Darlo's World

The UK has four seasons which seem to merge into one another at a fairly standard rate, allowing you to slowly adapt to the coldness of winter after the few good days of summer and vice versa. Japan on the other hand is slightly different. Yes it has it’s basic four seasons of Autumm, Winter, Spring and Summer, but it also has a rainy season (or two). Just a few days ago I was walking to uni wearing full fleece-hat “oh my frickin’ ass it’s cold” clothing, whereas now I’m finding myself wishing I’d brought more (any) shorts (that are wearable outside). For an excellent description of the seasons themselves, read Joshua Zimmerman‘s description, The Five Seasons.

The seasons here seem to change with the subtlety and tact of kick to the groin and a pie in the face at the same time. Definately agreeing with Joshua about stepping off the plane into a wall of heat and water, turning to winter seemed to happen overnight with me being thankful that my AC would also function as a heater, and now that it’s warm again am thankful for the AC once more.

It’s going to get a lot warmer in Osaka, so I guess along with books and other things I’ll be sending back early, I’ll have to start thinking about my warmer clothes too and getting them home … the heavy buggars.

Right you ‘orrible lot, this doesn’t happen very often but today I’m going to write about what a good day it’s been, generally speaking. So if you’re in a bad mood and don’t want to hear about it, you might want to naff off and come back tomorrow.

To be honest when I crawled out of bed with a stiff neck at about 6:30 this morning with a stiff neck, I thought I was in for one of those days, but around 15 minutes later I found I suddenly a nice bout of energy. Breakfast wasn’t fantastic, fried egg with ham slices and salad, but the egg had a hard yolk (just the way i like it) and best of all, NO MAYO!

Setting off we soon encountered something we hadn’t in a good few months. The weather was nice. It was sunny, with a very gentle breeze and a temperature that was neither a sweltering heat wave, nor it a Japanese version of the North Pole. It was just … nice. This good weather lasting pretty much until I got back in through the door tonight.

Nothing particularly special at uni today. I had my usual tutoring session, being a Tuesday, so this accounted to my one time to really practice Japanese out of class I usually get a day. The conversation was good, it was funny and entertaining, and I managed to use some of the new grammar points we’d covered on class.

I left campus much earlier than usual today, mainly due to the fact that there were even less Japanese students about than usual. However, the Spring Break will end soon and speaking practice will resume. Leaving early meant that I got to enjoy sitting down on the trains back to Osaka instead of standing.

This day, and this feeling, could only have been made better if we had curry rice for dinner.

And so we did (pork curry rice!!! EPIC!). My simply perfect day (ish) has been complete. And so to leave you with a video clip. Here’s the opening sequence to Baccano. Even though it’s just the intro, it’s still pretty intense, so I hope you enjoy it.