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SKY TANTRUMS

It's the end of tsuyu (rainy season) but the one-track sky keeps trying, bringing on the clouds and marching them overhead. It really, really wanted to rain yesterday and did its very best to pour, it really tried, it was darkening and threatening and rumbling and lowering all over the place, shouldering the mountains, steely-eyed with resolve. It managed to work up a brief drizzle, but that was more pitiful than convincing. It isn't often one gets to feel sorry for the sky. You know how frustrating it can be when you can't get something you want so desperately, we've all seen kids crying their hearts out in the toy store, well imagine something as wild and free and unfettered, and as young (yet old) as the sky, right there above the very earth it wants to rain all over, and at the verge being refused its heart's desire; that's a potent blend of emotions right there, and it was painful to watch. Even today, the cloud-laden gargantua continues to utter halfhearted imprecations over its many shoulders as it grudgingly makes way for a determined patch of sunlit blue moving implacably in from China. Japan imports most of its weather from China, so that might be part of the problem.