It’s stopped raining. Yesterday’s weather was hot and humid—typical Tokyo summer. We’re due to have thundersorms over the next couple of days, but that’s not a typical rainy season all-day drizzle. Looks like tsuuyu is over. If so, that was a very short rainy season.

Farmers rely on a long tsuuyu to keep the rice wet while the grains start to form. Not enough rain early on and the crop could falter or fail, driving up the price of rice in the shops. Rice is already expensive; a 2 Kg bag runs about 1,000 yen. That’s about $1.85/lb compared to $0.80/lb in the US. Now in the US it’s not a big deal since rice is a side dish but here in Japan rice is the main dish and everything else is a side dish!. So expensive rice is bad for the family budget.

Bring on those thunderstorms… Posted by kuri at July 09, 2002 09:11 AM