Zannen dakedo (残念だけど, it's sad to say), summer is winding down, and all we've got to look forward to now is the onslaught of taifū (台風, typhoons), landing one after the other as the kisetsu (季節, season) shifts to aki (秋, autumn).

And as the air cools off, there's the sense of biiru no nomisugi (ビールの飲みすぎ, having drunk too many beers), okane no tsukaisugi (お金の遣いすぎ, blown too much cash) and not having attended to one's hiyake (日焼け, sunburn) — which, among Japanese women, practically counts as a felony. Naze bihaku kea o shinakatta no? (なぜ 美白ケアをしなかったの？ "Why in the blazes didn't you do the whitening treatment?") scolded my friend Manami, balefully eyeing the blisters on my shoulders, ready to throw me in a vat of lotion and put me behind bars until winter.

The summer was a scorcher all over this semai shimaguni (狭い島国, cramped island nation) and the majority of Japanese women were forced to spend a small fortune on whitening skin care kosume (コスメ, cosmetic products) and hiyake-dome guzzu (日焼け止めグッズ, "sun-avoidance goods"), the foremost of which are the long black gloves last seen on Morticia in "The Addams Family." Then there are the oblivious females — usually under 12 years old — who think it's OK to go swimming in the sea without sunscreen and lie baking on the sand in a post-en'ei (遠泳, long-distance swimming) stupor.