Did I mention that we have a typhoon coming through? This is the one that’s made news over the last day or two, as it smashed into Okinawa. It’s now knocking Kyushu around, and it looks like the eyewall is making landfall right on Kagoshima (my former college roommate, the one I saw in September, is a Kagoshima ALT, so I hope she’s okay!). The articles say it’ll probably make its way to Tokyo, but of course they overlook everything in between, which is several hundred miles’ worth of cities and islands, including the entirety of my island of Shikoku.
This is a typhoon that sank a ship and has overturned trucks and done a ton of damage so far. I’m pretty nervous–because of the mountains enclosing our town pretty snugly, it’s easy to forget that we’re on an island and that you’re never more than 75km/50 miles from a coastline; in our case, the nearest coastline is only 25km/15 miles away, on the Seto Inland Sea. I think it may lose some of its intensity today as it makes landfall on Kyushu, but we’re still expecting winds over 100mph. I just did a load of laundry and am going to take it to the laundromat and dry it there while I go to the grocery store for a supply run.
At the same time, I have no idea how the mountains will affect how the typhoon hits western Tokushima. They create a separate weather system, which I was able to witness within the last month. Dark and ominous storm clouds were piling up here, but when I drove just 30-40km east of here, the sky was clear. I also drove north through the mountains on a cloudy day once, in search of one of the pilgrimage temples to our north, and the skies were clear and beautiful when I emerged on the other side–when I turned around to look at the line of mountains, I could see the clouds piling up over them, and nowhere else in the sky!
It should be an interesting day or two. Sally’s dad is in town and we’re meeting them in Ikeda for dinner (well, theoretically I will, if my stomach is feeling up to it; it’s been upset the last couple of days). We might be having a typhoon party out west or something like that. It’ll be nice to have some company, I think.