For the entire last week, my coworkers and my friends tracked Typhoon Man Yi that spawned off the southeast coast of Japan. Everyone made a big deal about it. Teachers discussed about evacuation procedures as the schools vice principle passed out copies of the path of the Typhoon. A couple of years ago they learned that it is better to be safe than sorry.
In the late summer of 2005, Typhoon #14 (creative, huh?) rocked the island of kyushu and sent Miyazaki and the surrounding prefectures into hysteria. Water was knocked out for weeks and massive land slides sent homes tumbling into valleys below. Even today, two years after #14 struck, roadwork and landslide recovery projects are still being done to repair the damage.
I guess they have a right to be scared.
Man Yi hit last Saturday and its now Tuesday. Needless to say, we're OK. In fact, the day after Man Yi hit Miyazaki, Meg and I were swimming in the sea that just the day before had 10 meter swells.
But as it didn't rock Miyazaki like #14 did, it was my first real typhoon. And as it wasn't as big and nasty as everyone had expected, when I looked out the window it got me thinking. I've seen Colorado storms of marble-sized hail that can shatter windshields, northern canadian squalls that can make the armies of mosquitos retreat to their homes, and Thai rain spells that are so off and on, its like God is lounging in the clouds laughing, flicking the weather switch with his big finger.
All of those storms, no matter how pecuillar they were, they seemed to have some common aim of to their madness. But a typhoon? If I had to give it a personality trait, I'd say its clinically insane.
Meg and I, after we watched our 2nd of the 8 movies we rented, we looked outside and decided to take a stroll around the block and get up close and personal with Man Yi. After looking at the dripping window pane for long enough, we were sure that it was not risking life and limb for us to step outside. So she threw on my extra large rain jacket, and I put on my best hawaiian shirt. We pryed open my front door and stumbled out into the wind.
We'd yell to hear each other as we made our way down the steps to the street. At first the wind was defening. Then it stopped. It caught me mid sentence yelling, like I was the guy with headphones on that was talking too loudly. Then, it started to blow again. It seemed to blow down one street, then made a quick turn then roll down the opposite side street. I looked up at the cherry tree of the temple that hung over my road. It shook back and forth irratically. Then it stopped. Then it started again and its leaves shook like a pompom, like the neck of a doll getting strangled by a little brother.
We walked down the street and were met with warm wind, then chilly wind. We trudged through the leaves and branches that filled the streets. Occasionally, a city car drove by, and gawked at Meg in her oversized fire engine red raincoat, and then me in my rainsoaked turquoise aloha shirt.
During the gaps, the transition periods when the typhoon was wondering which way to blow, there was a dead silence. No buzz of neon billboards, no storefront vendors welcoming you in the door. Just nothing. Maybe this is how it sounded during these gaps before Japan met the west. Everyone was inside listening to the buzz of their TVs, Meg and I went for a walk around the block and saw Japan unplugged.
Meg and I made our trip around the block and ran upstairs to plug back in. We had more DVDs to watch. But we kept staring out the window and watched the cherry trees shake. We'd be in mid conversation and the wind interrupted, screaming as if it needed attention. In a country that is so ordered and regimented, its nice to see that, even just for a day, it can still get a little chaotic when it wants to.
