Today I am meant to be talking about the weather for ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
melannen.
I think the most obvious thing to say is, it's getting warmer.
It's funny to be asked this question in Japan, where the weather is one of the few socially acceptable topics of conversation in almost any circumstance, and so is a place where you talk about the weather quite a lot. I have to look up how to say "sunny" again because I've forgotten it. The problem with not having a large weather-related vocabulary is the awkward silence that often falls after one has exhausted the topic of the weather.
The last time I spent a year in Japan I lived in Kyoto, which is rather famously located in a basin with mountains on three sides and so is automatically at least five degrees F hotter or colder than the rest of Kansai--enough to be immediately perceptible upon disembarking from the train when one has either entered or left the city. Japanese people were often amused that I knew how to say basin ("bonchi", for the record), but that is basically talking about the weather, and so, I can do it. But even in the seven years I've been hanging around Japan in irregular intervals, I've noticed changes--the tsuyu (rainy season) is never very impressive, and more and more one is likely to get impressive summer rainstorms outside of tsuyu. There was a truly ginormous one in Tokyo in July which I was of course caught outside in sans umbrella. That's what I get for forgetting the Girl Scout motto, I suppose.
This summer was also remarkable for a truly terrible heat wave--temperatures soared to nearly 40ºC in some parts of the country, and in Tokyo the heat index was about 120ºF for nearly a week. That's something that never used to happen, either, and there's not really anything to be done about it except chug cold drinks and keep going. Luckily the Japanese are masters of cold food in the summer, which is good because heat cuts the appetite as it is. Also, unlike the Metro in D.C., the trains here don't seem to be as prone to hot weather delays due to the tracks expanding.
It's interesting to me that though it's farther north Tokyo actually seems a little warmer than Kyoto thus far--I suppose partly it's because Tokyo is directly on the ocean. I don't except that it will ever snow and stick here, or even that it will get much below freezing; it snowed but rarely stuck in Kyoto proper, but it was frequently below freezing, a problem compounded by the lack of insulation and heating in my apartment (it was much like stupid Berkeley in that respect, actually. I can't understand how anyone would willfully choose to be so energy inefficient, but then, I'm well-known for my curious attachment to logic). There's a reason the wild parakeets of Tokyo have been able to survive here since the 60s (for the record, the ones on the Todai campus seem to be feasting on gingko nuts, which is only appropriate seasonal behavior).
We'll see how it goes. I'm currently planning on going to Tochigi next month and debating whether I should try to find a pair of snow boots in a thrift shop for it--Tochigi isn't the yukiguni proper, but it's close enough that I hope to see snow. Snow! It's so wet here, all the time, everywhere, except in the mountains I suppose--they must have powder in Nagano, or it wouldn't be a skiing hotspot, but everywhere I've seen it it's always thick and wet like it is in New Jersey and never is in Minnesota. Of all the places I've lived, Japan is the most humid, but New Jersey gives it a run for its money.
melannen. I think the most obvious thing to say is, it's getting warmer.
It's funny to be asked this question in Japan, where the weather is one of the few socially acceptable topics of conversation in almost any circumstance, and so is a place where you talk about the weather quite a lot. I have to look up how to say "sunny" again because I've forgotten it. The problem with not having a large weather-related vocabulary is the awkward silence that often falls after one has exhausted the topic of the weather.
The last time I spent a year in Japan I lived in Kyoto, which is rather famously located in a basin with mountains on three sides and so is automatically at least five degrees F hotter or colder than the rest of Kansai--enough to be immediately perceptible upon disembarking from the train when one has either entered or left the city. Japanese people were often amused that I knew how to say basin ("bonchi", for the record), but that is basically talking about the weather, and so, I can do it. But even in the seven years I've been hanging around Japan in irregular intervals, I've noticed changes--the tsuyu (rainy season) is never very impressive, and more and more one is likely to get impressive summer rainstorms outside of tsuyu. There was a truly ginormous one in Tokyo in July which I was of course caught outside in sans umbrella. That's what I get for forgetting the Girl Scout motto, I suppose.
This summer was also remarkable for a truly terrible heat wave--temperatures soared to nearly 40ºC in some parts of the country, and in Tokyo the heat index was about 120ºF for nearly a week. That's something that never used to happen, either, and there's not really anything to be done about it except chug cold drinks and keep going. Luckily the Japanese are masters of cold food in the summer, which is good because heat cuts the appetite as it is. Also, unlike the Metro in D.C., the trains here don't seem to be as prone to hot weather delays due to the tracks expanding.
It's interesting to me that though it's farther north Tokyo actually seems a little warmer than Kyoto thus far--I suppose partly it's because Tokyo is directly on the ocean. I don't except that it will ever snow and stick here, or even that it will get much below freezing; it snowed but rarely stuck in Kyoto proper, but it was frequently below freezing, a problem compounded by the lack of insulation and heating in my apartment (it was much like stupid Berkeley in that respect, actually. I can't understand how anyone would willfully choose to be so energy inefficient, but then, I'm well-known for my curious attachment to logic). There's a reason the wild parakeets of Tokyo have been able to survive here since the 60s (for the record, the ones on the Todai campus seem to be feasting on gingko nuts, which is only appropriate seasonal behavior).
We'll see how it goes. I'm currently planning on going to Tochigi next month and debating whether I should try to find a pair of snow boots in a thrift shop for it--Tochigi isn't the yukiguni proper, but it's close enough that I hope to see snow. Snow! It's so wet here, all the time, everywhere, except in the mountains I suppose--they must have powder in Nagano, or it wouldn't be a skiing hotspot, but everywhere I've seen it it's always thick and wet like it is in New Jersey and never is in Minnesota. Of all the places I've lived, Japan is the most humid, but New Jersey gives it a run for its money.
