I go through jags of missing Japan every once and a while, but there are some times when I look about and think, “Thank god I am not there anymore.” Most of these instances involve very hot or very cold weather.

Let’s start with the hot. My town in Japan was around the same latitude as Atlanta in the USA, so it was much warmer in general, and there was the general presence of the ocean to muck about with weather patterns. I live in close proximity to many bodies of water, but dealing with lakes and rivers is much different than dealing with an ocean. I don’t mind warm weather at all, and enjoy a sun-bask like anyone else, but as the saying goes: “Hell – it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.”

I abhor humid weather, and learned the Japanese word for it (蒸し暑い, mushi-atsui) as soon as I could. Minnesota can be deadly humid on occasion as well, and that kind of weather has been creeping up on us. I don’t have air-con in my apartment, and have taken on a few occasions to taking a respite in the basement, chilling out on the cooled concrete in the dark with the circuit breakers and someone’s laundry that has been drying on a line for approximately four months.

Minnesota’s humidity is rendered bearable, however, by the fact that it breaks spectacularly. A humid day usually leads to violent weather, with sheets of rain, hail, thunder, lightning, the sky turning pea-green and the occasional tornado. After you ride out the storm, the humid weather is cut away and you’re left with a week or two of the best summer weather anywhere on the planet.

When I got to Japan, being forewarned that the walls in my house would literally sweat (and they did), I was on the lookout for clouds, waiting for the storm break. I saw them roll in, familliar black and green across the mountains, and plucked my laundry in from the line, ready to go out and enjoy some cool weather after the front passed. Storm, boom, bang, crash, whoosh – and it was gone… but the humidity remained! I came to find out that the humidity begins around late May or early June and can persist easily through September or early October.

The other extreme was the cold. Given that I endured some deepy bone-chilling -20F (-28C) weather in Minnesota this winter, you think I’d miss the comparatively mild Japanese winters, where the temp rarely dropped below 0C (a balmy 32F). We had snow a handful of times in my town, whereas I was blanketed in the stuff while moving into my south Minneapolis apartment during a blizzard on December 1 of last year.

Minneapolis homes, however, are made for the six months of chilling winter. Insulation, central heating, sealed and double-paned storm windows. Japanese houses are made to fall down in a neat pile if there is an earthquake, hence my paper-walled reed-floored house was an icebox. I get shit from locals about being “too cold” during 32F weather, but I tell them to try sticking it out in a sawdust house with only a CO2-belching kerosene heater and an electric blanket. The only person who still thinks this sounds like fun is my father, who likes winter camping and is also crazy.

Sometime around the long two week spell this past January when the wind chill raged below zero on a regular basis, the radiator in my room clicked off in the middle of the night. I woke up around 6am with my face and nose absolutely freezing and was convinced I was back in Japan, as that was how I would wake up every morning: warm body under futon with electric blanket, and everything from the neck up damned-near frostbitten. “Oh crap oh crap what time is it is there gas in the scooter I have to get to work and make a lesson plan and make copies and set up the room and… oh. Oh wait, no. Zzzzzzzzzzzz.”