Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Typhoon season, the hyped up big one

Autumn in Japan is typhoon season and I have experienced many typhoons during my ten years in Japan and generally they're a bit hyped up in foreign media. Sure, it's a bit windy and it rains quite a bit making it unpleasant to go outside, also trains keep getting delayed or canceled which is of course a problem in Tokyo. That's not to say that there aren't serious incidents, but usually it is a small number of people who have been extremely unlucky and getting the car crushed by a feeling tree or those who haven't realized that getting out on the ocean in a small boat during a typhoon is not the best way to spend your time. For the general population, a typhoon is a bit inconvenient, but not really dangerous as long as you use common sense and stay indoors during the worst time.

However, now, typhoon no. 18 "Melor" is on it's way to hit the islands of Japan . This typhoon has been hyped up to be something out of the ordinary with winds blowing at 45m/s and also the first one in two years to really hit the Kanto area and the city of Tokyo right in the face. I must admit that I've become a little caught up in the hype and feel a slight excitement and tension, the big question is whether it will be possible to get to the company tomorrow morning or even worse, getting to the office but being unable to get back home to the warmth and safety of the wonderful Mrs. Sunshine-Salaryman and the big comy bed. If you don't hear from me in a while, I might very well have blown away!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm in Tokyo and just realizing that I don't know how to find out if my trains are cancelled or if my university has cancelled classes for the day. That's Meiji Gakuin U in Totsuka. Any ideas?

Sorry for my lameitude.

Anonymous said...

you're fucked.

Jon Allen said...

so, it was all a big hyped up non event pretty much. However I've not seen that many trains disrupted on the status screen at Shibuya before.

I got lucky. it wasn't raining when I left home this morning and I didn't suffer any delays, but it looks a bit windy out there at the momemt and there are reports that the Yamanote line is intermittant now.

As for looking out for train info looks like : http://www.jreast.co.jp/e/ is a bit slow this morning. Not sure if they have real time info in English.

Mr. Salaryman said...

Anonymous - A little too late now, but I don't really know of any good English resource on that, otherwise Japanese yahoo, JR pages or so probably should give you the lowdown. Morning news had the info too.

Jon - Yep, turned out to be a non event, a bit dissapointing after the media hyped it up so much... Just a little wind and rain...

iago said...

Certainly it was nothing like the one that flooded the streets and subways a couple of years ago: it had started to run out of steam by Tokyo. To be fair, though, people further west did get hit pretty hard.

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