It's what...!

Yes, it's August.  But it doesn't quite feel like a typical August.  It was hot on Monday but yesterday (Tuesday) a big thunderstorm rolled in and just hung about.  It dumped quite a bit of rain on this region.  Mostly in the form of squalls that lasted for about half an hour or so.  The heavy rainfall led to flooding warnings being sent out several times in the day.  At one time an evacuation warning was in place for a hamlet up in the Kuriko Pass area.  That's the pass leading from Yonezawa to Fukushima city.  I presume the danger passed as I didn't see an evacuation order.  Right...in case one is wondering, these warnings are sent out by local authorities to all mobile phone devices in the region.  Of course this means that residents on trips to other areas in Japan will receive the warnings, to the alarm of the locals around them.  Such was the case for a student who was in Saitama when the March 11th earthquake struck: she was on a commuter train and her cell phone was the only one to receive a warning of the earthquake and go off with a loud audible klaxon.

Off on a complete tangent...an acquaintance proudly announced on a social media site that he had received a couple of "two-four"s (my words) of "Space Beer"(sic).  It's beer brewed using barley grown in space.  I don't recall which company made the beer (it's one of the big four - Asahi, Kirin, Suntory, and Sapporo).  Needless to say, the beer is not on sale in stores.  There couldn't possibly be enough of it to permit that.  It's only available by mail order.  While such a product has a high novelty factor, I can't imagine it'll taste all that much different from a usual Japanese pilsner style brew.  Which is a bit of a shame....