I said typhoo not typhoon!

Excuse my absence. We were in Sydney finding a lovely place to live. We did, although it's not quite in Sydney, but more on that later... As I write, the trees on both sides of the kitchen are whipping about. Japan and right now, Tokyo is experiencing a cyclone - the first typhoon to hit land in decades. After bucket loads of rain during the night (50cm apparently), the skies have cleared to beautiful blue and we have just the wind with which to contend.

As you would expect, Japan braced itself for the onslaught with military precision. Warnings were issued and instructions to fill baths with water, and stock up on goods that didn't need cooking. Naturally we got whipped up with the excitement and lashed down the roof terrace, brought the bikes inside (including the motorbike) and moved the car right under the porch. We also watched the extended news last night for information on what we might expect. Always rather amusing - I think I've mentioned previously about the English voice over news which can never quite match the sex of the newsreader to the voice, despite having a selection of both from which to choose.

At the time, the storm was over Osaka in the South West. The bulletin cut to the eye of the storm where a reporter was standing with an umbrella. "Nearly took it out my hand" he said... "the leaves are moving and when the wind blows, the boats in the harbour rock"... and "there is nobody around". This appeared to be the biggest news, although there had been some damage - cut to 3 chimney bricks fallen down.. and some people have 'voluntarily' evacuated their homes ... cut to shot of about 20 people neatly lying under yellow blankets asleep in a hall (why were they asleep at 7pm? Im not sure, maybe exhaustion!) Back to the studio....

In true Japanese style, we plan for the worst. We are shown some colourful footage of what might happen - footage of natural disasters around the world, the floods in India where people are being airlifted, some large waves in the UK, mud slides etc. Over all this, the voice over says "be careful of mud slides... be careful of flooding". We end with a shot of a woman in a wind tunnel experiencing 100 mph. I have no idea why, given the winds are only forecast to reach 70 mph.

Anyway, when I woke up this morning, I was alive and was able to let out the bathwater I had saved from last night, just in case. Apparently there are a couple of trees down and some trains are not running but that's about it. The big gusts are still here but there's nothing like wind to push away stagnant energy so I'm off again - along with my neighbours who are obsessive leaf sweepers - seems a bit pointless right now though but it's not stopping them.