It Never Rains in California

The American Airline, AA137 from London would arrive at Los Angeles in an hour. As usual as the most of flights, the captain announced to the passenger about the weather condition at the arrival city.

"The present weather in Los Angeles is fine and the temperature is 30⁰C…"

The sound of surprise could be heard among the passengers. In London, we had had only cold and rainy days since the beginning of November. For the passengers who came from such a country, the announcement of "30⁰C " is far more than a joy, but shocking news due to the fact that they had not experienced such weather in London. The same question came up in everyone’s mind, "Could such a thing be possible?"

The rocky mountains and the desert were spreading under the plane. Some places were covered with white things, but it could not be snow in this climate. " It probably may be salt", I imagined. As our plane started reducing altitude, houses could be seen below. There was almost no green. Only dry land could be seen spreading into the horizon. The very straight roads penetrated the wide and dry land. When I watched down the city of Chicago from a plane last year, the impression of Chicago was very similar to one in Europe, besides the fact that the houses were built with extremely wide spaces. The impression the city of LA gave me was totally different from European cities.

I got off at the airport. Despite the air temperature with 30⁰C, but thanks to the dry air, I felt no oppressive feeling from the heat, which I always had in Japanese summer.

I was stopped and interviewed at the immigration control by a very cheerful and sociable officer.

"Your cap stimulates my curiosity," were his first words. I had worn a cap from the German football team "1 FC Cologne", and I told him that. On the immigration card, I wrote the address of my female friend Y, and I told the officer that I was staying at her in the city, Torrance. "

"Send best regards from me to your female friend. ", he told me smiling and I was released.

"Has the hot climate made him crazy?" I asked myself.

I came out of the airport building. It was just past two o’clock in the afternoon. The majority of the people around me were in just T-shirts and shorts. I put on my sunglasses as the sun was dazzling and almost too bright. The sky was very blue. Although there is an opportunity to see blue skies in London, the blue colour of Californian sky was completely different. It was tropical blue.

After a while, I found a sliver BMW and my friend Y with sunglasses approached me. She was a classmate from elementary school to high school and we had not seen each other for more than twenty years. I was going to stay at her house for the next six days.

On the way from the airport to Torrance, where she lives, I saw a lot of palm trees. They were about 20 metres high, and there were only green leaves at the small part near the top of the extremely long trunks.

"When I came to LA and saw those palm trees for the first time, I always felt a bit odd.” said Y, who moved here from the east two years ago. She was certainly correct. It also felt quite strange for me to see so many palm trees growing so high in the middle of the big city. It also felt odd because the sky was so blue.