Typhoon Faxai.

Typhoon Faxai — the fifteenth tropical cyclone of the 2019 season — is due to make landfall somewhere in central Japan late Sunday, September 8th into Monday, September 9th. Heavy rain and strong winds are on the way. From this map, Faxai looks like it will hit Tokyo almost head-on.

This blog post is going to be a bit rambling I am afraid… We were only made aware of this typhoon yesterday, from an email that my husband received at work, warning employees that the trains may not be running, and to stay home Monday morning if the weather is threatening. I had just looked at the Weather Channel app on my phone, and only saw the typhoon that is presently traveling north from Taiwan toward China. I found later that if I had scrolled right on that photo, Typhoon Faxai comes into view.

It is often this way. We usually don’t hear much about the typhoons until right before they arrive. Maybe we just don’t pay enough attention to the Japanese weather reports. We both use the Weather Channel app and sometimes those weather forecasts are more concentrated on the weather “back home” in the US. We sometimes get weather announcements for Japan from the US State Department. This is not the only typhoon we have experienced here… although, I don’t remember one that hit central Japan (and Tokyo!) so directly. Usually they seem to hit farther southwest from Tokyo and just slide up along the coast.

Typhoons can be disastrous for Japan. The country is steeply mountainous in many places, and heavy rain and wind bring on landslides and severe flooding. The Tokyo area lies east of the mountains, on the coast, and so landslides are not that common. But, the storm surge can cause dangerous flooding issues. Our apartment, for example, sits just a few meters above sea level. Our area is buffered and somewhat protected by a system of canals, and those canals mostly have flood gates that can be lowered to protect from storm surge. And, being on the western coast of Tokyo Bay, the Chiba peninsula also lends major protection. But we will see…

The biggest issue for us right now is that both of us are due to leave the apartment this weekend. My husband has a work trip scheduled. For the next two weeks, he will be working long hours and weekends on a project. Most of the project will be here in Tokyo, but he will be staying at a Tokyo hotel with the rest of his group. He was supposed to leave early Monday morning on the Shinkansen for a two day trip to the Niigata area on the western coast of Japan. Because he was going to be working such long hours, I scheduled a trip back to the US to visit with family.

My flight leaves Sunday afternoon… several hours before Faxia is supposed to arrive, so likely I will still be able fly out ahead of the storm. For my husband, however, with a Shinkansen trip on Monday during the projected landfall, his train will most likely be canceled, delaying his meeting and lengthening his project time. Usually when there is heavy rain, and especially high winds, the trains — local and Shinkansen — are canceled or delayed.

Also… our son and his fiancee have been visiting this week, and are leaving on the Shinkansen to go to Shikoku (another of the four main islands of Japan — farther south and west of Honshu). Fortunately, their train is very early in the day, and they should be able to get away before any major problems with the trains. Shikoku should be largely unaffected by this typhoon.

For the most part, typhoons move through pretty quickly, and even with heavy rain and high winds, the storm shouldn’t last too long, and the city will just be dealing with the aftereffects. I am sort of sad to miss seeing what this storm will do. We have been in this apartment when the winds are strong, and you can actually feel a slight swaying — not unlike what happens when we have a minor earthquake.

But… hopefully all of us will get to where we need to be during this storm without any major mishaps or delays.

For my part, I will be back in the US for two weeks, and I am sincerely hoping that when I return to Japan, this awful heat and humidity will be over, and fall weather will be on the way. It has been a miserably hot summer in Tokyo. I can’t imagine what will happen when global climate change causes the temperature to increase even more.

The other day when I was walking to the grocery store I saw a man wearing a long-sleeved windbreaker. It looked like he was some sort of service person, or utility worker. When I got close up behind him, I noticed that his jacket had two cooling fans integrated into the fabric. Wow… I want that! I really needed it that day! His jacket was all zipped up, and the cooling fans (presumably) were circulating “coolish” air around the inside of the jacket. Ahhh… I see many people walking around with small battery powered, handheld cooling fans, but never a jacket with “air-conditioning!”

[And just as an aside, speaking of coolish… Here is a brand of ice cream that we have found in the combinis (convenience stores) here in Japan. “Coolish” is a Lotte product… a Korean company. We have found these nice, neat frozen ice cream packages in vanilla, chocolate and now… this one, is pineapple. Good for a nice cold snack on a hot day in Tokyo!]

Well — as I write this, the clouds are starting to roll in. It will start raining overnight, but hopefully not too much rain until after I walk to the subway station tomorrow morning. We rarely take taxis, but I may have to resort to calling the “English-Speaking Taxi Service” here. I am getting better at Japanese, but ordering a taxi in Japanese could be an ordeal. Just hoping I can just get by walking to the station.

For our friends and family back in the US, I hope the weather is improving wherever you are. I see that Hurricane Dorian is still churning away in the Atlantic, but hopefully there will be no more major issues from it. Take care out there…