Summer Stasis

We've reached the complete flipside of that late January, early February period of winter stasis that happens every year, and drags on so long. Now it's summer stasis: very warm every day -- it isn't really hot unless it's 100° F, and we haven't had that yet -- and not quite cool at night. At least this year we're getting some rain.

The living is easy, if you have an air conditioner, and the scratch for the juice. This house came with one, but I've lived without them. This was especially uncomfortable in Osaka, though with the help of an electronic mosquito coil, I could sleep with my screenless windows open.

I've never seen an electronic mosquito coil, which looks like a plastic UFO with very small hot plate on top, for sale in the United States. You buy rectangular-shaped chips of repellent -- always blue, these chips -- and put them on the hot plate, plug the entire thing in, and it keeps mosquitoes away. Heat vaporizes whatever chemical is in the chips, and the bugs must not like it. In the morning, the blue chips were white, meaning it was time for a new chip. Gaijin lore had it that the chemical was carcinogenic somehow, but I never let that discourage me from tossing one on the plate.