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:
So I moved house yesterday, during a small typhoon. I say small - it was big somewhere but we just caught the edge so there wasn't really much to write home about except a bit of wind. The moving people turned up in a small lorry, and much like a parade of clowns, they jumped out of every opening. There were six people in total, meaning the room was cleared in twenty minutes leaving epic amounts of dust everywhere. Seriously, there was ridiculous amounts of dust. By the end there were piles, feet deep. You didn't so much leave footprints as impressions.
Sherlock Holmes would have been able to deduce your birthdate from it; such was the amount. After moving into the new place, the city was privy to a fantastic sunset. That often happens after a typhoon, all the cloud cover for miles around is sucked into the storm, leaving perfectly clear skies. Today has been the same - there isn't a cloud to be seen, nor had their been all day. I stole this image from a friend on facebook. The colours aren't very intense, but you get the general idea.
A typhoon is going to make landfall today, with strong winds (obviously) and lots of rain (obviously). It's already been pretty wet today, and this is just the leading edge.
I fear for my house because it's made of paper, held together with nothing but hope and the building is administered by a crazy landlady who tries walking in whenever she feels like it. Luckily, I've had my door locked ever since my second day of being here, when a random foreigner walked into my house of his own accord.
That seems to be commonplace here.
Of the typhoon; the temperature has dropped to the low 20's, which is glorious. I hope it's a factor of the season rather than this weather event, but I suspect it isn't. It's also heading up the length of the country (see the link).
It's only a small one so people aren't particularly fussed, although I am somewhat suspicious of the projected trajectory. Look at the previous path of the storm and you'll see that it went around in a circle. No way did anyone predict that; which means this, like an earthquake, is unpredictable at best. I wouldn't be surprised if it missed Japan entirely.
As an addendum, the internet delivers when no question has even been asked! That's what the graph in my previous post should have looked like, and that's why the chair, once it's attached to the machine, is a real bastard to pull loose.
#Update#
All the kids are going home in ten minutes because the typhoon is trying to kill people down south.
Initially I laughed because they have to ride home on their bikes if their parents won't pick them up; but then I realised that I'm obliged to stay until my contractually pre-arranged hour. Why send the kids home? Because they don't want the little brats caught in the strongest part of the storm, which will be from now, until who knows when (the centre of the storm is passing right over us, and it's not calm like a tornado) which means I will be riding home in the hell-storm.
That wiped the smile off my face.
Then again, IT WILL BE HELLA FUN! I can't wait.
I want to go stomping around outside pretending to be a dragon, splashing around in the puddles roaring.
Then I want to play a game of rugby in this weather, for about twenty minutes I bet it'd be awesome. No one would be able to pass the ball. After that twenty minute period I'd be exhausted and go home. Probably with polio.
So today we're experiencing a small typhoon. Apparently they close down schools when the weather's this bad they usually close school for half a day, but not this time.
I am absolutely soaked. I am currently creating a puddle under my chair, and I can only imagine the kids fared worse - they travel for more than 5 minutes by bike. I was wearing my raincoat, and it was pretty effective for about three of those minutes. To put this into context, this raincoat is the most effective one I've ever used. It's a good coat.
Couple this with the fact that I didn't use my brakes once on the journey here (the wind was strong enough that I never broke 5Km/h and I stopped dead a number of times without meaning to) and I suspect the management made the wrong decision with regards to keeping the school open today.
My feet are so wet.
On a side-note, English people often become extremely defensive and incomprehensible when the BBC is called into question about anything. The BBC is a news outlet, just like any other, and is not the bastion of neutral reporting many claim it to be.
'The attacks on Cate Blanchett also reveal an instinctive suspicion of people in Australia perceived to be part of a cultural or educational elite - especially by the populist right.'
This is not a quote from an individual, this is written as the voice of the BBC. Since when does a subjective opinion become fact? Since when is defamation of the ideals of a political movement acceptable? Let the people make their own minds up - it's for programmes like Have I got News for You to comment on the validity of an individuals' views, not the main news department.
P.S Australians, seeing as you are all the same, and you are all suspicious of the cultural and ruling elite, and you are all therefore part of the populist right, to some extent, don't you think it's time to let go of jealousy and live your lives?
P.P.S To the BBC: Do you see how it could be construed as opinion, when quotes are not identified? Not every Australian is suspicious of the ruling elite classes (whatever they are), don't present opinion as fact.
