Rain, rain, rain: this has been the wettest summer I can recall in Japan, and we've had wet weather off and on for weeks. The especially heavy rains this week brought Japan's famous Shinkansen trains to a stop, stranding thousands, and an evacuation warning was issued for the entire city of Okazaki, near Nagoya, as rivers that ran through the city overflowed, killing at least one. It was even more tragic in July, when rain-fed flash floods whipped through a riverside play area the city of Kobe had constructed to give children a place to play in the water, washing away a mother and three children. Summer in Japan brings thunderstorms almost daily, and last week lightning started a fire that damaged the Daigoji Temple in Kyoto. We're especially nervous about lightning around here -- twice J-List's building has been struck, killing our main air conditioning unit and causing us to go a week in the sweltering heat as we waited for it to be repaired. The extra wet summer is all the more puzzling because typhoon season isn't supposed to start until September -- which means we might have another month or so of pummeling and rain to look forward to.
A cool picture of a girl in the rain in Kyoto of the 1950s
3 comments:
I went to school in Okazaki (there is a good Japanese language school there), so found it very interesting to hear about the evacuation order.
we also have had unusual amounts of rain here in SouthEast America, mostly from Tropical Storm Fay, and soon-to-arrive TS Gustav.
Peterd, that's cool. I didn't realize it but that's where Ieyasu Tokugawa game from, I guess. So that's pretty historic right there. And back in those days, he limited all gunpowder production to his own city, and now most of Japan's fireworks are still made there.
Timo, I hope the storms won't be too bad this year. No more Katrinas...
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