothes seem to get when unable to dry out properly, and no one seems to have a dryer!
Personally, I believe that this extended rainy season will lead to a shorter and milder summer this year. I’m will probably be proved wrong however!
In the meantime I will continue to carry my umbrella where ever I go, despite the fact that it’s next to useless – most of the time the rain here doesn’t fall but floats – you walk into it rather than through it!
I love the rain. But especially I love the grey drizzly days that we have had sometimes recently. I think that this is because i spent a part of my early childhood in a part of Germany where this was the weather everyday. And I will definitely take the rain over the ridiculous heat of last summer. Especially with so many power plants offline. Near Tokyo, problems have been discovered in many of the nuclear power plants that provide electricity to the city, forcing around 20 of them offline for repairs and creating something of a power shortage. As a result of this, the local government in my city, of which I am an employee has mandated that the air conditioner not be used in the office. So the hot days (like today) are unbearable, while the rainy days are bearable. But a lot of the days are more like riding through a cloud than through rain, and so although I ride my bike with an umbrella in one hand, it does me little good. By the way, if you wan to do this, it is very important that you have one of the transparent umbrellas. The other kinds are just plain dangerous, because no one on the sidewalk tends to look where they are going, even in the best of weather conditions.
Believe me, when the rain is pounding down, you can get really wet even if you have an umbrella – it’s the lower half that gets soaked, as the rain ricochets off every available surface to saturate your shoes and trousers. That’s what I hate the most about the rainy season – the rain can be so heavy that you get soaked from the bottom up.
I think the main problem with wearing raincoats during the rainy season is that it’s too hot and humid to wear them. If someone could come up with a fabric that keeps you dry and doesn’t make you feel like you’re in a sauna during the hottest days, they’d likely have a huge success.
RIding bikes while holding open umbrellas is illegal, but I doubt anyone ever gets prosecuted for it. Kind of like driving while using a mobile phone.
I have never met people who were less prepared for rain than the Brits, or more precisely Londoners. I mean, LONDON, of all places! Nobody there takes an umbrella with them, it is astonishing. Also umbrellas are rather bulky and heavy, unlike those nifty light things here in Japan. The Brits should really know better, don’t you think?
People walk through the rain just like that, especially men. They come into the office with wet hair and clothes. Of course they will complain about the rain, but not too much. They certainly aren’t fussy about it. Even if you walk next to them with an umbrella and offer some shelter, many people, again males, don’t bother.
I always found that remarkable because I hated the rain in London. It is cold and damp in a rather unpleasant way, completely different from here where it is warm and while damp too, rather somehow has a smooth quality to it.
Dirk