I completely forgot about it while in Paris, but Japan is in the middle of a heatwave. It's hot. Too hot. It's the hottest summer in Japan since the second world war. Paris - cool, chilly, wonderfully rainy Paris - was a welcome break, but now we're back baking in the late summer heat.
We have 38° or so, dropping to a cool 30° in the middle of the night. The weekly average is about 5° hotter than last year, and the forecast says it's going to get worse toward the end of the week. Companies are still running summer commercials on TV and some beer gardens - that normally close at the end of August - have announced they will extend the season into mid-September.
When I come home I'm hot, sweaty and tired. A cold shower cools me down and perks me up. But our "cold" tap water is 31° by now and a cold shower has become but a fond memory.
Half our plants have wilted in the heat. The morning train smells of Eau De Salaryman. If the heat wasn't enough to make you sweat, the electricity bill from round-the-clock air conditioning will do the trick just nicely.
I'm quite done with summer now. Autumn should come any time. Any time now. Aaany time. Please.
Chilly and rainy indeed. What a crappy summer we've had this year. Still better than Japanese summer, but nowhere near as nice as a good Finnish summer.
ReplyDeleteHow was your trip to Paris? From your flickr feed, I gather you were staying in the Latin Quarter. Not the worst part of town, to say the least.
Yep, we stayed near Luxembourg. The conference was at the museum of natural history and at the Marie Curie university so it was close enough to walk.
ReplyDeleteI've only begun to process my images so a fuller blog post about Paris will have to wait a while.