Uchimizu

Maid cafe staff and a group of young adults sprinkle water ("uchimizu") in Akihabara as part of a campaign to increase awareness of the heat island effect and global warming.


About Maid cafe: It's a cafe where you are served by a maid in costume. There are plenty of them in Akihabara, the "electronic town" of Tokyo. For the concept, check out this article.
I quote: In Some cafes, customers call maids "my lady" or maids call customers "my lord". Oh dear....


Uchimizu is the Japanese tradition of sprinkling water in the summer time, in house entrances and gardens or in front of shops. They believe that it gives a sensation of freshness, or relief from the terrible heat. Some say that the air will be 2 degrees cooler by doing Uchimizu. Hmmm, I don't quite believe it, but here is an interesting and funny page that will tell you everything about it.
I quote again:
If many people do Uchimizu at the same time at the same place, heat island will be released.
80% of participants feel "cool" doing Uchimizu.
Mission Uchimizu has made us aware of doing actions ourselves to overcome global warming.

Ehemmm....I'm not going to comment on that. Instead I'll give you a reader's comment of the photo in the newspaper:

Wearing all those clothes will have no doubt increased global warming (not to mention the temperature increase in all the guys on the scene, so they should have just watered the pavement naked.

Le prochain plan canicule?