And Sometimes Why

Tag: weather

  • Typhoon 18

    It’s been an interesting day. I woke up super early this morning (5am is super early for me now) to go see this year’s fighting mikoshi festival at Dogo. I didn’t bring my real camera because I didn’t want it to get rained on, so I’m glad I got decent photos and video last year. The pics snapped with my phone camera are pretty useless, but Kevin got a decent video or two.

    It’s been raining for the last three days, actually. It started out as a nice steady light rain, but just in the last few hours it’s gotten heavier. At this point though, the rain isn’t as big a deal as the wind, which almost inverted my umbrella as I was riding to work. You see folks, Typhoon 18 is about to hit southern Japan.

    I hear about typhoons pretty regularly, but I don’t usually pay attention to the warnings because the east-west mountain range just south of the city usually diffuses any strong weather before it hits Matsuyama. (Unless of course, I’m riding a bicycle across a series of bridges that day. Then it will undoubtedly rain cats and dogs.)

    This time is a little different though. I actually have a typhoon warning on my phone, evening classes at my school were canceled (which I didn’t learn until I had already pedaled over there), and the business next door to my apartment building piled sandbags in front of their door.

    I think we’re in for some real weather here.

    If I don’t post again, look for me in Oz.

    ******** Update October 9th, 2009 ********

    Much ado about nothing down here in Matsuyama. It hardly rained that night, and the next day was beautiful. The city of Tsuchiura, in Ibaraki prefecture however, was not so lucky:

  • What the heck is a gust front?

    Here’s the result of a query I threw at the USGS National Earthquake Information Center database, showing all earthquakes stronger than 5.0 for the year so far in the region.

    Mother Nature is really toying with Japan right now. I’m not sure how much press the recent Japanese earthquakes have gotten in the states, but they’re pretty big news here. First of all, last month’s huge earthquake: When I woke up on Saturday the 14th and turned on the TV while eating breakfast, it was on every channel. The earthquake was a magnitude 7.2, and totally reshaped the landscape in some areas. The eastern and western tectonic plates that meet at the earthquake fault line moved toward each other up to 28cm and 29cm respectively in some places. Because of the specific planting grid pattern layout of rice fields, it’s easy to see where they buckled and formed small hills where the ground pushed together.

    A number of roads were not just destroyed, but erased- the land they were on is now gone. One landslide moved 5 million cubic meters of soil – enough earth to fill the Tokyo Dome 40 times over (as repetitively reported by a number of news agencies here). Some landslides left gaping holes in the ground that look like the Grand Canyon. Fifteen “quake lakes” formed from landslides blocking rivers. The power involved is really awesome, in the more traditional sense of the word.

    One local onsen was completely erased by the earthquake. The family that owned it and a few patrons were inside when the building was crushed and carried downhill in a landslide. So the building is gone, the owners and their family are gone, and the spring is now buried under a mountain of mud.

    Everyone interviewed says that they couldn’t remain standing during the quake, they had to lay down or fall down. Videos from security cameras show everything in stores just collapsing and falling to the ground. Twelve people died, ten are missing (now presumed dead), and 358 injured.

    Some bridges collapsed, and land under some national highways has risen by up to 50cm, disjoining sections of roads and bridges. A number of bridges that weren’t destroyed will need to be replaced because of damaged underpinnings. It seems a lot like a Sim City earthquake, with long ripples in the topsoil, and everything above the quake just wiped- trees, roads, and buildings alike.

    So that was June 14th. A week ago, on July 22nd, there was a 5.2 off the coast, and then the next day, a 6.8 on eastern Honshu (the largest Japanese island) on the 23rd injured 200 people and damaged 90 buildings.

    As if a series of powerful earthquakes wasn’t enough, a few days ago there were wind gusts strong enough to uproot trees, knock over light buildings (temporary offices, sheds, unfinished construction), and injure people with flying debris. A huge deluge today dumped so much rain that four people died in flash flooding, and the government evacuated 50,000 people from central Japan. One river rose 1.3 meters (~4 feet) just in the span of ten minutes. They didn’t even have time to close some flood control gates it was so fast.

    I know I haven’t been here very long, but I can’t imagine this is normal. It can’t be.

    Right??

  • Weather

    It’s time I talked about the weather in Matsuyama.

    Here is one of the corners on my way to work. The small road on the left will take you to my apartment, the large road to the right will take you to ALS Matsuyama. I think I’ve mentioned before that Matsuyama reminds me very much of San Diego. So much so, in fact, that I’ve begun to think of it as a smaller Japanese version of that beautiful southern California city (minus the plastic aesthetic).

    Despite its importance on the world stage, Japan is a small country, physically speaking. At about 375,000 km², it’s a little smaller than Montana and a little larger than Germany. One of the neat things about a country that size is that the nightly news gives weather for the entire country, rather than one local area or region. Not only that, but Japan’s newscasters must have some weird 6th sense (Shirley MacLaine, not M. Night Shyamalan) that allows them to determine the precise times, locations, and magnitudes of weather patterns in three hour blocks.

    Seriously, the local nightly news here not only gives temperatures throughout the day, it tells you what time it’ll start raining tomorrow and what time it’ll stop. Unfortunately, only the national news is simulcast in English, and having just recently acquired internet access at home, I’m not yet accustomed to checking the forecast online.

    This brings us to the trigger that convinced me to write about the weather in the first place.

    On Thursday, there was a light rain in the morning that let up around the time I needed to leave for my Japanese lesson. Smiling at the clearing sky for cooperating with my need to hurry and get there on time, I set off on my bicycle sans umbrella.

    A light mist started falling almost immediately, and the skies darkened the further I got from my apartment. Ten minutes into the twenty minute ride, I was severely punished for my foolishness when the rain really got going. Fat raindrops fell in my eyes and soaked the front of my shirt and shorts. Knowing I was soaked either way, I kept going to my lesson, arriving dripping wet.

    I wasn’t really sure what to do at that point, as I had no way of drying myself. Paper towels are virtually nonexistent in Japanese bathrooms. Most small and medium sized businesses rely on you to bring your own towel. I kid you not- my school and many restaurants are the same way. I’ve asked a few Japanese people in Matsuyama, they’ve all said that Japanese people always carry around a washcloth or handkerchief, at least. Large businesses that expect foreign visitors might have an air dryer, but EPIC doesn’t have one of those.

    So I found my teacher, and of course she started laughing the moment she saw me, asking “Didn’t you look at the weather forecast?”
    “No,” I said, “unfortunately I did not.”

    Then she surprised me by going to the front counter and asking to borrow a towel on my behalf. The woman stifled a laugh when she saw me and quickly brought out a towel from what I think is the employee lounge. Anyway, I dried what I could and tried to hand it back to the woman, but my teacher told me to take it home, wash it, and bring it back on Monday. “It’s the Japanese way,” she said.

    Surprised and thankful, I said I would do just that.

    Here’s a picture of the Matsuyama University towel I was lent. Beneath it is the towel (I got from an onsen that) I will start carrying with me.