Monday, June 30, 2014
Tokyo Showers - Yes, It's Rainy Season Again [ GX7 ]
This is a little video I took along the streets of Tokyo yesterday, when we had a sudden (and I mean very sudden), torrential rain come down on us. It was crazy - one minute it started to sprinkle, and as we turned the corner it started coming down hard. Fortunately there was a little awning we could duck under, because it went from nothing to pouring down in buckets in around 15 seconds or so.
Of course, if you want to see the video in all its glory, you need to head on to YouTube and watch it at 1080p. Not that you have to, I'm just sayin...
Here is a still I took of the same spot. Man, was that a nice downpour. After waiting a few minutes we decided to chance heading to a coffee shop on the main street (right of this pic), but stupidly made the choice to run for it right as the light was turing red. So we waiting like a minute under my little folding umbrella. Yes, it was better than if we'd had nothing, but not much.
But we made it to the coffee shop and had a rest there, legs and shoes sopping wet. Thank god they didn't toss our dripping asses back onto the streets, or it would've been a lot worse.
Of course, the shower was mostly over 15 minutes later, so I guess we probably should've just waiting in our first hiding spot. Oh well, live and learn.
Actually, thinking about it, it was a lot like an American summer rain, especially like stuff we always got when I was a kid back in Illinois. It comes on hard and fast and out of nowhere, you duck under a ledge or into a building, and before you know it, it's all done.
The rainy season in Japan doesn't usually get rains like this. Or at least it didn't in the past.
When I first came to Japan and for most of the time I've been here rainy season was an endless rain. It would start on a Monday and when it really finally stopped raining a week or so had gone by. OK, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the idea. We'd get a lot of rain, yes, but it was spread out over a long period of time.
Rainy season was (and is still) the gateway to summer here. Just when it's starting to get warm in the latter half of June, the rainy season starts. You have alternating days of muggy humidity and constant rains, with a brief respite from the heat as each shower hits. And then two weeks or so later the rains end and you enter the endless heat of summer.
But around 3 or 4 years ago especially we've started to get these massive, quick storms like the one we got yesterday. And not just that, also crazy stuff. Just this week on the east side of Tokyo (near where I filmed this), they got so much hail and rain it went up to your waist on some streets and they were shoveling it like snow afterwards. Japan's also seen a bunch of tornados in that same time period, and not just far north in Hokkaido where they always used to happen. You have mudslides and floods now almost every season, and on a scale that breaks records left and right.
Is this evidence of global warming/climate change? Probably. But I don't want to get into that now.
Anyway, the rainy season is here, and will still continue I'd guess for another week or maybe two. Enjoy it while it lasts.
Especially the cool evenings after the rains stop.
I'll finish up with one more picture. This one is of one of my favorite spots in Japan - near the old Tobu Asakusa station. Just outside the station you have this steel bridge over the street that continues on across the river. It's a beautiful old bridge in one of the neater spots in Tokyo.
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