Since Beppu is on the mountaintop, it’s at a really high altitude. And it is now *officially* the rainy season. So, this means that when I woke up this morning…

All I could see out of my windows was white:

The weird ripples are the chain-mail esque screens on every window in Beppu. This is because Beppu is one of the homes of the lovely Japanese giant hornet, which can burrow through ordinary screens:

Don’t worry, they rarely get this big outside of captivity, and they’re not usually aggressive towards humans (unless if you piss one off, in which case, like any animal, it will defend itself). In fact, they eat bugs which eat our crops, so they’re a bit like spiders. Most rural areas in Japan have some numbers of these hornets, since they like building nests in trees.

But I digress. The mist itself made visibility next to nothing (probably 10 meters, and that’s being generous), and had a peculiar effect on the campus. Everything seemed really soft and fuzzy around the edges, and the loud sounds of college students heading to class seemed muted. I thought this looked particularly cool:

“You see, we programmed the fountain to turn on between the hours of 11 AM and 4 PM, and dammit, it’s going to go on whether anyone can see it or not!” 😀

So that’s it for today~.

Tomorrow we’re having a picnic uhh… somewhere. I’m just going to follow the loud people in orange shirts (RAs). Hopefully this will have lifted by then, though I think it’s already starting to. Jaa, ato de ne?