Rainy Season in Japan blows

But it's here for a reason

How Zen. Yeah, imagine meditating on this for 50 days straight.

Japan’s Kanto Plain has now entered “rainy season.” Doesn’t that term sound harmless?

‘Tis a season of…rainyness.

It’s, shall we say, a wetter time of the year.

Rain is likely to “happen.”

The rest of Asia pulls no punches and calls this Monsoon—an entirely more ominous sounding word. (When something is shit, trust the Chinese, Thai, Viet, and Indonesians to call it shit.)

Monsoon conjures up danger. We see in our mind’s eye mud, walls of wet dirt, downpours day and night, landslides, leeches, people in rubber rafts, and the Red Cross. We feel water inside the shoes, and endless drips down the back of our necks. And if all that isn’t bad enough, Monsoons are sweaty and steamy. Ick.

But typical of dainty, haiku-writing Japan, the absolute same weather front is a season in which rains tend to arrive.

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My first 18 years on this planet were in southern California. So yeah disclaimer—I’m not built for this. Back then, we had four crappy collapsible family umbrellas stored in the back of the hall closet. I think I saw my dad use one once.

I have a vague childhood memory of my mom insisting I wear a weird yellow rubber rain coat and yellow rubber boots on a “rainy” day. I cried. But come to think of it the scene is hilarious. What, did it rain for four minutes that morning?

Southern Californians have no clue.

When I first arrived in Japan, it was a crisp and cool October day.  I was informed though that from June and maybe until the first few weeks of July rainy season would arrive.

I thought I understood, but I had no idea what was coming.

Rainy season here is hopeless. After the first three days of the 50-day stretch, you are sure you will never see the sun again.

The nation is pinned down with water. We go to sleep with rain, wake with rain, go shopping and to work in the rain, slosh out to dinner in rain, take the garbage out in the rain, walk the dog in the rain, and fall asleep again as it still rains.

When we wake, it is raining.

Toru and I were walking through flooded rice paddies with the dog recently. Even though this was before rainy season had hit, the gurgling sound of 24-hour runoff was already everywhere. We spoke about the abundance of water on these islands. Japan is well known for being bereft of natural resources—it’s basically volcanic ash and valueless rocks—but if Japan does have one resource it’s water.

The country will never go dry. There are no deserts, no dunes, no No Man’s Lands. There aren’t even patches of kindling or brush weed. It’s all green. I like to call Japan the Ireland of Asia. A soggy, perma-moist dirt rock with long grass, tall weeds, and inedible bushes everywhere.

Japanese farmers at least can be thankful. They will never have to be concerned about drought…at least in this eon.

Editor’s note: When a Californian mentions the word drought to a Japanese, the latter always says, “Oh we had that in 1994, it was incredible. IT WAS SO BAD WE HAD TO IMPORT RICE FROM THAILAND. We almost all died.”

They have no fucking idea what they’re talking about.

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So I’m sitting in my little office here in Frog’s Glen gazing out at our first rainy season in this valley. Forgive the vocabulary cop out, but wow is this wet. The Daikon Guy’s field (which is now rotated to growing cabbages, cucumbers, and pumpkin btw) is a fucking lake. The rice paddies further up the hill are so topped out with water they spill over into run-off gulleys. The roads are all an inch or more underwater. Not a soul is outside our house and only a car or two an hour drives by on Highway 86. We are all hunkered and silent.

And still the rain comes. It was raining when we got here yesterday afternoon, and this morning now at 9AM it is still raining. The TV says we may get an hour pause this afternoon before it starts raining again all through tomorrow. (They’re probably fucking with us about that pause—just trying to keep morale up.)

There is no pattern or modulation to this rain. It is like a faucet on full. It is a wall of perfectly even downpour. The sound is hhhhhhhhhhhhhh. It is so loud and encompassing we can’t hear the gutter water that we can plainly see gushing onto the ground right in front of us. The frog calls even are drowned out at night—it’s like they’ve all left.

Imagine the leeches.

Look, don’t take all this as a complaint or a rant. I should be thankful. I garden and this is all a 100% free deluge before the blazing, pitiless summer scorch that we know is coming from mid-July. For now at least I can spend my time sipping coffee and watching the drenching of our azaleas, maples, Sakura, dogwood, hotas, wisteria, and hydrangeas.

The southern Californian boy in me used to fret over Japan’s howling winds. I was horrified by the flooded lawn and the mud. But I’ve learned to remind myself this is Japan. It’s the way it’s supposed to be.

First the tree trunks thicken and the roots deepen in the unrelenting winds. Then in rainy season the underground lakes engorge, and the rivers rush, ensuring the flora will for a year sip to their hearts’ content no matter what Mother Nature throws at them the next 12 months. 

The valley likes this mess.