Local Warming

   It was so warm yesterday--27℃--that my wife and I decided to take the boys to the beach. Only three weeks earlier we had done the very same thing, thinking it would probably be our last visit of the year. Thanks to global warming, or perhaps local warming, it wasn't. And, it may possibly won't be our last.

   According to the news, the arrival of the autumn hews, what the Japanese call kōyō (紅葉, lit. "red leaves"), is now fifteen days later than it used to be fifty years ago. Thanks to this warming trend, we are now able to come to the beach eight months of the year, something that is both pleasant and terrifying at the same time. 

   Better late than never.