windy windy i go to kindy....

(title kindly on loan from the collection of Darren "call me darren" Ede.)

Crikey. Windy though.
Much light is made around this time of year by members of the expat community in regards to the Japanese fascination with typhoons. I have been living here this time for 2 years now and have been warned of an impending typhoon probably 20 times. In all of these instances it started raining, people lashed their potplants, grandmothers and houses to the ground and looked skyward....anxiously. Then the sun would come out, a bird would sing and life would go on.

That was until Monday.

The first sign that something maybe amiss was a BBC weather report on Sunday night that went a little something like;

".....thanks Carly for the sport, now looking at the weather; all looks clear and fine wherever you are on earth, apart from the SUPERTYPHOON approaching Japan really, really fast. And now back to Ted in the Newsroom...."

"SuperTyphoon?" I thought "Hmmmmm......"

Monday dawned bright and early and I looked outside for signs of so-called supertyphoon, our neighbours grandmother was strapped to the ground beside our window and obscured the view somewhat but it certainly didn`t look too typhoon-y. Then I received a text message from Arch that his school had been cancelled because of the "typhoon". Hmmmmmmmm.

So I stroll off to work, things eerily quiet, no birds about- thought that was a little odd- usually theres a couple of VW Beetle-sized crows sitting on the side of the road, staring at you with their big, black eyes, feathers looking none the worse for wear after their morning commute from HELL, just waaaaaaaiiiiting, waaaaaaaiiiting for you to make one slip up....

Anywhoo, they weren`t there this morning. So I get to work and the TV is on in the office and there are some mighty images of pounding waves and shaky boats and trains stopped at stations (an odd picture that they would show for maybe four or five minutes at a time. Some guy, holding his ear peice in, standing on a train platform with a train behind him going;

".......nooooooope still hasn`t moved.....pretty windy though......thats the typhoon y`know...........nooooope, still hasn`t moved........... nooooooooooope...... ........noooot yeeeeeeeet........ nooooope; from Nagoya Station, I`m BlahBlahBlah BlahBlahBlah.")

Then a siren went off. Then a stern looking guy came on the TV and said "Look out for the typhoon". And all hell broke loose. Suffice it to stay I dashed out of there fairly quick, went home, looked at the stuff on our balcony, decided we could live without it, closed the door and started playing Playstation. And then it arrived.

Windy. Ooooooh Crikey. Windy. We had an NZ flag flying proudly off our balcony. We HAD an NZ flag flying proudly off our balcony. There was wind, there was rain, there was wind and rain. Not any thunder and lightening though - I like my `forces of nature extravaganzas` to be more about the thinder and lightening. Still, a bunch of rain and wind which served to stir things up. It really started going bonkers at about 11am, then died away by about 4pm, leaving little permanent damage but certainly something to talk about beside the water cooler.

It was fun, and the next day!!! Ohhhh, the heat blasted out of the air by the rain, the air crystal clear, what with all the crap washed out by the rain and the wind. Twas lov-er-ly. Now its back to being reeeeeeeaaaaaalllllly hot.

Jon and Melody arrive on Friday - Hoorah!!

See ya folks.