Nice Weather We're Having

[aide]

It's 5:15am and I'm awake.  If you were here, you wouldn't be surprised.  We're in the middle of the 9th typhoon of the year.  I say "middle" not in the sense that "presently, we are experiencing a typhoon" but we might be at the mid-point because the wind has been whipping the trees around and the rain has been coming down in buckets since about 8pm yesterday.  If the wind lashing at the building wasn't enough to wake me up, I'm a genius and left our laundry rack out on the balcony which as surely going to be blown away.  I went out in the wind and rain to collapse the stupid thing, since its flimsy and made of aluminum.  It's taken gentler winds to blow that thing over.  Even with clothes on it.  I always thing something is going to take flight off our balcony at any moment and it'll be gone forever.  The windows are rattling, wind is whistling through the cracks, things are rattling outside on the balcony, who can sleep in this?  Nikki is even awake.  Although she said she heard some women screaming outside on the street and that's what woke her up.  I'm a little groggy from out drinking party last night after Kids Training so I'd really like to get a few more hours sleep, but this storm doesn't look like its stopping or letting up anytime soon. 

Nikki and I are going to call in to work (at a more reasonable hour) and ask what we're supposed to do.  I'd rather not go out in this, surely the trains aren't running.  I'm actually 100% sure they aren't, right now at least, because this is worse than it was last night.  Nikki and I got back to Kashiwa at around 11pm last night from Funabashi and found that all the trains had stopped.  We attempted to ask some guy standing there reading his comic (and he probably was like, "What the fuck do these crazy white girls want?") but all we could communicate was "電車ダメ？” Densha dame? which roughly translates to "Trains no?"  Coincidently, the guy next to him could speak fluent English and started talking to us and telling us the trains were all stopped because of the bad weather.  He said we could take a cab, since they wouldn't be running anytime soon.  We only live in Abiko, a 5-6 minute ride on the train - only 1 stop, so it wouldn't be that bad.  Nikki did it once from a bar in Kashiwa and said it was only 2000Y.  This guy lived in Toride (2 more stops on the Rapid train, maybe 20 more minutes on the train) and said he would split a cab with us to Abiko and then continue home.  I know that sounds stupid since we don't even know this guy, but he was a student at USC in Communications as well as in Chicago for a bunch of years.  He gave us his name card, and then later he asked for my email though I'm not sure what he's going to email me about.  He was a really nice guy and helped us out.  Although, the cab to Abiko was 2000Y and we each gave him 1000Y so we could have cabbed without him but he was nice so I didn't mind. 

Anyway, this weather is ridiculous.  I have never seen such a bad storm.  I wish I could capture it on film to show you.  The sun is coming up (well, its getting brighter at least) so I might be able to in an hour or so.  I wonder what it will be like in an hour, it sounds like things are getting worse.  This is worse than any of those storms Vancouver had last winter that screw the city because all the trees were destroyed.  The tree across the way outside our window is just waaaving in the wind like nothing.  The foliage must be more resilient here.  That's my conclusion about Japan so far: everything is bigger.  The produce (grapes the size of your nose), the beer, the bugs (cicadas the size of your face that chase you), the storms.