This post is more of a public service broadcast. Beep bee dee beee bee dee bee beeee. You’ll understand soon enough, you, who are sitting clear under an AC vent, or frantically waving a fan.
Tokyo is a jungle, an urban jungle. It is a humid, sultry sweat house of a place during summer. This is when you may choose to flee, or take five showers. There are the lovelies, however—the ways to make it grand, or at least (better than) bearable.
Leza Lowitz, the famed, exquisite author, has some lifesaving tips to keep you from heatstroke. Do you know Leza’s work? She is the definition of “prolific writer” and writes through and within many genres. Her latest is Here Comes the Sun, a memoir chronicling young Lowitz’s life in Berkeley, California, to a woman making a life rooted in Tokyo. Through deep, poetic writing, Lowitz shares how yoga and a desire for mothering helped her to realize the nature and depth of her heart and the ability to mother. She captures a soul’s longing and shows us the glory of a heart poised for possibility.
Here Comes the Sun was part of a triad of current books by expat authors in this post, here. (Sorry, the giveaway is over, folks).
Leza, to be sure, knows Tokyo summers. She knows the work of pressing in to greatness despite humidity or any temporary condition. We’ll call this post, “Here Comes the Heat”. Get it?
If Lowitz was a doc, she’d prescribe this:
2. If you can’t leave, visit the ice-cold baths at a local sento or, say, Bath King (Ofuro no Ousama) in Oimachi.
Do you know onsens and sentos? Here is my blogpost on cooling off (and getting naked) at these ancient baths. Consider it a retreat.
Take that fizzy, plum tonic and read more of Lowitz’s work! You’ll dog-ear every page.
There is the fierce Jet Black and the Ninja Wind (which also partially takes place in Tokyo, and certainly Japan). There are Yoga Poems, and an always fresh one I love, Green Tea to Go: Stories From Tokyo, among others!
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