I wasn’t sure what category to put this entry under. I went for ‘society’ and ‘tourism’… Close enough, I guess. It does affect both and it’s not exactly ‘slices of life’ material.
We’re in for gray skies and sticky weather for a while and then some. Travelers beware! The rainy season in Japan usually starts somewhere around the second week of June and lasts for about a month. But this year, it arrived 10 days earlier according to the Japanese Meteorological Agency.
They say the rain the Kanto area got this morning (at 11 a.m. to be exact) officially marks the beginning of rainy season. It is the third earliest time in recorded history. The first two were May 6th in 1963 and May 27th in 2011. And compared to the last 36 years of the Showa era during which the rainy season started in May only once, it’s already the fifth time 25 years into the Heisei era!
It seems that one reason that explains why it gets here so early in recent years is that the jet stream responsible for the weather front dividing the cold front from the Asian continent and the warm front from the Pacific Ocean which used to be right under where Japan is located has been pushed up north. The Agency estimates that the rainy season should end around July 21st. It seems all we can expect for the next month or so is cloudy, wet and humid weather… Which I hate more than winter and is sure to put me in the worst mood 😦
I’ll try to keep up the smile 🙂
News and My Life 