Apparently, the rainy season is acting in a rather strange way this year. Okinawa is getting a normal rainy season, but (trying to remember what was said on the weather last night) it seems that the high pressure area that regulates the rain front over Japan is not acting in the normal way. Hence, Kansai (Osaka and Kyoto area) and Kanto (Tokyo) regions have not had enough rain.
However, part of the mis-shaped rain front lodged itself over Niigata, and has caused servere flooding up there. Remember, this is the area that is still recovering from the big earthquakes they had recently.

Where I am, it’s certainly been hot, sunny and humid since last week. Only last night at about 20:00 did it start raining, with some thunder thrown in. It stopped then, but early morning until not long after I arrived in the office it’s been raining as well. It’s no stopped again, and the roads are dry already due to the heat.

EDIT: This is the thing that gets me… despite the lack of rain, no one seems to be making an effort to conserve water. We have a De-humidifer in the study room of our house (don’t want to have paper’s and documents going mouldy), which we run on low power mode. The water that collects gets re-used to water the food we are growing. Meanwhile, out there, people still continue to use their hose pipes to clean cars, and clean the ‘concrete’ garden at the front of their homes!