Sugoi Atsui Desu

My rudimentary Japanese will run out much too fast for me to keep up the conceit of titling all travel updates in Japanese, but we’ll run with it while we can… I don’t know if there’s a Japanese equivalent of “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity,” so we’ll just go with this.

When I told people we were coming to Japan in August, the general reaction was “Good God, why then?” I didn’t get to pick the dates for Worldcon, though, and anyway, I thought, “how bad could it be?”

Answer: Pretty freakin’ bad. Tromping around eastern Kyoto yesterday was essentially the same as hiking on St. John, weather-wise, only there wasn’t a white sandy beach at the end of the trip… I sweated clean through not only the T-shirt I was wearing, but also the golf shirt I had over it in hopes of concealing the fact that I was sweating like a fat pig.

I’ll probably acclimate a bit, but that was rough Still, the sights we saw– Sanjusangen-do, Kiyomizu-dera, Kodai-ji, among others– were worth a little discomfort. I took 114 pictures yesterday, so there will be images after our return, but right now, I see that the restaurant has opened for breakfast, so me and my jet lag are going to get some food.

Mata ne.