Ugh, I am horrible at keeping up with updating these type of things. I do apologize.
Anyway, a short note: I still do food reviews on YouTube. You can check out the video feed on my channel if you want to see them.
On to the main topic, let’s talk about humidity, shall we?
Fact: You will never know humidity like you will once you have visited southern Japan. It is more humid here than the inside of a giant’s odorous armpit (albeit slightly nicer smelling). The humidity has been so bad that you can literally see it coalesce on the windows close to mid-day. Sometimes, it is so thick and billowy that it seems like fog hanging low over the mountains, but no.. it’s humidity.
This is the kind of humidity that you walk into and instantly become drenched. Your skin starts to itch because it feels like you are being coated in little filaments of spider silk from head to foot (and here, it’s quite possible you are). You go outside and attempt to breath, only to have your lungs weigh heavy with the moisture that clings to your insides. It is suffocating.
Currently, it sits at 90% humidity where I reside. The dehumidifier runs constantly and fills up at least once a day (and this is a large dehumidifier). Even with its help and the air conditioning going (which is set at a reasonable temperature because we must be aware of and respectful to others living in the building), it does little to stifle the heat.
It also rains nearly every day here. So there might be a tiny reprieve from the suffocating death, but eventually (like in less than 12 hours) it will be back again, hanging over all of Kyushu like some sort of lurid white death.
And yet, it has an ethereal beauty to it. You can see history happening because of the humidity. I look out my window on days like this and am reminded of how accurate many of the screen paintings and Ukiyo-e prints were when they depicted their country with it’s numerous green mountains and rolling swirls of (what I thought at the time) was fog. It’s very peaceful, yet slightly disturbing.
I say this because on days when the humidity (or fog if you want to call it that), hangs so low, it is eerily quiet outside. It is very reminiscent of portions from the game Silent Hill, with fog obscuring the entire town and not a soul can be found.. in the middle of the day.
In any event, it is quite a sight to behold and I am fortunate I got to see it, even if it is a misery to live through.
