Someone flipped a switch and turned summer on. The weather is sunny and hot during the day with just enough humidity to feel sticky. The evenings are wonderfully warm. There’s no excuse not to spend lots of time outdoors.

The veranda has become our extra, outdoor room—we eat breakfast and dinner out there, carry our laptops out to work and generally spend as much time as possible there. We’ve got charcoal arriving on Friday, so we’ll be set to grill this weekend. Soon enough it will be tsuyu and we’ll be soggy with the rain.

Last night we tried a Mexican restaurant in Ochanomizu and on the way home, paused on a bridge over the Kanda River to take this photo looking towards the train station and Akihabara.

It was about 9 pm—look at all the people on the train platform! They are heading home after spending dinnertime at sports bars watching Japan’s first game in the World Cup (it was a 2-2 draw against Belgium).