Then again, this is on their website, so a flunky is probably responsible for writing this article. がんばって flunky, you can improve! The whole world is behind you! <--- Presented as a fact.
So I'm writing this during lunch, primarily because I can't face eating anything at the moment.
I'm feeling quite terrible, having eaten hateful chicken wrapped in hate and loathing. At the time it tasted quite nice, but even as I was eating it something unpalatable crept along my spine. This unpalatable feeling stemmed from the myriad diseases the establishment puts into the food. The upshot is that I feel quite vile, but the life of a foreign teacher is irriplaceable - unless you die, there's no getting out of work.
In reply to the question about prior storms; yes we have had our storm. It was pathetic. We then proceeded to have another storm immediately following, seemingly along the same path. In a sudden and unexpected turn (sic) of events, it altered heading and veered straight towards us. In the first 'eye of the storm encounter,' (TM) I have ever had, wind speeds exceeded forty miles per hour. That's nothing, frankly. It didn't even turn my umbrella inside out, while walking along the street.
I was exceedingly disappointed, as per usual, but the rain was quite spectacular. 120 mm in two days, I think that's some kind of record, to be frank. That's two to three months of rainfall, in a day.
What's even more impressive, is that the lag time between rainfall and peak river flow, from cursory observation, is exceedingly small. This means that the vast majority of the rain that falls, finds its way into the rivers, and in short order. I would imagine flooding is or was a major problem around Korea, as the abundance of steep-sided mountains means the rain is funneled extremely quickly into the rivers. When we travelled over the river after the days work, it was extremely high (still nowhere near capacity) and by the next day it was back to normal levels.
And there ends the geography based geeky interest in the landscape of this island.
It rained a hell of a lot, for the summarised version.
So the typhoon disrupted school on Wednesday, meaning I didn't have to go in. However, the typhoon never materialised, meaning I had a free day. It transpired that the typhoon had struck overnight, uprooting a handful of trees.
While I walked around looking at an (almost) entirely untouched island, I wondered why they were so scared of this particular event. There must have been a really powerful storm recently, otherwise there would have been nothing stopping us from working.
All things told, I was disappointed with both the effects of, and the storm itself. It didn't even wake me up the night before!
I did get a day off work though, bonus!
We also had a power cut on Thursday, rendering all our air-conditioning units useless. The power cut didn't stop the sun however, and we were all soon melting inside the classroom. Rooms full of overactive children broiling at thirty degrees do not smell good...
So there's a monsoon coming, apparently. The only forecasts I can find suggest a rather subdued smattering of rain and cloud, with a small chance of lightning. If this is what passes for monsoon weather over here then no wonder they have so many, the Korean MET office probably consider sea spray to be a bonefide hazard.
Maybe I'm just being cynical though; the event hasn't happened yet so who knows.
But after the Japanese cataclysmic typhoon/monsoon that never was, I will retain this cynicism.
I will endeavour to upload at least a handful of pictures tomorrow, and indeed it might be better that I do so, as it will force everyone to come back and read it time and again as I frequently upload a small number of pictures...
So these are the pictures of the typhoon. Or rather, these should be the pictures of the typhoon, except that it moved an awful lot quicker than people were expecting, and therefore the brunt of the storm hit around 5AM here, instead of the predicted 9AM.
I even woke up especially early (8AM) in order to capture this event on camera. However it had already passed, so all I managed to get were a few shots of the wind, and an incredibly high tide.
The air pressure was so low it made my joints ache, as if I'd been scuba diving or something. This also made the sea level extremely high, and if there had been any wind whatsoever I'm sure the sea would have caused some problems.
As it was, the wind was actually pretty strong. But there was nothing else of incident really, no blown over houses, no cows sailing past the window. It was strong enough to physically push me off my seat a couple of times, which would have been hilarious for anyone who happened to be watching, had there been anyone else within fifty miles of me. In the early morning there was no one anywhere close to me. I think everyone was still under the impression it was storm weather, or had the potential to be stormy. By midday it was sunny. Annoying.
So basically I've never been blown away before, (well not since being a child presumably) and this did make me think that if it had the power to move me when it was only the trailing edge of the main event, the winds inside must have been really impressive.
The whole event has basically made me want to see a proper storm close-up. I think it really would be impressive.
Anyway, onto the pictures!
