Rain

I've been here for over four months and for the first time, it's raining. It's not really coming down hard, but it's enough of a curiosity where people are taking small children outside to look at the rain. The natural thing for me to do this morning was go get my car washed. That may not make sense in light of the facts that I already pay someone to wash my car and that it's stupid to wash your car only to have it rained on right away. While the guy who usually washes it does a fair job, I wanted to give it a really good washing to get the sand and salt water washed out from under it. Also, I really wanted to have it vacuumed out and they won't do that unless you have the car washed. I could probably vacuum it out myself but they really go to town with the vacuum with four guys cleaning out your car.

I was planning on getting it washed last weekend. I got into line and after about 20 minutes, moved only about three car lengths into the 15-car line. That was enough for me to say "screw this" and move on. I heard that you have to go there right when they open at 7:00 am. Even though it was a little later than that, I figured that most people wouldn't be dumb enough to get their car washed in the rain and was right about that.

I was actually a little disappointed about not having anything more notable to say about the rain. I'd heard that just a little rain is enough to shut down the city and that the drainage system isn't equipped to to handle the water. I was planning on getting some photos of flooding. Apart from a few puddles outside my apartment, there wasn't anything worth taking a picture of.

We drove to the shopping mall a few miles away and the traffic was a little heavy, but I think that's usual for a Saturday in the early afternoon. It rained a bit off and on and I even had to turn on my windshield wipers on intermittent a few times. I grumbled something about "probably getting stranded there because of the rain" but nothing even close to that happened.

People were walking around outside with no umbrellas and even though it wasn't raining that hard, were this Japan everyone would've had an umbrella. Families were even out in the parks playing. I guess that when rain is a novelty, people don't seem to mind it as much. Even with the rain it was about the same as every day.