Woke up this morning thinking I heard the snapping of a tree, and instead awoke to a muggy, overcast, almost still morning. Seeing the pile of garbage bags in the collection area, I see everyone still expects garbage pickup today, so I put out my “burnables.”
A respectable gaggle of children (considering the birthrate in Japan) has passed by my house this morning (at 7:30 am) wearing school backpacks (regulation stiff leather in red or black). Businessmen head off to work. It’s all very casual. I check the Internet: my typhoon flower has slowed down and lost power.
3 pm: the backpacks are returning home. I’ve been over at a friend’s house for lunch (somen, fugu!, and grapes so good they are the Platonic ideal of grapes) and now it is coming, the winds are rising, and by 6 pm it should hit…
ETA: Some flooding, 2 deaths, many homeless people rescued from rivers on whose banks they had been camped out, and a big general cleansing blow through Japan. But not as serious as it could have been.
