It's finally stopped raining

I was greeted by this beautiful sky this morning when I opened the curtains, and just had to take a picture (can you count the crows?). After living in Manchester for seven years I tend not to complain about rainy weather so often (it's nicknamed "The Rainy City" for a reason). However, it's been raining almost non-stop since last Friday night, when huge thunderstorms and quite insane amounts of rain (think tropical deluge) hit Tokyo and followed me all the way to Kyoto, where it remained until around 5pm on Sunday. 

Constant rain doesn't make for a good city-break, but we tried our best to get around and see some sights in Kyoto over the weekend. I'll publish the photos throughout the week.

Summer Storms

Summer is definitely here. For the last two days, the temperature in central Tokyo peaked somewhere over 35°C. North of Tokyo, in the mountains of Gunma-ken, 900 people were hospitalised and 2 died from heatstroke. It's rather hot, to say the least. It's also very humid (between 50% ~ 95% RH).

The strong sun easily burns, and it's not uncommon to see ladies with parasols. The heat causes the moist air to rise high, creating these magnificent cumulonimbus clouds. When I took this photo, we could already hear the thunder in the distance. Two hours later, the thunder was above us, and we endured another huge thunderstorm.

Every cloud...

Every cloud... | NEX-7 & SEL18200LE | 115mm, f/8, ISO 100, 1/2000, RAW

...has a silver lining. Saturday was a complete wash-out. We knew it would be; our phones told us. At its peak, I think the rain reached 40mm/hour... which is a lot. However, Tokyo is basically prepared for such events. Luckily, the Government has poured its money (no pun intended) into colossal drainage systems, ensuring floods are a rarity. Sure, such spending has put japan further into debt, but these days, my very understanding of money is being challenged.

Anyway, we went out drinking with friends on Friday night, with no intention of moving from bed until Saturday afternoon. We ventured out, I had my haircut, and then we stocked up on wine, beer, cheese, biscuits, and enough food for the rest of the weekend. Saturday was spent watching films, playing computer games, drinking good wine, and eating lots of cheese. I also had a couple of white russians. Not bad, really!

We'd been told that Sunday was to have extremely high winds, and sure enough, bikes were being blown down the street (along with everything else), and the wind was howling at around 70-100 kph. A little blustery! One decent side-effect of the strong wind was the removal of the rain clouds, leaving behind fast-moving, but much more photogenic, cumulous clouds. We went for a late-afternoon walk just before sunset, and I took this shot from just outside our front door. The temperature is around 20°C right now, and I'm pretty sure we've seen the last of the cold northerly winds. I've put my big coats away, and I'm trying to remember how I usually dress in the spring.

Kumo

Kumo│ NEX-7 & Canon FD 50mm  F1.4 │ 50mm, ISO 400, f/8, 1/4000, 0EV Learning a language other than one's mother tongue is an undertaking I would recommend to all. After a certain point, not only is one able to converse with people from completely different cultures, upbringing and backgrounds, but one will also undergo a kind of self-reflection like no other. That is to say, I now study and understand and approach the English language in a way I never did before. Learning English as a child, I've basically forgotten how I did so. Trial and error, sure, but I was also learning how to walk, read, count, ride a bike... etc. Learning a second language, as an adult, requires a different set of skills and a completely different approach to that of a child. I cannot learn Japanese simply by speaking it with my parents or class mates, as my parents don't know more than "konnichiwa", and I don't go to school. I need a much more structured and methodical approach, utilising my current skill set. Word association is one such technique.

For example, when I  started learning English, I knew no words at all, in any language. However, I now have the English language at my disposal, and have images and metaphors in abundance, to associated imagery with the Chinese characters, or Kanji, in Japanese. Without the Kanji, spoken Japanese can be both ambiguous and down-right confusing.

Why the diatribe on the learning of Japanese? Well, it's because the words for "cloud" and "spider" have exactly the same sound in Japanese; Kumo. Kumo is cloud, and kumo is spider. "Oh, look at that huge kumo", someone shouts. Do they know I am a climate scientist... or are they warning me as a potential victim of arachnophobia? The message becomes clear with context, of course, but also when written. 雲 is cloud, and 蜘蛛 is spider. Completely different!

Well, the above image is of the former, and the lovely photo below is of the latter. I did it that way around so as to not scare anyone off!