Things finally reset today, and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing.
It is a tradition in Japan that every summer the Japanese press go to one of the major airports and film the reactions of foreigners as they walk out of air conditioned comfort into a level of cruelty they didn’t anticipate. There are legends of people arriving to Japan to work, suddenly rushing back into the airport to get tickets home after encountering the heat and humidity at even 9:30 in the morning. I’m convinced at least one of my friends was broken by the walk from the terminal to the bus and that ruined his entire tenure in Japan.
The previous 10 days, though, it’s been cloudy and cool and the foreigners have probably been more worried about where they could find a sweater or a good fleece jacket.
This has forced the press to the beaches to interview die hard beach bums and parents who couldn’t convince their young kids it was a bad day to go to the beach.
To give you a sense of the difference, the temperature the last 10 days has averaged, by my personal records, a high of about 23.1 Celsius (73.5 Fahrenheit) and, despite random rain, it has not been very humid. The usual temperature for this time of year is “Scorched Earth” (35 Celsius or 95 Fahrenheit) with a humidity level approaching liquid.
Today, the humidity returned with a vengeance and the sun appeared, after an annoying morning rain, to let us know it was still kind of important to the survival of the Earth and to make us annoyed that we had to carry umbrellas for no reason.
The temperature also returned and it got up to 30 Celsius (86 Fahrenheit) which is great if you can sit on the veranda sipping mint juleps but is bad if you actually have to work or move.
What worries me the most is that, despite the gloom (we didn’t see the sun for 10 days) the cool weather had everyone in a good mood (well, at least I was in a good mood) but the return of hot weather will put me in a bad mood just in time for the start of classes.
Maybe that’s for the best, though. A Scorched Earth mentality isn’t a bad thing to have at the start of the term, especially after summer vacation.