This morning I woke up at 5.15 for some reason. (Could it have been the dream I was having, where flies landed on my body and laid eggs, which instantly turned into maggots and started burrowing into me? Sorry if you're eating...)
Just as I was falling asleep again, K woke up. Despite my best efforts neither of us got any more sleep.... One good (?) thing about this is that I can report with confidence that it is already light at 5.15. In fact, today's sunrise was apparently at 4.55. It's only in the depths of winter and if I'm forced to get up before 7 that I see darkness in the morning. I really love that, but I can't have it both ways - no long summer evenings here. Even at this time of year it's dark by 8 o'clock.
After the war, under American occupation, Japan had daylight saving time in the summer but it was scrapped again later. I've always thought it would be better if we had DST - surely daylight between 8 and 9pm would be of more use to most people than between 5 and 6am. I've heard lots of reasons against it that, to be honest, just make no sense at all to me, usually based on the loss of sleep(one hour a year, right? do you always really go to bed and get up at exactly the same time?) or some misguided belief that you'd have to go to work earlier or stay later or something...
But recently I heard a compelling arguement from someone who has actually experienced daylight saving time in Japan - the heat. Although the humidity doesn't change, the sun going down does make the heat a little more bearable, and was particularly relevent in the days before air-conditioning. As a distinct fan of doing anything to keep (somewhat...) cool in the summer, I'm convinced - 'no' to daylight saving time after all.
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