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japan seems to be in a dangerous mood lately. the 18th typhoon of the season is about to hit osaka after rampaging its way through the lower islands of japan. there have been an unusually high number of typhoons this year. in fact this year has been anunusual year for weather in general‐the june‐rain season which was supposed to darken the early part of my stay never materialised　threatening　the　rice　crops, temperatures in tokyo hit plus 38 in the daytime and plus 30 degrees at night and was blamed on overuse of airconditioners.
schools in the path of the typhoon have closed down for the day, trains and boats have stopped running, tv news reports concentrate on reporting the damage it has　done and forecasting where it will go with a large red dot depicting the centre and a light green area as the outskirts. we are just beyond the outskirts but since 10 this morning the winds have been howling, washing has been brought in and windows shut and fastened.
i am looking forward to this typhoon‐the last one struck at night and so i didn’t get to see the effects clearly. reiko has (probably quite rightly) called me an evil man for wishing a thing upon us which kills, destroys property and devastates but this all so new to me. coming from a country which names a 2cm dusting of snow a blizzard and where typhoons and earthquakes are rare at best and more accurately practically unheard of i am confronted with a sense of danger which is novel and exciting.
on top of all this another earthquake hit this morning waking me up and wobbling glasses and bottles. as i was higher up this time, the effects seemed to be more marked. as it was so early i was unsure if it was real (though later verification proved it) i’ve realised that i don’t know what to do in the event of a serious earthquake i think i’ll go research that now. duck and cover or run for the hills?