My First Typhoon!

I’m sorry about the long delay and lack of new information. For those who were worried, I survived the typhoon. During the entire typhoon, the most unnerving aspect was that I never knew how much danger was actually flying about me.

To my surprise, I was called into work Monday morning, and though the wind was humming around 70 M.P.H., and torrential rain was falling sideways, business in the educational office continued as usual. My coworkers carried on with their work while I looked out the window, watched palm trees bowing in the wind, and dumpsters tumbling around the parking lot and into cars. There were occasional power outages during the day, but besides my supervisor tying everything to a post or pillar, the office was relatively calm. At about 2 p.m., they told me to go home and insisted that the winds were going to get much worse and admonished that I shouldn’t go outside from then on.

At around 5 p.m., I heard a knock at my door. Upon opening it, I found my upstairs and adjacent neighbors standing outside the stoop with hands full of wine and food. They said that a dinner party was the best way to ease the tension of the coming typhoon. By the time they showed up, I couldn’t believe that the typhoon wasn’t in our presence because the wind was nearing 85 m.p.h.

I let them in, turned on the stove, put on some Ray Charles, and sat down and enjoyed some great food, drink, and Japanese/English conversation. Throughout the meal, my kind friends appeared as though they were forcing smiles over their concerned faces. In the same sentence, they often talked about hurricane Katrina and the oncoming storm. They said that it would be almost as big as Katrina, but assured me that our building was very safe. Everything was continuing nicely; to our ease, the moaning of Nina Simone or the guttural cries of Etta James muffled the screams of the wind. The food was devoured gluttonously, and the alcohol was siphoned deep into our nerves where it rested dreamily. Everything continued nicely until the power went out around 10:50 p.m. and stayed out. After about 20 minutes of darkness, my guests washed their dishes, packed their things, and said goodbye. The opened the door and were whisked to their apartments by the violent wind and stinging rain. The typhoon had officialy arrived. The winds were around 110 m.p.h, and the typhoon named after a butterfly, looked and sounded more like a dragon should.

I sat there a little drunk and in the dark; I couldn’t turn on the T.V. to see pictures of the storm, and I didn’t have a radio, which I wouldn’t be able to understand. I didn’t have any information about what was going to happen or what I should do. I had bought a lot of water and had about three days of food. I decided to light a candle, pull my futon mattress away from all the windows, and try to sleep through the typhoon. Sleep was not an option though because it sounded as if a construction crew were outside my sliding glass door, trying to drill and jackhammer through the single pain glass that separated the storm and I. As time went on, the whining grew with intensity. I tried to stay relatively calm, but since it was my first mega storm, I was agitated nonetheless. All night, lurid thoughts flitted restlessly around my mind as I tossed about the futon, sweating, and dipping in and out of sleep.

I felt I was traversing the night as if I were crossing an ominous suspension bridge. The evening was anchored between two points of safety, Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning. Between those two pillars of hope, I clutched onto what I could find in the darkness and took small steps toward the light. I remember thinking that it was incredibly hot and humid for a storm. The room was nearly airtight and suffocating as the smell of tatami (straw floor mats), alcohol, and sweat hung in the thick, damp air. As the evening passed, I remember it being like a feverish hallucination. The hours slowly burned away in the candle light. The blue bars of my digital clock, powered by battery, refused to morph into other digits. Sweat soaked my sheets. In hindsight, I remember it being like a scene from the novel, Dracula. A horrible monster was flapping outside my windo, its wings thrashing about my window.

The beast eventually had its fill and moved on toward Korea. In its wake, it crumpled hillsides, devoured sections of towns, and left 5 dead in Tarimizu. My town, Minamiosumi-cho, didn’t suffer any casualties and had minor damage. It was left, however, isolated from the rest of Japan and without power for two days. There were two big landslides across the two inlets into Minamiosumi-cho. Before the storm came, I wondered why every hillside had been covered in concrete, or terraced with concrete and rebar. Now, it has become apparent that Japan has awful forestry practices that make PALCO look like environmental activists. Because of the deforestation here, entire towns are left vulnerable to earth flows. That is how the five elderly died in Tarimizu, which is about 65 kilometers up the road. Nevertheless, Japan’s infrastructure is very sound, and most people are forewarned and aware about the danger they are in. I luckily do not live under the burdensome stare of a menacing hill. My building is very rigid, safe, and warm.

Up the road, the few houses that I did see with damage looked as though they were built then attacked by a violent child who had built them out of popsicle sticks, smashed them to pieces, then poured a bucket of mud slurry over the top. I was going to take a picture, but then figured that I shouldn’t sensationalize somebody’s loss. Typhoons are a common occurrence here, and most children look forward to them because they get to miss school. I guess my fear is another’s pleasure.