‘Heat Island’ Tokyo Is in

‘Heat Island’ Tokyo Is in Global Warming’s Vanguard (NY Times) Just as I suspected, Tokyo is getting hotter.

Outside my apartment window

Outside my apartment window I can hear the cicadas sing, a sign of summer leaving us soon.

Black

Black seems to be the color for this coming fall in Japan. Just a simple glance around a newsstand, I see that most of the fashion magazines have the word “black” written all over their covers.

Chick Hearn

Belated condolences go out to the passing of Chick Hearn, the announcer of LA Lakers of 42 years. Great players come and go, but Chick goes and come no more.
Check out the LA Times tribute on Chick and some Chick-isms.

It’s been very hot

It’s been very hot and humid the past couple days. Our apartment is on the first floor so we normally don’t need to turn on the AC to sleep even on 30C nights - a blessing - but it was just too much last night and we had to use it. Since ACs themselves are horrendous generators of heat, if everyone in Tokyo turned off their AC I wonder if Tokyo would cool down naturally.

Jalan-Jalan

My good friend Yoyo just reminded me that burabura in Indonesian is jalan-jalan. That is quite an interesting coincidence that to wander in both languages is a two-syllable sound repeated twice. Please let me know if that is also the case in any other languages.