Black Cherry
Well, it finally happened.
Upon researching the weather for various parts of Japan in the autumn, I kept stumbling upon the reoccuring word: rain. I barely missed typhoon season (damn), but I was right in time for the autumn rains. Awaikeda, where I am is, is nestled in the valley of mountains, the nursery of storms. I remember when I was 14 or so, a group of us hiked to the top of Mt. Wheeler in New Mexico. Even though the daily temperatures were pleasant - 70s or 80s - at night it POURED and the temperatures plummeted to the 40s and 30s. Even in a thermal sleeping bag, I would wake up every morning in a tight ball because my muscles were too tight to uncurl. As Shikoku, this island, is fairly tropical in terms of location (we're a sneeze away from the Philippines) for Japan, so it's pretty hot here during the day - around the 90s. A few days ago, rain clouds (amagumo, in Japanese) began to form. We got a day of sprinkling and blessed cool temperatures (we picked that day to go hiking, lucky us), but the next day it was back to the oven. The day before yesterday, the sky was heavy with promise of rain - grey clouds, humidity, windy, crows riding the thermals of rising warm air, and right before bed it began to drizzle. I listened to the sound of the rain on the roof that night..and at 7:55 am I woke up because it was POURING. I couldn't sleep through it! In Texas, it pours for about five seconds then everything evaporates in the next five minutes. In Los Angeles, it weakly rains about three times a year (February and November) and maybe for half the day. It. poured. The whole day was a curtain of rain; I couldn't even see the valley below us. I even wore a sweater to bed. Now, the rain is gone. The visibility is deep, miles and miles, the grime in the air washed away...I reshot some of my pictures just because it was so clear. Postcard photography at its best.
Now it's hot again, the wind tipped with coolness. It may rain again in a few days.
That's...pretty much all that has happened. I was working on translating chapter 3 of a book with my host (her English is good enough) and we finished last night. She wanted to make fifty copies...and it's about 11 pages including the covers and credits. Instead of taking them to a copy center, she opted to borrow two older home copy machines that make one copy at at time by feeding in one piece of paper at a time. So, guess what we did last night. Did I mention they all have to be folded in half? My host kept telling me to go to bed, and said good night, which is a really Japanese way of telling someone to stick around, so I stuck around to help her until around midnight until the work was nearly done. Even if she was sick of me, I knew she needed the help. She's a perfectionist, and did way more copying even after I went to bed. It's really hard to read Japanese people.
Speaking of reading Japanese people, the people who live next door to us keep staring at me. The old guy to our left often goes to get his clothes off the line (Japanese people don't use dryers here, and if they exist, it takes 2 hours to dry three pairs of jeans) wearing only his underwear...which is about two sizes too big for him. It's kind of awkward. That wasn't nearly as awkward as that day in the rafting place when a row of Japanese teenage boys, fresh out of their rafting suits, walked past me in their underwear on their way to change into their regular clothes. The Australian guide was laughing at the look on my face. It's difficult to get used to the fact that Japanese people completely disregard modesty. This is a country that has a festival involving putting a couple hundred naked men in a dark building and having them scramble for a baton. ...yeah.... I..don't really follow that.
I am going to go fold more paper now. I am craving Japanese pumpkin again (kobocha) ...Japanese food is so good!
PS: It seems Dio is fine, he was just stressed out. All is chirpy on the homefront.