The heat is on

I was going to write a long post about how horrible the Japanese summer is, but I thought I really shouldn’t subject you all to my whinging.

And then I thought, why the hell not: it’s my blog and I’ll whinge if I want to.

So here we go.

I absolutely hate summer in Japan. Here’s why:

1. It’s so incredibly humid. Being from Melbourne, which has a dry summer, I’m not used to this sort of heat at all. I hate sweating, and the humidity makes you sweat ten times more. You can’t move without breaking out into a sweat. Morning walks and soccer practice with the kids are out of the question. The lawn hasn’t been mown in months. The kitchen is like a sauna if you try to cook. You end up not wanting to move a muscle or do anything.
2. There’s no respite. I’m used to the changeable Melbourne weather, where even during summer we might have a spell of excruciatingly hot weather (including days over 40° C, the idea of which horrifies most Japanese) but you always know there’s a cool change coming along a few days later to give everyone a breather. Not so in Japan. The weather has been over 30 for more than a month now.
3. There`s no escape. Inside our house during the day it’s 30° – 32° C downstairs and 35° C upstairs. So all four of us often spend the entire day camped upstairs not moving in Daddy’s office (where Daddy cleverly had an air conditioner installed back in May. Just as well too, because when I went down to the electrical store to ask about a second one for downstairs I discovered that they’re out of stock due to the heatwave and won’t have any in until September. By which stage summer will, please please O mighty weather gods I beseech you, be almost over.)

By way of scientific evidence, here`s a screenshot of the weekly forecast issued this morning:

As you can see, though the weather may vary from sunshine to cloudy and even rain, every single day is maximum 34, overnight minimum 27. As yet the bureau hasn’t issued the forecast for Saturday, but… no prizes for guessing what the temperature is going to be.

Though the recent heatwave in Japan is officially over, the temperature just keeps going up. The reason is that the heatwave brought unseasonably hot weather for July (ie 31-32° C when it should have been high 20s), but now it’s August so we’re now into standard August weather territory (33° – 34°). And did I mention the humidity? That makes it feel even hotter. (It’s true! My new favourite weather website lists the actual temperature together with the “Feels Like” temperature, calculated via a special formula that includes the humidity level. Today, for instance, the official temperature is 34 but the Feels Like temperature is 45. And I can confirm that it really does feel like 45 degrees.)

The upstairs office is our salvation; that and the ice-maker in the fridge. When I chose the fridge back in January, in the middle of winter, it never occurred to me that the ice-maker would come in handy. I’d always regarded ice-makers, at least the ones that deliver ice into your cup via a huge hatch that takes up half of your fridge door, as the height of dagginess (= uncool, for international readers). But ours is fantastic. It has a little tank of water in the fridge section that magically transforms into cubes that plop into a little compartment in the freezer section and you open it up and there they are just waiting for you. I love to sit in the kitchen in the cool of the evening listening to the fridge disgorging a fresh new cube every few minutes. (Maybe I should get out more often.)

Felix, in light of his longstanding obsession with eating ice from the freezer, has been appointed the Ice Meister: his job is to keep the tank full of water so that we have ice for our water bottles. So what with the upstairs office and the iced water and regular trips to the beach down the road, we’re managing somehow. But I’m counting the days until this sticky sweaty inferno comes to an end.

OK enough whinging. In the interests of fairness and balance, here now is my list of positives about Japanese summers.

1. Our gas bill has halved because we’re all taking cold showers.

That’s all I can think of.

Anyway we’re off to Nagoya tomorrow to visit friends. It’ll be ridiculously hot of course up in the big city but it would be remiss not to travel during the holiday period. And we’ll be meeting up with Naho, a Japanese friend who we met in, of all places, Sansepolcro during our year in Italy back in 2003, and she has started up a PIZZA RESTAURANT in Nagoya with her Italian boyfriend, and I am sooooooo looking forward to eating pizza that the heat and the hours of train travel will all be worth it. And with any luck Naho’s boyfriend may even be able to make us a Real Italian Coffee!