Typhoons? Earthquakes?
Japan is falling apart! Last week we had several small earthquakes, and then this weekend we had Typhoon Man-Yi. Now, apparently....typhoons are the same as hurricanes...just the wind spins in a different direction cause they're in diff. hemispheres? But in any case, you might remember me whining earlier about whether or not I was gonna go to the Natchi Fire Festival this weekend. Turns out fire festivals and typhoons don't mix so that became a non-issue real quick. BUT, I still really wanted to get over to see Tristan for the 3-day weekend. BUT, I live on an island (Shikoku, the smallest of Japan's four main islands), and Tristan lives on the main island, Honshu. And when I woke up at 6am Saturday morning and called the ferry office, they said all the ferries were cancelled! It had been raining for the past 4 days or so, and the winds were starting to pick up, so I guess the waves in the Inland Sea were too dangerous to navigate. "No problem" i thought! I'll just run down to the station and see if the buses are still running! I got on the 7am bus to Osaka, not knowing that all the buses after that one were cancelled because even driving over the bridge to Honshu quickly became too dangerous.
Long story short, by taking a series of roundabout buses, I managed to get into Shirahama, Tristan's town, just as things were getting way sketch outdoors. My umbrella broke the moment I got off the bus (think cartoonish inside-out unmrella schtick) and tristan and i took a taxi for a distance we usually would have walked, back to his house from the bus stop.
Once inside, we closed all the windows and hunkered down for the duration, watching movies and listening to the wind whip past his house. The eye of the storm passed over us during Saturday night, the sound was so loud we couldn't sleep. But then on Sunday morning, it was like a whole new world! Occasional rain, but much less wind, and we went down to the beach to check it out. The tide was way out and the waves were doing unusual things, but despite the clouds, the weather was fine, and we lay out and read for a few hours before catching dinner in town and heading back to his house.
Anyway, then on Sunday there was a relatively big earthquake in northern Japan (the only part not hit by the typhoon), but we didnt feel it down here in the south! I don't know what's next...locusts??
Long story short, by taking a series of roundabout buses, I managed to get into Shirahama, Tristan's town, just as things were getting way sketch outdoors. My umbrella broke the moment I got off the bus (think cartoonish inside-out unmrella schtick) and tristan and i took a taxi for a distance we usually would have walked, back to his house from the bus stop.
Once inside, we closed all the windows and hunkered down for the duration, watching movies and listening to the wind whip past his house. The eye of the storm passed over us during Saturday night, the sound was so loud we couldn't sleep. But then on Sunday morning, it was like a whole new world! Occasional rain, but much less wind, and we went down to the beach to check it out. The tide was way out and the waves were doing unusual things, but despite the clouds, the weather was fine, and we lay out and read for a few hours before catching dinner in town and heading back to his house.
Anyway, then on Sunday there was a relatively big earthquake in northern Japan (the only part not hit by the typhoon), but we didnt feel it down here in the south! I don't know what's next...locusts??