It has been one of the hottest years on record in Japan, especially in Tokyo. Something about too much pavement and too many high-rise buildings blocking the breeze. It makes you wonder, why don't those people in the high-rises just open their windows to let the breeze through?

Yet I have not turned on my air conditioning once this year. Something about the sea breeze flowing through my second-floor windows and the mountain forest in the back of the house shading it from the sun. I'm not bragging. I'm just thinking that long ago in Japan, people wore kimonos in the summertime and used hand-held fans. Geisha were able to cake on all that makeup without having it slide off their faces into the laps of their patrons. Then somehow, our lives became more complicated and now we need air conditioning.

But this year I decided to stop avoiding the great outdoors by escaping to air-conditioned malls or ducking into grocery store frozen food isles. And, more truthfully, what started out as an attempt to keep down my summer electric bill turned into a pleasant discovery of the powers of natural air movement, shade cloth, water pistols and cold beer. It has been the coolest summer on record for me.