Tsuyu

Tsuyu - the rainy season - has arrived in Kansai. It's early; it normally starts around the second week of June. Also, Okinawa is expecting its first typhoon of the season already, and it may even reach Honshu in a few days. While typhoon season typically starts around now, it's rare for the early typhoons to be strong enough to hit Japan directly.

The weather service has predicted a hotter summer than normal; let's just hope it won't be as bad as last year. Much of the country is going to have energy supply problems already, and a heatwave will make the problem worse. Of course, it would give us an excuse to go snorkelling...

High Summer

The rainy season - tsuyu - is over, with a drawn-out, if not very impressive, thunderstorm on Friday. We're getting into high summer now; it was 34 degrees yesterday, and as I write this it's already 35 degrees today. I kind of prefer tsuyu over high summer myself - it's a bit cooler and if I'm getting soaked in any case I prefer rainwater over sweat. Besides, there's no typhoons and no locusts during tsuyu, another bonus. As it is, we'll jsut have to suffer through it.

Will I annoy everyone with complaints about the heat all the way to mid-October? You bet I am. Will I be just as irritating next year? Count on it. If there's one thing I really don't like about living here, this is it.

JR Osaka station. First day of high summer, and it's getting hot.

Tsuyu

Tsuyu, the rainy season, is declared for the Kansai area. It's about one week late - spring and summer has all been later than usual this year. We can look forward to a month of damp, rainy weather. Everything has an upside of course; photography is often more interesting in bad weather than in bright sunshine.

We've set the first batch of umeboshi and have another two to make over the next few days. We also set a jar of dark rum-based umeshu; we'll see how that goes. Maybe we'll try whisky umeshu next year.

And finally congratulations to my little brother and his girlfriend, as they are pregnant (well, just the girlfriend obviously) and expect to become parents in January. I really have to start working seriously on my "disreputable old uncle" persona.

Tsuyu is Over

Tsuyu, the rainy season, is finally over. The meteorological agency has declared it over in the Kinki region from yesterday, 15 days later than usual. And there was much rejoicing... I think.

We'd already guessed it'd be over about now. The air turned perceptively drier on Monday and the temperature climbed from around 30 last week to 35 degrees. According to the agency, we should expect a cooler August than usual; by "cooler" they of course mean "Still too damn hot to leave the comfort of an air conditioner if I can at all help it". It may not creep up to 40 this year, but peak daytime of 35 is still plenty enough thank you very much.

At least we'll be able to dry our umeboshi during Obon next week; we were starting to worry about that.

Tsyu Days Are Here Again

Tsuyu - the summer rainy season - has been declared by the meteorological agency; looking out the window at the dripping wet world outside it's not exactly a major surprise. This is a mixed blessing. On one hand, it does keep the temperature down, with highs normally below 30° even on sunny days. On the other hand, it's wet. Everything is wet. Rainy days are worst, of course, and there's a lot of them right now. Osaka gets over 200mm of rain in June; not a huge amount by south Asian standards, but by comparison Stockholm gets less than 70mm during its wettest month of August.

Rainy day, Nishitanabe, Osaka. Not a great picture, but I'm in no mood to go out and take a better one - it's wet and miserable out there.

It's not the water, though, it's the humidity that gets to you. Everything gets damp. During cool nights you end up feeling clammy and miserable - you're hot and freezing at the same time. Mildew and fungus thrive in this weather (real fun cleaning the bath this time of year), and food poisoning becomes a real risk so you have to be careful with your produce and ingredients.

On the other hand, it's plum season. Now is the time to buy (or pick, if you have a tree) the barely ripe green plums and pickle in brine for umeboshi, or put in jars of alcohol for umeshu. We'll try to make hachimitsu (honey) umeboshi this year in addition to the normal stuff. The vodka and rum umeshu we made last year are so-so; the vodka is good but needs a bit more time to ripen. We probably should have used better quality rum, as that variety has very little actual rum flavour left. This year we'll try to make brandy umeshu and see how that goes.