Doesn’t time fly???

Hello! Welcome to week 29, a fairly quiet and very dry week. The weather stubbornly continued to remain rainless and from the stories on the news and the slightly extended weather forecasts, I think the authorities are beginning to get a little worried. Having said that, as I sit here in my official office, at my official desk, it is raining outside! Finally, after two weeks of no rain during the rainy season, the forward forecast went from “brief rain” for today, to “rain which briefly stops” as of Monday, to “rain” this morning. Of course that was easy to say, given it had been raining since before midnight.

The tv forecast last night indicated there would be 200 – 250 ml over the next 24 hrs for the Kyoto area. So, in an effort to make up for it’s misdemeanours, the weather decided to try to catch up with the missed rain. It is going to have to do a lot better, though, because that is not enough and the forward forecast again is looking very dry.

It seems that the gradual creep of climate change is having its effect here – the idea of a rainy season may well disappear and be replaced by single days of very heavy rainfall. This, of course, has flow on effects (…) including localised flooding and landslides. It also means that more of the water in storage will have got there as a result of heavy rainfall, which has lead to flooding and consequential erosion. This causes sedimentation of the water storage dams, resulting in reduced storage capacity. Also, sediments can carry chemicals and nutrients that affect the water quality.

The other effect that I have noticed here over the last few years is that the typhoon season is extending – and while Kyoto is not on the coast, so doesn’t take the direct brunt of the winds, etc, it very often receives the ‘tail’ weather, ie flooding rains.

Anyway, enough of climate change 101.

What else has happened? I had a visit from a nice police officer, which I assume was a follow-up from the visit of the Kyoto officials. She asked a lot of questions about a guest house and I did my best to answer them so she could understand. Funny, though, how when you are trying to work out what they want and where this is all leading the ‘other language’ capacity of the brain seems to diminish. In the end she seemed satisfied and left. I assume the police would have greater powers to search records and could find information held by other departments/authorities.

Finally, in an effort to actually provide some pictorial interest to this particular post (since there are no new flowers to report), I thought I would mention a Kabuki performance I saw the last 20 minutes of the other day. I wish I could have seen it all, as it was a comedy/parody of other Kabuki performances. At one point, one of the characters suddenly ripped of the hat he had on, was given some make-up and a mirror from an assistant who came out onto the stage (not in costume), changed his make-up, put on a long wig, ripped off the kimono he had on and revealed another underneath. It was very unexpected and very funny (unfortunately, I didn’t get any photos of this).

At another point, the set started rolling away to each side while the curtains remained open and a second set moved up from behind – it was Mt Fuji. One of the characters then climbed up Mt Fuji and deposited the contents of a ceramic jar into the volcano, which then sent up a snake-like plume of smoke. I assume that the contents had been poisonous. It was a very colourful performance and wonderfully funny. The audience loved it. I recognised some of the performers, so I think it was a special event performance.

So, that’s it – quite a short posting for me! I hope those of you in Adelaide are coping well with winter. Today is the winter solstice for you, so I hope you all enjoy the day and keep in mind that the days will now start getting longer again. For me, it is summer solstice today. At the moment, it starts getting lighter at around 4:00am…

Cheers

(and cheers from kappa)