Typhoon

We had made it safely from Haneda to the Onsen and had a good night there. 

The onsen was old but they had two or three nice baths, two that looked out onto the surrounding mountains.

We lounged around until nearly noon-time when the rain began to come down in earnest.

Good-bye to the onsen.

We made a short stop home to put aside backpacks and to show Takumi and Julieta-san Tony and Leiya's wedding album.

It's so nice that Julieta-san is an animal lover.

We needed to pick up John from the vets at 4:00 and though the rain was getting stronger we headed into the city to do a little shopping.  HOWEVER because of the typhoon the city was like a ghost town!  We had already heard that all flights into Japan had been cancelled and that the Bullet train and local trains weren't running.  We went to the large mall in the city but the parking lots were roped closed and everything was tightly shut and dark.  The 24 hour convenience stores were closed with sand bags in front of the doors, even most of the gasoline stations had signs that said they were out of gas!

We did find a department store that was open but it turned out that only the supermarket section was open and the rest of the store's shops were roped off and closed for the day.  NO clerks in the shops one in the aisles! 

The escalators were running so we went upstairs to see if anything was open there but nope, it was all roped off.  We all commented how open and trusting Japanese department stores must be to have just these flimsy lines across their open shop entrances and how no one just leans over and takes anything. 

It was true that we seemed to be the only people on the second floor but you would think that the department store would have barred off the escalators or shut them down preventing people from going into un-patrolled areas...  We met a lone guard man on the second floor and he didn't seem to be too concerned about us.

We picked up John who got into a tiz with new people in the house and then we hunkered down for the night of typhoon weather.  Later I heard that friends' husbands had hammered plywood over all their houses windows and that many homeowners had taped their windows to prevent splintering glass.  We got out candles and flashlights and recharged all our phones in case of emergency and Tetsu being head of the Home Owners Association sat next to his phone with emergency numbers in hand in case evacuation measures were needed to be relayed to residents.

The following three photos are pictures I took of photos in our local newspaper.

And it is true, throughout the night the loudspeakers in the neighborhood and all our phones kept blaring out red alerts telling us to be ready to evacuate at any moment.  Of course with all the wind and rain it is hard to tell if it is more dangerous to be outside trying to get to an evacuation shelter than it is just to stay in a small room upstairs in one's own house.  It was rather an iffy situation which had Tetsu tense and calling people til the early hours of the morning.  Julieta was a bit worried about living through her first typhoon but Takumi and I weren't too concerned... meaning that we generally think it is better to take the emergency when it comes rather than get too prepared for it.  That actually may be a very foolish attitude but we did get through this weekend.

By about 3:00 am, the typhoon had passed us and we all were able to relax into sound sleep finally.  Though our neighborhood had little damage, other parts of Japan, some very near to us, were devastated. 

The river had flooded over in the next city sending large areas of the city under a few feet of water.  Really scary for some people!