Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Typhoon, again


Another typhoon came through Tokyo yesterday and today, apparently causing some pretty heavy damage to the south of here. Luckily, I didn't have anywhere I had to go. With the heavy rain I decided to come home in the early afternoon yesterday, and stopped at the grocery to make sure I was stocked up. I watched the torrential downpour go on for hours outside my window, and received an email late in the evening that the research institute would be closed today due to the storm. Trains were stopped in most of the city this morning, and the wind became quite heavy sometime around 3 a.m. It settled down in the mid- to late morning, but even this afternoon there are occasional strong winds. 

Not growing up with tropical storms, they are still fairly unfamiliar to me. It's amazing to watch inches of rain fall for nearly a day, and then the rain slows down, the wind is crazy strong, and then some time a few hours later the most perfect clear sky appears (like above). It's quite transformational, really. I took a walk down to the river after lunch to see the flooding, which was already starting to recede. Even though I'm slowly growing accustomed to these storms, I'd take a blizzard over a typhoon any day.

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