6:30 Dark Saturday morning. My watering the garden might call for rain. Soil turned blackish under trees. I am going to have an annual medical checkup first thing in this morning. Oh, I must return an overdue book to the library after that…

7:00, Slept longer a bit. Cloudy again. Wet ground. It seems the rain front is back and has brought torrential rain in Korean Peninsula. Many fatalities are reported as it caused floods and landslides. Yet in North Korea, even the number o…

6:40, It rained... of all the days! Yesterday we watered the garden. From far distance, if I listen very carefully, the low sound of a train echoes through the town. So low that it sounds almost like a vibration that could rattle window pa…

6:40, cloudier, wet ground. Rained? 26 degrees Celsius. No wind. Muggy. This summer started early and hot. But the typhoon seems to have changed the weather thereafter from unbearable to more bearable one. That's good. A sudden breeze caus…

7:00, Cloudy. Somehow got up in a bit of a stupor. Cool air seems to stay above Kanto area for some time since the typhoon. About a month has passed since the summer solstice. The summer is around us and we expect sweltering days of August…

6:30, 25.5C, Sunny Monday morning. Still cool for a midsummer day. A glass of iced coffee is the thing for a morning like this. Out in the balcony sitting on the top step of the wooden stairs, I sip the bitter awakener looking down the who…

6:30, 24 degrees Celsius. Cool outdoor air is coming in. But the glaring sun is back and so should be the dog day. Look down on the street out of the window and see garbage scattered. A crow is a suspect.My wife says garbage is collected e…

7:00 Another cool morning. 20 degrees Celsius. Cloudy. Traffic noise is coming in through open windows. In hot days, I remember, they were closed and it was very quiet in the house. Every window in our house has triple panes. I chose "trip…

6:45 It's like autumn... 19C. Fine. No wind. Crisp air. Masses of puffy, white clouds floating here and there in the blue sky. Cumulus. They call it. The typhoon is gone. A brief break in the spell of sweltering days. Hope this will last f…

6:30. 20 degree C. Chilly. The typhoon finally has brought with it enough rain to wet the ground under leafy trees in my garden. Still raining a little. A strange typhoon it was. It came from the south, hit Shikoku, and now, as if to bounc…

Rain. But less than we expected of a typhoon. With a speed of a bike, it still hangs around off Kii peninsula. It brought a rainfall of over 1000mm to Shikoku within a couple of days, an amount equivalent to the 10 year's precipitation in …

Plants look different today. Refreshed and greener than green. Long waited rain at last!!! The typhoon is forecasted to head north for Shikoku for a while and then take a sudden right turn to go along the Tokai coast line, coming closer to…

Up at 5. Cloudy. How long haven't we had such a morning without sunshine? Congratulations! The Japanese women's national football team, Alpine Pink (synonymous of a Japanese woman with grace and elegance), beat the US to win the world cup.…

Got bored of saying it's hot and humid. A typhoon is coming. We could use a little rain. He is a friend of my age and the only one I can call friend. He was my classmate in high school. We went on to different universities and hadn't met e…

Strong morning sunshine. How many days more will it be like this? This rainy season ended too early. My client's office finally decided to loosen up the energy saving policy. They used to preset the air conditioner at 28 C, but under the n…

Muggy. 80% humidity. Got up at five to watch a football game. Alpine Pink beat Sweden 3 to 1 to be the one of the finalist. I always adore the captain Homare Sawa for her leadership and untiring, unyielding, high spirits. I heard that she …

Nothing seems different from yesterday morning. Hot and humid. This is summer. "My suggestion, my warnings, my advice.... all rolling off you like water off a duck's back." What a nice way to say you are not listening. It is as good as its…

Six thirty in the morning. Blinding glare of the sun, already. Dull motion of air. Going to be another hot day. Located on the 15th floor of a new building in front of the Futako-Tamagawa station, our new office commands a panoramic view o…

Rainy season is over, already. Blue sky. Strong sunshine. Finally.... it's back. Mother seems fine today. She says she belatedly begins to understand how her late husband was feeling his old age. "If this is so painful for me it was for hi…

Hot day. Mother feels weak in the legs these days. Around this season last year, she complained the same but it got better toward winter. But again... In spite of all this she went out for social dancing. In this heat! She said she would b…

When my wife asked me out to a movie on her birthday (it should have been the other way around!) I was reluctant because, from what she said, the movie seemed like a girl's manga story in which two ballerinas compete for a lead role. It wa…

Bought an electric fan. Plated with copper, it looks cool for the last one left unsold in Daiei. The blades remind me of an industrial cooling fan. All the fans were sold out in the two appliance shops I visited before Daiei. The energy cr…

At six in the morning, the temperature outside reaches already 28 Celsius. Is rainy season over? Hope not. I prefer rainy weather to that purgatorial heat in summer. Come to think, I used to love summer. Without any conscious reasons the w…