#klimmat Shinto priests in Japan have been keeping track of the weather for 576 years. “It's a winter without ice. I am worried about that.” He did read the weather report. According to the expectation, this winter day will be 9 degrees. That's 19 degrees warmer than Kiyoshi Miyasaka likes. The 69-year-old Shinto priest stands on a slippery draughts with a thermometer in his hand at half past seven. Practical sports shoes under a gray priesthood, are equally gray hair fluttering in the wind, which is too strong to his liking.

In front of him lies Lake Suwa, dark in the morning twilight, with behind it the Japanese Alps. Miyasaka kneels and inserts the thermometer into the wavy water. Next to him, two assistants do the same with their thermometers, one digital, the other analog. After comparison, the priest notes the water temperature in a tiny notebook: 5.7 degrees. The air is minus 0.7 degrees.

“It's too hot and it's blowing too hard,” is his analysis for the seven Japanese journalists who watch this ritual every day. In the unlikely event of a minus 10, they will be in increased state of readiness. Because if it turns into minus 10 three days in a row, there's a chance of an omiwatari, and the whole country needs to know that. Then runs out of the region and buses with tourists come from far to Suwa.

Conclusion after 576 years measuring: it's too hot in Japan