On the evening of 1st October, United Flight 852 landed at Narita Airport in Tokyo. This is the fifth homecoming trip to Japan this year. It was drizzling when I walked outside the terminal building.

Oh, it's raining again.

Frankly, I was a bit sick of a rainy weather. Thailand is in the middle of the monsoon season, and we have a short but torrential storm nearly every day. However, Japan is also in another rainy season called "Shurin (秋霖)" or "a long spell of rain in autumn." This rainy season starts in late September and lasts for approximately two weeks... In this context, I may be facing a kind of Catch-22 situation. Escape is impossible.