Greetings from the core of the sun

That's what it feels like today anyways. It isn't even officially summer yet. Coming home from work today I stopped into a store that was selling digital clocks. One of the high end clocks also displays temperature and humidity levels. According to the clock it was 31 degrees Celcius with a humidity level of 55%-at 9 0'clock at night. Just imagine what it was like at 12 o'clock in the afternoon. The Japanese delight in warning me it's only a taste of whats to come. Apparently last summer was a real scorcher-hopefully this summer is different.

It's really the humidity that gets you. Thirty-one degrees isn't actually that bad for the end of June (oops I just realized that actually summer has officially started after all.) The humidity in this country is beyond ridiculous though. They warned us to bring our own supply of anti-perspirant over because apparently the Japanese stuff doesn't work on Westerners. I'm begining to think that the real issue is that anti-perspirant just doesn't work full stop. If only our school would adopt the "Cool Biz" fashion that the government is trying to promote to cut down on air conditioning costs.

'Cool Biz,' ie. business casual will be a failure in Japan because people here are resistant to change. They don't know how to go to work any other way than in a suit in jacket. It's really quite comical. They're being given an opportunity that most Westerners would jump at in a second and they are rejecting it because they can't adapt. I can think of another great examp of this phenomenom. Daylight savings time.

As you have read previously, the longest day of the year has come and gone and I didn't even realize it. The reason for this is that for the longest day of the year in Japan, it is still dark at 7pm. A recent article suggested that if the Japanese adopted the Daylight Savings Time system they would be set to gain an additional 900 billion yen from increased tourism and they would reduce carbon emissions by 400,000 tons per year. What could possibly trump these benefits? According to a government official the fact that it would cost too much to change the timing on the traffic lights and the fact that it's inconvenient to change the clocks offsets these benefits. Whaaa??? I'm sorry but unless they have to get some little japanese guy to scurry up every single trafic light in Japan I can't see how it could possibly outweigh the benefits of an extra 900 billion yen. Oh well these are the same people who want to charge me a months rent to vacuum my tatami mats.