12 May, 2006

Prelude to the Fifth Season

It's been cloudy and rainy for days now in Tokyo. Makes me really gloomy. I see a streak of sunshine for a moment when I'm stuck in office, and when I excitedly set one step outside for lunch (see May 9) it start's raining. Boohoo.

Japan is in many cases referred to as a country of four seasons, but I believe that's not an elaborate enough description. Aside from the fact that Japan is not the only country in the world that has four seasons, I actually think that she has a fifth season which is the damn rainy season.
Right before the worldwide famous humid summer begins in about late July, there is this most miserable one month of non-stop rain to come every year with no exceptions.
This makes it sound like wet-season or monsoon which tropical countries experience, but the difference is that the rainy season here doesn't bring strong rain. It rains softly all day with only occassional strong rain. To make put it short, it never clears.

This is most definitely the worst time of year when I can get gloomy and cranky about a lot of stuff - it's wet it's humid it's dark and it brings a lot of mold here and there.

The Met Office hasn't announced that we've actually entered the rainy season (btw it's tsuyu in Japanese) so I guess it's not the season yet - we usually go through it during June and July - and besides I don't feel like it is anyway, but because the sun has been gone most of the time and because the temperature is so low, I can barely believe it was spring until a couple of weeks ago.

So shall I call this the prelude to tsuyu then?

Well this morning it was cloudy but at this moment (15:37) I can see a bit of hazy blue sky and sense a hint of warm sun. I have a huge window in front of my desk (yes I sit facing the window with my back on all the other fellow workers) and I like to gaze outside of the window... only if I had better things to see than icy concrete buildings.

Ohhh, I just checked the weather forecast on the Internet and to my GREAT disappointment it's going to rain tomorrow and the day after and pretty much everyday next week. This is truly depressing. Break in the clouds is just a random break and it soon gets covered I see.

Geez, I suppose all I can do this weekend is to stay home or get soaked. What's a good way of enjoying rain???

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