梅雨 Tsuyu The Rainy Season Sets In.............

The 2007 rainy season or tsuyu as it is called in Japanese has finally set in for 2007. It usually occurs in this area mid June to mid July. While it is great for the rice fields, flowers, and other local crops, it can start to seem pretty dreary for humans after the second week. While it doesn't rain all day long it has rained more days than not in the last couple of weeks and looks as though it will rain 24 hours a day. As you can see from the picture comparison , it is not yet raining this morning, but the city is entrenched in a foggy haze and 100% humidity pretty much eliminating our nice view of the mountains and the west side of town. These pictures were shot about the same time mid-morning with the bright one being shot in March, and the foggy one being shot this morning, but it could be any recent morning. I tried to zoom in to Utsunomiya Tower but the haze limited the shot to the about as far as the Shinkansen tracks.

This weekend myself(ksaul) and 3 other expats had planned to climb Mt. Fuji, but had to cancel do to a Typhoon coming up the East Coast of Japan, which would have centered off the coast in the Mt. Fuji area about the time we pushed for the top Saturday night. We hope to reschedule the climb for next week, work schedules and weather permitting.

Typhoon MAN-YI http://www.jma.go.jp/en/typh/0704.html should be as far North as Utsunomiya Sunday, but should hopefully mean no more than another Utsunomiya rainy season day for us.