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typhoon

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Last night a typhoon made landfall at Tokyo.

My partners and I had a meeting with a potential partner firm lined up for 09:00, and it was going to be tight as it was. But with huge wind velocities and tonnes of rain sheeting down—and sideways—, and the trains all stopped or running slow, we called it off.

Watching the storm continue to hammer the city, I took the time to pull out my boots and to dress both Kenny and myself in our head-to-toe rain gear. Getting him into it is always a hassle, but it was finally done and his boots were on. I strapped him into the baby carriage opened the door.

To find sun streaming down. Looking back through the apartment, I could still see menacing clouds all about, but to the north it was quite pleasant. Yes, there was still a strong wing and lots of debris whistling through the air (no bowling lanes, though, which if the Simpsons is at all accurate is the defining characteristic of the eye of a hurrican), but we were clearly overdressed.

Still, I imagined that the storm could resume in a flash, so we set off.

We were still only two blocks from the apartment building when a giant gust of wind hit, and a strange noise came from the roof of an adjacent building. Looking up, I could see that some round shapes had blown off of the building's roof. Duct covers, or something like that. Watching them tumble toward me, I tried to guess where they would land and whether I should be running in any particular direction for shelter.

They turned out to be two of those plastic things you put down under potted plants, and bounced harmlessly off of the street (one each before and behind us). The rest of the trip was much less eventful, and I made the return trip with the rain garb tucked under my arm.

In the afternoon, the weather was even good enough that I could attend the other scheduled meeting by cycling to it (not a suit and tie affair). The city, despite the copious debris in the streets, was behaving as if nothing had happened. I suppose it's like a semi-major dump of snow in a Canadian city—people just work around it.