Air-conditiioning

An executive decision was taken and the air-conditioners in the teacher's room were turned on.

The air conditioners somehow emit a faint, but distinctive smell. It's difficult to pinpoint. Not bad, not good, but one that snags your nose. In the bookshop, too, mingling amongst the smell of paper and glossy magazine. The smell washes over you with the cool air on entry.

You grow accustomed to it, of course, like all smells good or bad, sooner or later. Then it becomes unremarkable, it slips right out of the air and seeps straight through you.

The muggyness picks up a smell too, but again, you'll only notice it at the threshold of muggyness and air-conditioned. A tight little border, ring-fenced with smells, and with them memories.

Air-conditioning and soggy heat brings back last August, when I first arrived here in Yamagata and when all sorts and sods were flying through my head and over my shoulder. I bedded myself in and earthed the worst of the exotic shocks and everything became a little less remarkable.

But lately, it's all been coming back, just as I pass through doorways, to the teacher's room, to the bookshop and soon enough to my own room. And out again, into the soggy heat...

...well. I say lately. That was actually last week. Lately, it's been pissing down cats and dogs.