This Post Has No Photos; Camera's In the Rice Bin

What's upsetting is, it's a brand new camera. I'm worried about the water damage it might have taken yesterday evening when I went out to get photos of the flooding.

Typhoon Talas moved through (finally) after sitting just south of middle Japan, inching up towards us at like 12km/h. I was told, and this is unprecedented, that I needed to leave my apartment because of its proximity to the visibly out-of-control river..! It looked even higher than it did two years before.

Everything is okay where I am, though two years ago when I had just arrived in Japan, Typhoon Melor did some horrible stuff to areas north, in Ichinomiya, Haga, Chikusa, and Sayo. In Yamasaki, it was mostly just mud damage, lots of tatami being replaced.

Usually, wind isn't so much an issue around here (which is why it was so weird a few months ago when the wind was whipping through, taking things apart and throwing Pachinko Parlor pieces onto cars!), but the rain overload becomes dangerous. Landslides can happen in the mountain areas, and flooding in the lower spaces by the ubiquitous rivers.

Everything I could think to, I put up on top of something (tables, the bed, chairs, etc.), then grabbed my computer and some clothes, and went to Monzen. Before it got dark, I saw that the river had come up just below our apartment complex, and the bottoms of the cherry trees on the bank were underwater.

Day before, someone had stolen my favorite umbrella (!) but it turned out okay, because it was rainin' sideways, and I just wore my rainjacket everywhere anyway. My phone is also in the rice bin. I hope they recover. I'll be very sad if they don't.

Though it might be time for me to get a phone that can access google maps. So I spend less time being lost on Japanese roads!

And now for some more geography:

First, look at this map to remember where I live.

Next check out the track of Talas here.  I know, right?

In terms of things that have a direct impact on my immediate reality, this was a fairly big deal (it changes my weekend, and in some very minor ways, my life). The funny thing is, almost no one outside Japan asked me about it! Everything is relative.. some things that hugely impact Japan don't actually affect my immediate circumstances, and then some things that no one hears about have me replacing my shit and crashing refugee-style on higher ground!

Stay dry, everyone.