Tuesday, July 22, 2003 It's Not Getting Hot in Here A low-key day, though I'm still busy with some rush project at the office and--of course--behind schedule. The weather, I have to say, has been fairly peculiar recently. If memory serves me, it's been much cooler than at the same time last year. The rainy season isn't over yet (it's over when the National Meteorological Agency says it is, apparently). Which is good, not just because it's more comfortable but because that means there's less chance of electricity shortages or even blackouts. No, seriously. The local electrical utility, the Tokyo Electric Power Corporation (TEPCO) had to shut down--what? 17?--nuclear power plants because of scandal involving faked nuclear plant safety inspection records (I honestly don't remember if it's that they did the inspections and faked the results or just faked the inspections themselves). Until TEPCO inspects, repairs, and certifies those nuke plants and gets them online, they'll be pushing their system to capacity, especially if, when the heat and humidity of summer in Tokyo really hit. Then millions of air conditioners put a massive load on the grid, and suddenly it's like California a few years (though I don't know if they'll be resorting to rolling blackouts). I don't have air conditioning at home (a fact that boggles the mind of current and former foreign residents of Tokyo I tell this to), so I'm used to living in the heat, but I feel sorry for the poor sods who've come to rely on air conditioning and other mod cons. (Strangely enough, according to an Daily Yomuri story I read the other day, nursery schools not only do not have air conditioning, it's by deliberate design: Japanese parents apparently feel that if their youngsters don't get used to the heat of summer, they'll grow up unable to sweat. I'm not sure if that last part is literally true or even believed to be literally true, but it makes a certain degree of sense to me: if I had a young child, I'd certainly want that child to become accustomed to the elements as they are and not coddled behind walls enclosing machine-processed cold and dry air. The point of the story, by the way, was that some parents wanted schools to install cool (or at least cooler) rooms in case the heat becomes really bad. The schools are taking these concerns under advisement.) 12:52:40 PM    Comment on this post! []