Sending in the Paras

[steepholm]

Finding Japanese people to interview about the Cotswolds in hot weather in the UK is in one sense really easy: just follow the parasols. Not that everyone carries a parasol (and I admit that those who do are not a randomised sample, being largely adult females), but parasols are easy to spot at a distance, and you can be pretty sure that anyone carrying one will be east Asian. Not necessarily Japanese, of course - there were more Chinese than Japanese at Bourton-on-the-Water the other day, for example - but it's a start.

I bought my parasol (or higasa - literally, "sun umbrella") in Tokyo last year, and I use it quite often, being fond of neither sunburn nor suncream. However, in Bristol I've so far seen precisely one other white person carrying one. When I walked past a Romsey school the other day, a pupil shouted, "It's not raining!", and I felt a bit like Odysseus when he'd walked so far inland that people mistook his oar for a winnowing shovel...

Googling parasols just now, I find that the ones on sale in the UK are not what I first think of as parasols at all, but big garden devices for shading your patio. What would Monet have thought? Why would people abandon such opportunities for elegance?

Do people carry parasols where you live, reader?

Comments

[calimac]

They don't. Which may be odd, given that, if they're an East Asian cultural thing, there's an enormous amount of East Asian cultural influence (not to mention immigrants and descendants of immigrants) in this area. And the amount of sun and heat we have. B. wears a broad-brimmed sun hat, which does have the advantage that you don't always have to be carrying it.

[steepholm]

They do take up a hand, it's true, although no more so than an umbrella, which are still common enough (though I suppose needed more in the UK than in California).

[thistleingrey]

I never found any to buy in Los Angeles when I was growing up. Where I live now, I see people of E Asian and SE Asian descent carrying umbrellas as sunshade-parasols in season.

[steepholm]

I wonder if they'd buy bespoke parasols if they were available? My parasol and my umbrella have both had to stand in for each other on occasion, British weather being so fickle, but it's never quite as satisfactory.

[cmcmck]

One or two of our older ladies of Afro Caribbean origin locally use and umbrella to keep the sun off.

I'd call that pretty sensible myself!

[steepholm]

Me too! I've occasionally used an umbrella for the purpose myself.

[larryhammer]

Some do, mostly Asian women (with likelihood increasing with age) and a smaller population of middle-aged Latina women (and not, interestingly, older Latinas). What's used is usually a repurposed small umbrella, which means in thunderstorm season they're set for a sudden bout of rain.

[steepholm]

Interesting demographic picture there. Being in Britain, I've often found myself carrying both a parasol and an umbrella, and using one immediately after the other.

[ethelmay]

I've seen some in Arizona, though not as many as I would have expected, and have once or twice seen them here in Seattle (don't mock, we are having a heat wave by our standards here), though usually they're just light-colored umbrellas and not especially fancy. I get quite tired of carrying things, and have had one unpleasant experience with skin cancer, so broad-brimmed hats (*and* sunscreen) for me, no matter how unbecoming (and I am afraid my current one is not the best in that regard, but it is very comfortable).

[steepholm]

once or twice seen them here in Seattle

Vampires on a day-trip from Forks?

[maellenkleth]

Ah, Forks, where the billboard says "Fangs for dropping by!"

[maellenkleth]

Here in Salishaan (northern maritime Cascadia) we certainly do know about parasols. The summer sun is relentless, especially down by the shoreline.

[steepholm]

I had to look up Cascadia!

[maellenkleth]

Salishaan .. an archipelago where the sun rises over the sea (and, some places, over the mountains of the American mainland). The sea is called the Salish Sea. The name 'Salishaan' used to be solely applied to the large island whose formal name was formerly 'La Isla de Quadra y Vancouver', fundamentally a drowned mountain range dissected by fjords and shattered by seismically-active faults.

We have whales, volcanoes (admittedly small ones), glaciers, and few remaining patches of 100-metre fir-trees.

At the most local scale, two cats, a fine little kitchen, book-shelves in every room, and one and two-thirds Ph.Ds amongst our household. ^_^

[edit to correct syntax error anent unclosed parenthesis]