Where’s me brolly?

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Well, it looks like Typhoon #2 (Japanese don’t follow the western convention for typhoon naming – on one hand, I suppose it’s kinda nice not having to admit that your cities got “battered by Alice” or “ravaged by Gertrude”) – is coming straight for my island tonight. Last time a typhoon came by I had to drive over the bridge between here and Kobe, and it was like the movie Twister in that I just had to crack my window to see just how strong the wind was blowing. In an instant, every loose toll receipt, shopping bag, hamburger wrapper, etc., whipped out the window as if we were at 30,000 feet and if I’d had the foresight to attach GPS trackers to everything, I probably could have mapped out the eye of the storm (I guess that makes my Silvia “Dorothy” in this analogy but I won’t go there.).
The weather today is what I like to call, “fungus-inducing.” Basically, this is the kind of humidity that causes jungle foot, crotch rot, and the downfall of western civilization. You actually feel dryer in the shower on days like this. I might as well spend the night in there since big storms usually destroy my satellite reception and the last one screwed with my FTTH connection as well.
It totally cracked me up when my Aussie pal told me what a brolly is. And a sultana (as in, “Sultana Bran”). Thanks to William Gibson, I know what a standover is. Damn, I really need to visit Australia sometime soon. After I buy a D70, I think.

5 thoughts on “Where’s me brolly?

  1. Haha, we’re getting dumped on, but you’re in for some shit tonight!
    That fuzz starts to grow when the tatami get that funky summer smell. As soon as it warms up I’m busting out bleach. Japan is the only place I’ve ever seen mold growing on hot sauce and unattended luggage. At these times re-wearing undergarments no longer seems like such a good idea.

  2. The biggest gripe about humidity that I have is not being able to use bath towels more than once – there ain’t no way to keep a used towel from getting stanky in the summer.

  3. That just happened to me this morning. I was toweling off after a shower, and was unhappy to discover that my twice used towel smelled like a big armpit. Time to bust out my stash of onsen towels. I have enough of them to last two weeks if I only use each one once.

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