It's raining, it's pouring,
The old man is snoring.
He bumped his head, and went to bed,
and couldn't get up 'till the morning.

Do you know this old English kids song? I don't remember when I first heard it, although I suppose I must have been very young. People from England are of course very familiar with rain, and some of them joke about the length of the rainy season in that country ... 12 months! But as I left England when I was only five years old, I don't remember much about such things. I spent the next ten years living on the Canadian prairies, where there really isn't any such thing as a 'rainy season'. There are plenty of thunderstorms during the summer, and lots of snow in the winter, but I don't remember ever having an umbrella ...

When our family next moved to the west coast of Canada, to Vancouver, I became much more familiar with rain. Although the Vancouver winter is very mild indeed, with not much snow at all, it can be very wet. Nobody can live there without using an umbrella! The grey days pass by endlessly, one after the other ...

Before coming to Japan, I had known that Japanese were very proud of their seasons, but I certainly hadn't realized that unlike most places in the world, here there were five of them ... winter - sprig - rain - summer - autumn ... Five times a year, the entire national mood seems to change, right on the day when the TV weatherman tells us that the next season has officially started.

A couple of years ago, my family spent some time living in a very, very old house deep in the mountains of the Kii Peninsula, but we certainly made a mistake by choosing the rainy season to do so. The original thatched roof of the farmhouse had been replaced with iron sheets, and it was like living in the inside of a snare drum! Every drop falling was like an explosion ... for day after endless day ... week after endless week ... What made it even worse, was that as the surrounding fields became more and more waterlogged, many of the creatures living out there decided to seek shelter in the old house with us. We felt like we were living in a kind of Noah's Ark ... specializing in mice and snakes!

Of course, city dwellers don't have that trouble when the rain starts, but there are still plenty of problems. Mold grows on the walls, the bedding becomes stale and stuffy because there are so few chances to air it out, and sometimes, with the walls getting so damp, it even seems to be raining indoors!

But after some weeks have passed, just when you think you can't stand any more, the weatherman then brings the news that "The rainy season ended yesterday ...."

Of course, that doesn't mean it stops raining, only that the rainy season has ended. We still have to keep an umbrella close at hand, and will need to do so right up until the blue autumn skies appear. But just as Japanese children keep the rain away with their teru teru bouzu 'dolls' made from handkerchiefs, children in England also know an easy way to make it stop ...

"Rain, rain, go away ... Come again some other day ..."