KUMAGAYA, Saitama Pref. — It was Aug. 16, 2007, and Minoru Tajima felt something strange in the air.

"I still remember the day clearly, it was a Thursday. I had the day off. It was hot, but on a much different level. It was hard to move," said Tajima, an official in the city of Kumagaya in northern Saitama.

That day Kumagaya, along with Tajimi in Gifu Prefecture, saw the temperature hit 40.9 and edge out the old record of 40.8 set in 1933 in Yamagata. Kumagaya's heat claimed two lives and ambulances were dispatched 47 times to attend to heatstroke victims.