So I found some other people out and about like I was, so I felt duty-bound to take some pictures of them.
A lot of the people walking around were salarymen aimlessly wandering about, when they definitely should have been at work. I made the assumptiont that their employers had given them time off, but they didn't want to spend it at home, so they pretended they had to work anyway; suits and all.
Having said that though, wearing a suit seems to be obligatory for men here, even wearing the tie at all time must be adhered to. So I'm sure I won't be climbing any corporate ladders if I get a job here.
Ok so I bought a set of waterproof legs to go over normal trousers in the local corner shop; thinking I'd need them for the reporter style 'being blown down the street in pouring rain and thundering ocean spray,' camera shot I was looking to get. Of course that didn't happen, and I was thoroughly disappointed when I took them off.
This is me looking confused. It was pretty much 9AM at this point, and I was wondering where the storm was.
I was all done up in plastic finery to avoid gettinng wet, but there was no rain!
Palpable disappointment in this photo, I think you'll agree.
So this cool looking building is a ferry terminal, and a park. There's grass and benches and whatnot on top, and this was my primary destination originally. However they denied me access to the park on top, even though I'm sure it wouldn't have been much worse than where I took this picture from.
You can also see the height of the tide in this picture. That little road is an access road for cars and whatnot, and when I came here a few days ago the sea was about two metres below that, despite being at a high tide then!
So this is the biggest building in Japan again. Remember when I said you could see it from anywhere?
I wonder what it's like to have those winds in a building that high and wide? I'm sure that would have been an interesting experience for anyone inside.
So it did rain a little bit, but nothing worth shouting about really.
I put on my waterproof trousers just to get some kind of use out of them.
Stupid? Yes. But I'm never averse to making myself look like an idiot.
Even the few people that were out and about disappeared at this point, and it felt like I had the whole city to myself. It was quite an interesting situation, and let me get pictures of the sea that would have been impossible without this weather.
And this was on the way back to the hostel, about thirty minutes after that last picture was taken.
People think the weather changes quickly in England, come and visit Japan during a storm. It's amazing how quickly everything switches around, and going from rain and wind to bright sunshine and... wind takes seconds.
By this point the general populace were out and about too, so a few people were falling over, and stuff was getting blown around so the walk back to the hostel was quite fun.
And people still had their umbrellas. No-one here has quite twigged that imbrellas, rain, and fifty mile per hour winds do not mix. It's really funny to see a line of people put up their umbrellas, and them all get snapped in succession. I would love to video it, and maybe I'll get the chance another time.
And we end with this guy. He's staying in the hostel too, and is studying Japanese at the moment.
I've not had a lot to do in Yokohama lately, because of all the interview based waiting around, so I've spent a long time aimlessly wandering, and chatting to the random people who turn up about the place.
I've spent a long time talking to this guy, so I definitely feel he's worthy of recognition in my blog. Brazilian born Japanese are becoming commonplace in my travels!
Ok so I took a few videos as well. This first one is during the night, and is basically demonstrating why I couldn't sleep, with a little voice-over on my part.
Ok now this second video is to demonstrate how windy it was. Think of this video as the base level of windiness, gusting much harder than this at times.
And that's pretty much all there is to that day of disappointing non-typhoon action.
It basically came overnight, much faster than anyone predicted. By the time I got up at 8AM (especially early to go out in what should have been peak storm times) it had already gone!
The shinkansen stopped running because of the safety risks, and the local services were severely disrupted on what was essentially, a bit of a windy, perfectly sunny day.
A number of shops were closed, and my friends' lecturer cancelled her university lessons for today because everyone thought it was going to be bad, but it turned out to be a reasonable day.
Last night sucked though. A bunch of Italians, who are noisy at the best of times, were hysterical at being stuck in the middle of the storm and were crying in the hallways, literally, and generally keeping everyone up. That coupled with the noise of the rain, (it hit overnight) meant I didn't get to sleep until 5AM. I now dislike Italians, which is interesting because in Italy they're a part of the landscape; some countries travel well, Italy doesn't
The weathermen get it wrong here too it seems.
More pictures and whatnot to come at a later date.
So here I am in another coffee shop, thinking on the day that's passed.
