June

1. Summer, in all it’s humid glory, is here. It’s actually not quite as hot as I remembered it last year, but it’s plenty hot enough for everyone. Though I do really love summer, the humidity makes it feel like a sauna but I prefer it to the dry furnace heat of the Australian summer — and I’m less likely to get sunburnt just sticking my head out the window. The Ozone Layer is really great like that.

2. (It’s so humid that at night, it fogs. At 24 Celcius.)

3. Summer never travels alone, so trailing its tshirt-tails are the festivals and festivities that happen around summer. Beginning of this month was Tokasan, which celebrates the coming of summer, where everyone dresses up in their best Yukatas and enjoy the street stalls and street food and street drinking. And dancing, as my friend Dan found, who looked his, err, best, in his man-Yukata dancing with the old ladies. He lives in a country town after all.

4. The beginning of the month also saw the leaving of two close work mates, and the arrival of a new one. It’s always sad to see people go, and it can be difficult to deal with friendships as a transient experience. But thanks to the magic of Facebook and email, they’re never that far away. Later this month my best friend here will leave for home, and tears may well be shed. *sob*

5. But it wasn’t all bad news. Fireworks are legal here, and people here love nothing more than to go down to the river and run around with sparklers and shoot off some explosives. So last weekend we did as the locals did, and went to the park to play with explosives. While drinking a lot. And I mean a lot. We also climbed trees, and you can see the photos here.

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