Typhoon Melor - Dispatches from the Ground

Typhoon Melor is going to make landfall and sweep across Japan tomorrow, and I couldn't be more excited.  This is my first experience with a typhoon or tropical storm, and hopefully it'll just be intense and impressive and no one will get hurt.

All junior high school and elementary school classes across my whole prefecture are canceled as well as most high school classes.  BUT.  All teachers still have to come in to work.  This is the dumbest thing I have ever heard.  I don't know what they expect us to do with a whole extra day, and depending on the severity of the typhoon it could be dangerous, especially for the teachers who drive.  If we want to stay at home we have to take a vacation day.  This is like a school having a snow day except for the teachers.  Sure, cultures are different, blah blah.  This is dumb.

Anyway, thus it will come to pass that I will walk to school during the height of the storm and spend all day there.  Since I will have almost literally nothing to do, I'm going to try to live-blog the typhoon with any pictures I can get.  If I'm not able to get onto blogger.com at work, I'll just do a diary and post it later.

Here's a picture from my apartment balcony at 5:15 PM--storm's a-brewin'.  However, something really interesting is that the clouds are all moving towards where the typhoon is coming from.  I guess they get sucked into the whirl of the storm system even from this far out.  Rad.  See you soon!

Thursday, 9:12 AM - The typhoon has been severly underwhelming so far.  A fair amount of rain and swollen rivers, but not much wind or awe-inspiring destruction.  It's business as usual in the office minus the kids.  They canceled the regular school lunch without telling me, so I had to order out for food.

Thursday, 10:10 AM - We have a TV on, and it looks like there is some wind and damage in other parts of the country, but not a lot.  I don't even speak Japanese and I can tell they're reaching for this news...

Thursday, 11:19 AM - It's slowed to a sprinkle here.  Little wind.  Lamest typhoon ever.  I heard that there was one fatality in Aichi prefecture, but I honestly don't see how.  Everyone has officially freaked out about nothing.

From the walk to work this morning.

 

Oh, carry me away, raging river...