Wet wet wet!
From June to July, Japan experiences its rainy season, during which a significant portion of the country's annual rainfall occurs. In anime, this season often serves as an opportunity to depict couples sharing an umbrella or for a love interest to come to the rescue by offering an umbrella to protect their crush from the rain or if the anime is more supernatural the love interests get caught in the rain by the local temple or shrine and must talk things out during the downpour. Often getting to those three awaited words for thunder or the downpour itself to drown out the words as it is far to early in the season for love confessions.
This year, Okinawa's rainy season began two weeks early, while in Kyushu, it started about a week earlier than usual. This time of year, also introduces a different type of flower viewing: hydrangeas! These delightful flowers have the unique ability to indicate whether the soil they grow in is acidic or alkaline. The beautiful blooms can range in colour from a pale baby blue to a deep, rich scarlet, showcasing a spectrum of blues, purples, reds, and pinks along the way. If Japan’s springs are represented by Sakura, then its rainy season is represented by the Hydrangea.
The rainy season brings with it sudden torrential downpours, thunderstorms and very high humidity. My experiences with this season so far have been interesting to say the least. I ended up resorting to my heavy snowshoes as my normal shoes stood no chance against the rain. My washing also took longer to dry, and I constantly felt damp. The heat and humidity were not fun, and the rain did nothing for the temperature. My prefecture is in places is only two meters above sea level and flat. So, the rain often had no where to go. The paths and roads started to flood, and the many channels and castle moat ended up scarily high.
What I wasn’t expecting was a break in the season which gave me about five days of sun admittedly temperatures started breaking the mid thirties and it felt like forty. But it was a break from being wet. Instead, I was a sweaty wet mess because the humidity is very high. The rainy season comes back for part two this weekend and I will be thankful when it is over.
Rainy season is just another flavour of Japan, and it is important to experience all of Japan’s sides whilst I live here. The wet season brings out beautiful flowers which I got to see in Kamakura at Hasedera temple. It is also a good season to enjoy plum flavoured snacks and the world of ice cream that has an array of flavours and forms in Japan. Through the dark rainy clouds, a silver lining is available to us in the form of food and nature.
