Summer review
This summer was long and hot with little to report that I haven’t already reported.
At the beginning of August my son surprised me when he walked in the door unannounced one Friday afternoon. He moved out of the apartment in the spring to take a job in another prefecture, and I haven’t seen him since. My wife knew he was coming, but she didn’t tell me. The first thing he said after coming in the door was to ask me about my knee, because he hadn’t seen me since before I broke my knee in a falling accident on April 29th. He spent the weekend in Tokyo but slept at his nearby grandmother’s house because there’s no longer any place for him to sleep here. When he left, I asked when he was coming home next and he said not until the New Year, probably.
The annual Rainy Season ended just a week before the Summer Olympics started in July. We had extreme temperatures and humidity one week before the Games, but by the time the Games started it was just simply hot. But many foreign athletes complained of the humidity here. I thought they didn’t know what they were talking about, the whiners. Hot, yes. But humid? Not very, I thought.
In 1964 the Tokyo Summer Olympics were held in October specifically to avoid the hot summer weather here. But this year broadcasting contracts with American TV networks forced the Games to be held in high summer because U.S. television doesn’t want Olympics in October to compete with the autumn schedule of sports like the baseball World Series, or the American football Super Bowl. They don’t want the Olympics to interfere with other revenue streams.
American networks also forced the timing of some events so that they corresponded to evening prime time in the continental U.S. The Japanese proposed early morning or late afternoon times for some events to avoid the worst of the daytime heat, but the U.S. networks nixed that because they wanted events held at times that synchronized well with American clocks back home. It was all about money!
Throughout the summer the fifth wave of coronavirus infection raged out of control in Japan. Hospitals were overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients and had to start turning patients away to recover at home. By the end of August, over 100,000 patients were recuperating at home, and some were dying at home. COVID-19 vaccinations persisted at an encouraging pace. If it keeps up, Japan might pass the United States in percentage of population fully vaccinated some time in September. The Japanese government is preparing for the anticipated coronavirus booster shots in the months ahead.
Throughout the pandemic, school classes here were never derailed or suspended. Schools remained set to reconvene the last week or August / first week of September on schedule.
Throughout the summer I saw teenagers playing sports on the school ground across the street from my apartment. And, at the end of August I noticed more kids on the streets in school uniforms, indicating that they were already back at school.
For the second year in a row, mass gatherings like fireworks festivals and neighborhood summer festivals - which are traditional features of Japanese culture - were cancelled.
I moved a fair number of heavy, hardcover books out of my apartment, continuing a years-old reorganization project, and fulfilling a promise I made. I also got a little sightseeing done in Tokyo during the summer. I visited some temples and shrines I wanted to see and photograph, not exposing myself to dense crowds. I didn’t do as much Tokyo sightseeing as I did last year, in the summer of 2020, though. Last year I was very active around Tokyo - much more than this year. This year I spent more time at home watching movies and old TV shows on the Internet. I dabbled in Game of Thrones and Downton Abbey until I got bored with them.