Cloudy With a Chance of Typhoon

So an absolutely ENORMOUS typhoon floated over Japan.

As you can see from the following images, the typhoon was roughly the size of a quarter of the planet, which is pretty big.

I love looking at these kinds of pictures; they really hammer home how small the earth is and how little control we have over everything.

I did not take any of these pictures, in case you were wondering.

Also, in case you were wondering, Japanese TV shows people being rescued much in the same way they are in England - boats in knee deep water.  Of course I understand that the infirm will need this kind of assistance, but it still looks like overkill whenever they pull out inflatable dinghies.

In terms of the impact this particular typhoon had; I think it's safe to say it was naff.  The above picture is actually from a different typhoon altogether (I think).  Okinawa is a tiny island hundreds of miles south of Japan (but still Japanese property) that always feels the full force of every storm that makes its way across the sea.  The island is the first stop for seemingly every kind of natural disaster and as such, gets all the camera crews.  I'm fairly sure that any footage you'll have seen of this particular storm was from Okinawa, or from the very south of Japan.  Those areas were somewhat more affected than the huge population centres (rural areas are hit hardest, who would have imagined) and make for much more dramatic television.

Also, to draw a little more light to the ridiculousness of the photographs above, of course half the planet was not engulfed by the storm.  It looks far more impressive if the entire frame is filled up with clouds though, so that's the image most editors use.

I have no idea whether this picture is from this typhoon or not, but it also looks pretty ruddy big so I'm going to use it to illustrate my point.  That circle of clouds is vast by almost all standards, but nowhere near the size the other pictures make it out to be.

You don't need photoshop to lie with a photograph!

In summary, the typhoon was mostly rubbish and very uneventful.  The upshot is that I didn't get any time off, and now that all the clouds are gone it's 33 degrees and 95% humid.  I've never seen the humidity dial cranked that far round.

All this viewing the earth from orbit made me think of this:

O.A.P - A.O.K

Japan has the largest number of pensioners (in terms of percentage of population) anywhere in the world.  What's most impressive isn't their collective age, or the age for which most people live, but the fact they remain mobile and independent for so much of that time.

Today I came across a quartet walking down some platform stairs.  Walking in two pairs, they were blocking the only way onto the platform bar an escalator heading upwards (we were all heading down).  I met them as they were just beginning their descent, with a full two minutes before the train was scheduled to depart.  Unfortunately they took an extremely long time - so long that I said 'excuse me,' a couple of times (politely) to no acknowledgement.  After a minute we were roughly ten steps down which meant we were obviously not going to make the train, so I turned around and headed upstairs, passing a dozen or so people on the way up.

My intention was to run down the escalator.  Which I did.  As I got about halfway down most of Japan decided to head in the opposite direction.  As both sides of the moving escalator were now full, I gave up and went back to the top.

The conductor waited about fifteen seconds past the departure time (if you know of Japanese timekeeping and their trains, this is equivalent to holding a head of state in customs - it just isn't done) before it became obvious they weren't going to make it.  That was the last train departing from that platform for a while so the only option was to go back up and get to the next platform over.  Some time ago everyone else had realised what was happening and left, so I was once again behind them and I couldn't help but laugh.  It wasn't hearty, just a quiet chuckle; upon hearing this they all turned and started asking each other (while still standing on the stairs) why the foreigner was laughing.  Upon hearing this I laughed even harder and trudged back upstairs.

I watched as they passed the elevator and started walking down the other set of stairs.  Luckily they were substantially wider so despite their going in a line (instead of in pairs) they couldn't quite block it off.

There's no real point to this story - it just made me laugh.