There's a typhoon coming; but those on the news aside, there's not much fuss about it. Although I'm certain it's the biggest one this year (a few reports have mentioned as much) and although I'm certain it's changed direction and is now going to pass right over here, rather than glance us as previously predicted; the people here pay little attention to the matter. Only upon prompting will they talk about it, and this is puzzling me. Maybe the fact that a serious typhoon is a threat to life plays a part in my perceived ambivalence surrounding the subject. Not wanting to relive past events and whatnot. Think back to the storm in the late 80's in England, and the furore that caused. Think winds that are twice as fast and more rain than is logically possible and you get the kind of idea of what typhoon means here.
Or maybe I've got it all wrong. The reason they don't talk about it, even though it's already affecting southern areas of Japan as I write this, is because it's not a big deal. Between the typhoons, massive fires, earthquakes and tsunamis this little bit of wind and rain is probably nothing to get excited about. Six feet of overnight snow would plummet England into the dark (I toyed with the idea of putting ice here instead of dark) ages, but in the Scandinavian countries? What you're used to defines your responses to such situation, I suppose.
Anyway, I'm in an absolutely prime position to witness this storm first-hand and have made the necessary preparations to do so. Yokohama is on the North Eastern side of a peninsula just below Tokyo, and the storm will (if it carries on as predicted) travel overland to hit me. Essentially, the storm is travelling at around 40m/s North North East, and will be weakened by the time it reaches me, because of the land it travels over.
Quick geography lesson: Oceans fuel tropical storms, evaporated water provides the storm with energy, so when it's over the ocean it has the potential to incorporate more water into its' mass. Once over land water can no longer join the storm, so at most the storm will stay the same intensity, but in most cases will rapidly dissipate. Lesson over.
Therefore, travelling up Japan means the storm will lose energy as it rains all over the southern parts. It also means the leading edge can't affect the seas here, as it will on the other side of the peninsula. The high wind speeds will counteract the extremely low pressures (935 millibars!) by essentially forcing the waves away from shore. The situation is completely different on the other shore, with winds and low pressure forcing high tides towards the land. It should be interesting to see the effect on damage between both areas, if there is any of course.
On the news I've seen the smaller islands south of Japan being battered, trees coming down and whatnot. There has also been at least one death, but where I have no idea. The warmer the waters are the more ferocious the storm, (until you go too far south, then there are no storms, but that's a whole different lesson) so these islands are always the ones you see on the news being destroyed by all manner of different god (sic) based acts.
So by preparations I mean I've purchased a few supplies. Firstly, to go with my rain proof jacket, I've bought plastic trouser overall rain proof cover things. If anyone knows their official name, please, do tell. I'm currently hunting for a plastic cover for my bag, and a plastic bag for my camera. Ideally I want a proper bag cover (everyone here has one), but I'll settle for a Tescos bag. (They don't have Tescos here, it was just an example) The plastic bag for my camera has to be completely clear though, I want to shoot through it without taking my camera out. It hasn't stopped raining for two days here because of the weatherfront, so I can only imagine how hard the rain will be once it actually hits – thirty seconds in the rain could spell disaster for my camera. These supplies aside I think I'll be in good stead to check out what's what.
I'll definitely go out and have a nose around when it's dead overhead, that is, until cars start sailing past my window. Then I'm very much the indoor photographer. There's a great park looking onto the seafront, and I think I'll find myself wandering in that direction. I might try taking some drenched reporter style footage, with the trees bent double and twenty foot waves crashing upon the break behind me.
Yeah they do that here too. Send reporters into towns that have been evacuated, wearing bright blue or yellow plastic packaging holding a microphone that's cellophane wrapped to stop it getting wet, shouting something no one can understand into the microphone. Pretty much the scene I described above. I've not had the chance to ask if anyone here thinks it's weird too, but I'm guessing it's stupid in any culture. It must be fun being the guy who gets to do that. Well the first few times it would be fun. It sure as hell beats going into Iraq and doing that kind of correspondence, anyway.
That's pretty much my day tomorrow sorted, I'm going to get very wet.
Then the day after is my interview of course!
And in other interview related news, I have another interview for a strange but cool sounding English speaking cafe. They hold lessons in English, but also have a cafe where the teachers and students hang out outside of lessons, and speak English! Sounds interesting, but I'm not sure how economically viable it is. Maybe it would be something fun to do at the weekends, to meet new people and earn a little money on the side.
That's it for now, I'm going to head back and collect my washing (it's free here, so it's very much a case of fill your boots.)
The typhoon is called Melor by the way. You can keep track of it on google!
