Rain. Thunder. Probably, in some far off corner of the sea, lightning. The gutters have been broken since the house was built, leaving great lakes, veritable Superiors and Hurons of water stagnating around my house. The rainy season does not prevent one from doing anything in particular. It merely makes it damper.
Islanders possess a unique outlook on the seasons, as they relate to one’s ability to enjoy the island’s essential island-ness. There is always some reason, not to be swimming, diving, or otherwise acknowledging that one is surrounded by water. The newly minted JET Programme Participant arrives on Kikai in a sweltering hellstorm of summer. Death is prayed for. The unsuspecting youth sweats through their heavy wool suits, and liquifies red-blue striped ties under an unceasing onslaught of sweat and misery. Every collar the participant owns is a black, greasy mess. But at least you can swim. The island will never feel more island-y, than these brief moments spent in an oven, slowly roasting at 350 degrees.
Thing will go strictly downhill in the swimming department from here on out. Each season is a series of compromises. Summer heat is traded for the occasional typhoon. Your first typhoon lives in the nebulous region between excitement and terror. You buy emergency water. You ensure that your flashlight has batteries. When the power inevitably fails, you cook dinner by candle light. The longer you’re on the island the more you start to root for the typhoon instead of fear it. Please Typhoon Mawar, swerve just a little bit to the left so we can have a day off of school. How dare you lose strength at such a key moment. Last year’s typhoons never had these problems.
Typhoons are exchanged for “cold”. Your first winter is inevitably underwhelming. Minnesotan shorts weather. Then you get used to it. Puffy bubble coats in 45 degrees weather. Layer upon layer of heat-tec, and micro-fleece. Long days huddled in front of your tiny electric heater, cursing Prometheus for not snagging the secrets of home insulation while he was busy stealing fire for the humans of Japan. Irresponsible deities. Your only consolation, is that every single one of your mainland friends is having to live under their tiny heated kotatsu tables. Their world, is considerably smaller. We consider their misfortune, thin-lipped Grinch smiles cracking across faces, and the islander’s heart is warmed.
Winter comes to a close with the most beautiful two to four weeks of your life. Island spring. Still too cold to swim if you’re a thin-skinned island native, but perfect for the hairy, blubber-laden American or European. Flowers bloom. The sun shines. Cats have wild, extraordinarily loud and angry sex outside of every window. Life is good.
Until the rain starts. Tsuyu, a word poetically comprised of the characters for plum (梅) and rain (雨) is when shit gets real on the islands. Even if it doesn’t rain, you can be sure that it threatens to. Weather forecasters rejoice, and go on extended vacation after blocking out cartoon clouds angrily pissing down rain on whole months of the Japanese calendar. Everything molds. In some cases actual mushrooms sprout from perfectly good menswear. Right when things were threatening to get good, Punxsutawney Phil’s distant cousin Tsuyushi the Unlicensed Weather Ferret pops out of his hole, sees his shadow, and predicts 2 more months of unpleasantness.
It’s a wonderful time to catch up on some reading, rediscover old hobbies, and make flimsy excuses not to attend social functions because you cannot reasonably be expected to get to the venue without getting slightly to severely damp. A serious problem for the average JET, inevitably saddled with a Wicked Witch of the West-like allergy to water. No one likes a half-melted gaijin.
Which brings us to the present day. Slow crawl out of bed to torrential bullshit, canceling plans to bike around the island in an effort to start conditioning myself for a misguided, potentially dangerous, and totally fucking awesome cross country bike trip when I get back to America. I resolved to make the most of it by writing, watching other people play video games on the internet, and reading comic books about astronauts. And by god, I succeeded.
You come to a tropical island, expecting a tropical island. No one ever imagines a tropical island in the middle of a typhoon. I doubt anyone ever moves to a tropical island excited for all the possibilities of island winter, or really jazzed to sit their first rainy season. But as I find the months slipping away, counting down lasts, remembering firsts, it’s the sound of rain popping off my concrete stoop, and the thrill of biking through flash-flood rivers and overflowing-drainage-ditch lakes, getting soaked to the bone under my flimsy rain jacket, that I think I’m saddest to see come for the last time. I have thoroughly enjoyed the misery. Far more than I could have possibly enjoyed 365 days a year of sunshine and ocean breezes. It’s just not Kikai without the rain.
