Goodbye Summer

The End of Summer and the Beginning of… uh oh!

When I was a kid, the end of summer vacation was always a sad event. I loved having nothing to do, especially no homework! September meant starting a new school year, getting used to a new teacher and new classmates. It meant the end of freedom and the onset of cold weather.

Here in Japan, the end of summer vacation is the beginning of the second term. (The school year ends in March.) the funny thing is that while all of my friends don’t really notice a big difference anymore, unless they have children, I still do. Of course that’s because I have the same vacation schedule as the students!

Other things in Japan are different too, take the weather for instance. June starts the rainy season and the end of July brings sweltering heat. August is uncomfortable, but so is September and sometimes October. But something worse happens in September: typhoon season.

I don’t think were in Kansas anymore

Being from California, I had never experienced a tropical storm before I came to Japan. My first September here was only a month and a half after I had first arrived. There were a couple of big typhoons that came that year. Not really understanding the gravity of what was going on, I ventured out in them. Not a smart idea. Luckily I wasn’t hurt. I would have to say though that it wasn’t that scary. That’s more from ignorance though. I experienced some pretty strong gusts. But when the eye passed overhead and that eerie stillness came, I was creeped out. Now I take sufficient care when there’s a threat of a typhoon. They are serious business!

But we have four season

Japanese people are proud of the fact that their country has 4 seasons. They think that California is always like they see in the movies. But even though Japan has 4 distinct seasons, it’s very different than it is back home and it’s very unpredictable. One thing is that the coolness of fall takes awhile to get here. Even though I don’t like cold weather, after a long hot summer it’s nice to have a change. That doesn’t happen here. September is always warm and sometimes hot. October is often warm and last year it was hot until the beginning of December! So much for sweater season!

Goodbye my love!

So now, in the coming days, I’ll have to bid farewell to my favorite time of the year, goodbye to my freedom and wait until the first storm gets here. Until we meet again in June.