暑い!

That character in the post title means "hot". It's freaking hot here! Tokyo summers are nortorious for being hot, muggy, and uncomfortable, and this year is apparently exceptional.

At breakfast today I asked Kurumi (Kuri's sister), "去年と今年は同じ暑いですか？" (which means, "Last year and this year are together same hot?"). It took her a few seconds, but she replied, "もっともっと暑い！" (which means "much, much more!").

So what's a summer like here? I suppose it's just a really intense version of any other day. For example, take the typical rush hour train commute and imagine that everyone who is in that train just stepped out of a sauna. It's not uncommon to be covered in someone else's sweat by the time you step off. Add to this the fact that Tokyo is still saving energy due to the Fukushima power plant incident. Kuriko's office shuts down the air conditioning after 5:00pm and on weekends (in fact, she's there right now and it's Saturday!).

The weekends are pretty good, though. If you can take the heat, summer is actually a pretty lively time to visit Tokyo. There are a lot of events, especially around Obon. People take advantage of open spaces like parks and you can sometimes catch markets or watch performances. If my wife wasn't at the office I would probably have taken her to the horse racing track. Come to think of it, we've got a nice breeze today. Makes me think why I'm blogging on a Saturday morning.

Alright, I'm out of here...

Sigh...

I haven't posted in a long, long while. I was considering for a while whether to keep this blog active or not. But occasionally something so stupid, so insane happens that I have to respond to it.

The Stanley Cup riot (which now has its own Wikipedia article) caused me no shortage of grief at work. The fiasco had hit the news by early afternoon Japan time. I spent the rest of that day and the first half of the next listening to cracks about Canada and references to the South Park movie - even from other Canadians (there are four of us on my floor).

Now I realise that the slander directed at me is nothing compared to the scope of the riot, but think of it this way: I work with mostly Australians, Japanese, and a few other nationalities. None of them pay any particular attention to Canada, much less to hockey; however, in less than the span of one day everyone knew what happened and had given some face-on-palm reaction. So yeah, this is how bad Vancouver looks. I wonder how much flak I'm getting at church tomorrow...

In other news, work is taking off. Sort of. It's still a grind and will continue to be, but the people I'm meeting these days are very good candidates, some of whom recognise the benefit of what I'm offering them. The general feeling is that a breakthrough is just around the corner.

Oh yeah, and I'm coming to Vancouver in August! Probably most people know this already. I'll be there from the 5th to the 12th.