Ame Onna

Well, after a week of wind and rain in the south of Thailand, I'm back home...in the wind and SNOW.

Yes folks, it's blizzarding here. This is not too unusual for Toyama, but it is unusual for this time of year. The snow generally doesn't fall and stick until January. One of the first things my JTE (Japanese English Teacher) said to me when I walked into the staffroom was, "Toyama hasn't had weather like this in 28 years." Fun.

In Thailand it rained every day except the last two of what was supposed to be a ' fun in the sun' holiday.

Well, here's the deal....I'm what they call here an AME ONNA or in my case I could also take the title of YUKI ONNA. ONNA means 'woman' and AME=rain, YUKI=snow. Are you pickin' up what I'm puttin' down?

Let's consider some of the somewhat recent evidence shall we:

Mount Fuji - good grief, I conjured up a typhoon!
John and Wendi's wedding - a perfectly good summer weekend...until I showed up!
New Year's in Sicily - are there any photos of sunshine from that trip??
Texas in the spring- ok, no rain (it IS Texas afterall) but the temperatures were definitely below normal - and windy!! It did, however, rain in San Diego on that same trip.
Summer in Alberta 2005 - I must have been in the company of a few sunshine people during the first part of my trip - but by the time I hit the road on my own it rained from the south to the north of that blasted province.
Thailand - 7 day vacation, 5 days of rain. It's Thailand for pete's sake!


I try to keep this 'character flaw' under wraps as much as possible (it could deter people from travelling with me) but it's an undeniable (and undesirable) part of me that I'm learning to deal with (that is, learning to deal with the disapointment that goes along with it). It's especially fun when I get together with my friend Shigako - she is also an ame onna and although it only takes one, you should see what happens when we're together! Fortunately we have friends that try their best to counter balance our ability to bring rain to every occasion -their odds are definitely better in numbers.

So, where to next? And who's comin' with me???