It gets hot in Tokyo.
Before you dismiss that picture above as just a screenshot of a weather app, please, read it. Look at that stuff:
- There is 62% humidity and no chance at all that it will rain.
- It’s 91°F (33°C) and it feels like 99°/37°.
- It’s only July.
And I can vouch for that “feels like” bit, too. In the train station (where you don’t feel that 17mph wind), it literally feels like a sauna.
But enough about the weather. Speaking only an idiot’s version of the language and knowing practically no one here, it gets lonely in Tokyo too. I’m an introvert, and something of a loner too, but I’ve surprised myself by how difficult that level of alienation can be at times.
So today I’m treating myself to 3 hours at 猫の居る休憩所２９９ (neko no iru kyuukeisho 299, or “Rest Area 299, Where There Are Cats”).
Here’s what things look like as I write this:
Pretty nice. Also, here’s a cat licking my plastic bag. Some cats are into this sort of thing, including my kitty at home in America.
Weirdos.
By the way, just outside of Ikebukuro Station, I found a warp pipe:
The Computer Cheats 
[…] For Mister Griff. […]
先生へ、
Hey there fellow Tokyo blogger! (I’m not there yet though, so my blog is pretty uninteresting compared to yours) WordPress is still kind of confusing to me and I couldn’t find a way to PM you without a plugin, so commenting on your post seems like the next best thing for me.
I was referred to your checklist post from Reddit, and I’ve found it extremely useful and I’ve been following you ever since. First of all congrats on fulfilling your dream of living and working in Japan! I’m fulfilling my dream as well and will be studying at Waseda University for an academic year starting in September. I’ve kind of made my own checklist based on yours, but I’m still having trouble deciding what I want to do for phone/internet service. I won’t bore you with it on here, but you can email me at mrgriff2@asu.edu if you want. Anyway, hope to hear from you, love the blog!
Well hello! I’m really glad to hear all of this — that someone’s benefiting from a post I made, that someone’s well on his way to fulfilling his dream, that that person has a similar dream to mine, that he’s following my blog… thank you for commenting! As a matter of fact, I had intended to write a post about my phone situation as soon as it was 100% settled, and it finally is as of earlier this week. So I think I’ll write that one now. Stay tuned to see how long it takes me. Thanks for the encouragement. 🙂
Done! It took me two hours and change and I really should’ve gone to sleep by now.