Fade to grey

There's been a lot of it around in the last week or so, grey I mean. As I mentioned in a comment on the last post, in the last week in has rained on sunday, monday, tuesday, friday, saturday, sunday, monday and again today. Mostly this has been incessant, full on 'proper' rain that just doesn't stop. Can fair get you down, let me tell you.

On saturday we had typhoon number 22 of this unusually busy and prolonged typhoon season dump its load over us here in the kanto region. At times on saturday we had over 100mm per hour raining down upon us which, trust me, is an awful lot. The entire golf course was flooded from saturday morning onwards, though in a pleasant variation, the raised bank between river and course was still navigable, almost as if a path had be laid through the centre of a lake, upon which one could walk and contemplate the elemental force that is nature. Well, you could if some bastard hadn't given you a cold that lasted exactly three days, the length of the bank holiday weekend...

So not only was the weather grey and pissy, so was my mood for the whole weekend. No study, even though it was perfect weather for it, as the brain cells wouldn't move out of first gear (which is something along the lines of 'I said no already, so bugger off'), no going out and having fun as it was too wet, no nothing except sitting at home, feeling miserable and waiting for the sun to shine (should anyone wish to add another bucket to the vat of self pity in which I wallow(ed), please feel free).

But all good things must come to an end and so by the time work came around this morning I was feeling chipper enough to drag myself in. Still raining though.

And the weather is playing havoc with the much vaunted weather forecasting system here. The newspaper on saturday confidently predicted that monday would follow the accepted post typhoon pattern of glorious sunshine and humidity to match, even going as far as to suggest that the late year record of 4th October for a 30+degree day would be broken. Was it buggery. And it looks like no end is in sight, well, at least not tomorrow, which appears as if it will be chucking it down again. This is not what I signed up for when returning to these shores. I expected cool, clear, crisp autumns with beautiful blue skies, gently falling leaves in a riot of colour and...and...and something else intrinsically autumnal which I am signally failing to get right now.

It could all be the end of the world, of course. I mean, I read in the paper this week that since a very large chunk of the Laursen B ice shelf (sorry about spelling) fell into the antarctic ocean a year or two ago, the glaciers in the area have been pouring ever more ice into the sea, potentially increasing the rate of sea level rise by another few notches. Added to this were rumbles inside Mt St Helens in the US, eruptions from Mt Aso here in Japan and a bloody big jolt of an earthquake on wednesday night last week which, not to put too fine a point on it, scared the shit out of me.

It was at about 1130pm and I was brushing my teeth at the time. Now I'm quite used to earthquakes (not wanting to sound blase in any way), but being on the 7th floor, they tend to get magnified a bit and so when this one hit, the jolt actually made me stumble slighty, the first time that had ever happened. The guru, who was in bed, immediately shouted "should we open the front door?" to which I replied "mmphf!" and then ran to the door, opening it upon my arrival. Now at this point the guru should have got up and proceeded in a calm, swift and yet orderly fashion to the aforementioned door. However she did what just about everybody does, which is sit bolt upright in bed and wait to see if the earthquake kills you. It didn't, of course, but it was a biggy, measuring 5.8 on the Japanese scale. Brian, who lives in Chiba, swears that he heard a roar just before it hit, which is something I have never heard but am assured does happen. The earth roaring, now there's a thing. In the office the next morning several bookcases had toppled and some water from the fish tank had slopped into the tortoise pens (don't ask), but things were generally ok.

Still, gave me a fright.

Oh, by the way

in my lethargy found this new game on yahoo - diverted my boredom in a pleasing way for a good few hours...