Super Typhoon

The biggest typhoon to hit Japan in years is currently wreaking havoc in southern Japan. It’s on course to hit the Tokyo area in a day or two. If you’re in Japan, take care! Typhoon storms, like hurricanes and cyclones, are dangerous!

Another typhoon

Another typhoon is headed for 本州 (mainland Japan).

It’s forecast to hit the 関東地方 (Tokyo area) tonight and tomorrow (Tuesday, 2013 October 15th – Wednesday, October 16th).

Here is a recent meteorological map of Japan.  The yellow areas are under a “typhoon advisory” and the orange areas are under a more serious “typhoon warning“.

Tokyo, on this map, is colored orange.

Storm on Grandparents Day

It’s a three-day-weekend in Japan.
Today is 敬老の日 (Respect For Elders Day).

Even though today is a holiday, we’re staying indoors … and if you’re in the Tokyo area, you should too!

Because a big typhoon is currently hitting eastern Japan!

Trains have stopped, bridges are closed, houses and cars have been torn up, some parts of Kanagawa had a black-out, Kyoto and the city of 小浜 (Obama) have been flooded.

(Speaking of the Japanese city with the same name as the U.S. president, I wrote a post here:
https://tokyo5.wordpress.com/2008/09/10/obama/ )

Tokyo sun shower

Summer in Tokyo is very hot and humid.  There is a typhoon season and sometimes a sudden thunderstorm with heavy rain will start seemingly out of nowhere…and then stop just as suddenly with blue skies returning.

Japanese people are sometimes surprised if I tell them that summer in Florida (where I grew up) is very similar.

Summer in Florida is also hot and humid. There is a hurricane season (hurricanes, for all intents and purposes, are basically the same as typhoons) and sometimes sudden short thunderstorms occur there too.

In fact, the area in Florida where I lived, Tampa Bay, is called “the lightning capital of the world”.

When the weather is sunny and then a rainstorm suddenly starts…with the sunny weather returning just as suddenly, Floridians call that a sun shower.

So I also referred to the same phenomenon in Japan as a sun shower, as well.

But a few years ago, the Japanese media gave these storms an original Japanese name.  Here in Japan, these storms are called 「ゲリラ豪雨」 (“Guerrilla rainstorms“) because of the way they violently come out of nowhere.

Well, yesterday, there was a sudden, short, ゲリラ豪雨 (Guerrilla rainstorm)…and someone photographed it from the Tokyo Sky Tree tower.

The 「ゲリラ豪雨」 (guerrilla rainstorm) that hit the Tokyo area yesterday. It looks like a tornado!

Typhoon again

Earlier this month there was a 台風 (typhoon) that hit Japan. It was the first one to hit Japan directly in a number of years.
(Click here to read my post about it).

Well, the weather was very cool (today’s high temperature was 17° C in Tokyo), rainy and windy all day today…because there’s another 台風 (typhoon) near Japan.

Look at this weather map showing the rain over Eastern Japan.

This typhoon isn’t hitting Japan directly like the last one did.

Here’s a map showing the typhoon’s forecasted path…it was off the coast of Tokyo at 8:00PM tonight and it’ll be past northern Japan and closer to Russia tomorrow.

But the 天気予報 (weather forecast) from tomorrow til next Monday for Tokyo is for the rain to stop early tomorrow morning and then sunny and warmer!

Tokyo's weather forecast for 2009 Oct 27 - Nov 2

Typhoon

There’s a 台風 (typhoon) near Tokyo now.

It’s been raining in Tokyo since yesterday…and it’s forecast to rain until Friday.

The TV weather information said that the typhoon will hit Tokyo the day after tomorrow (Thursday). So the rain and wind will be really strong on that day.

If you’re in the Tokyo area, be careful if you have to go out this week…especially Thursday!

The good news is that’s it’s forecast to be sunny from Saturday…so it’ll be nice weather for the upcoming three-day-weekend (Monday’s a holiday (体育の日 (Health Day))).

On the TV

At the moment, all that is on the TV in Japan is either the 台風 (typhoon) that is hitting the Tokyo area today, and the national election results.

Tokyo is in the path of the approaching typhoon.

Be careful if you’re on the east coast of Japan and you have to go out today.
The weather will be bad all day today, but it’s forecast to be nice tomorrow (normally, after a typhoon passes the sky is very clear).

Regarding Japan’s election today, the results are still not all in yet, but it’s winding down and the 民主党 (Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ)) is winning in a landslide.
This is an upset victory because the 自由民主党 (Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)) has won nearly every national election in Japan since the end of WWII. The current Japanese Prime Minister (Taro Asou) is the president of the LDP.

The next Prime Minister of Japan will more than likely be 鳩山由紀夫 (Yukio Hatoyama).

鳩山由紀夫 (Yuki Hatoyama)

Disaster

Every summer we go to a beach resort and stay a few days.
This year we planned to go there from Sunday, August 9 until yesterday (Tuesday, August 11) because all five of us had those days off from work or school clubs.

We checked the weather forecast for those days last week and it said that it would rain a little bit on August 9 and then it’d be nice the rest of the time.
But that’s not how it turned out…

When we arrived at the beach on Sunday, it was a bit cloudy but still nice weather and very hot. So the kids went swimming a bit. If they had known that that’d be their only chance to swim, they would’ve stayed in the water longer.

After they finished swimming, they took a shower and changed their clothes and we went for a walk around.
My second daughter caught a カブト虫 (rhino beetle).

Then it began to rain.

We went back to the room and ate dinner. And we turned on the TV and I checked the weather forecast.
A typhoon was hitting the east coast of Japan! 😦

The forecast said that the typhoon would be gone and the weather would clear up on the afternoon of August 11. The day we we going back home!

And then, while we were eating dinner, an 地震 (earthquake) struck!
The area we were in registered a “level 4 earthquake” on the Japanese shindo earthquake scale. (The Japanese scale goes from 1-7).
It was an unwelcome fright! But luckily it wasn’t strong enough to knock anything down where we were.

The weather forecast was correct. The typhoon stayed the whole time we were there. It ruined our beach trip.
The wind and rain was very strong the entire time we were there. Both the beach and the nearby waterslide pool park were closed.

And then yesterday morning at about 5:30AM, another big 地震 (earthquake) struck! This one had the epicenter in 静岡県 (Shizuoka Prefecture), and registered a “level 6” (out of “7”) there!
Where we were it registered as a “level 4” again. Once again, not big enough to do damage where we were…but big enough to wake us up!
I hate earthquakes!

But we still had fun together. Indoors.
We played games, watched TV, talked, and enjoyed time together.

We planned to take the 6:30PM train home yesterday (August 11).
At about 5:00PM, I noticed that the typhoon seemed to have passed and the weather was clearing up.
Just my luck! The weather was miserable the whole time we were there…and then clears up when were getting ready to leave!

Since we had time, and the storm passed, we took a walk around again.
There were many surfers taking advantage of the big waves brought by the typhoon.

Even though we didn’t get to swim as we planned, we still had a good time.
And as I said, we go to this beach every summer. This was the first time that the weather wasn’t beautiful while we were there.
Hopefully it’ll be nice weather again next year!

Japanese words in English

Often words or expressions from one language become part of another language. And sometimes the meaning of the word gets changed.

In Japan, alot of words of foreign origin are used in the Japanese language. Many are used quite differently in Japanese than they are in their country of origin.
For example, パン (pan) is Japanese for bread. It came from the Portuguese word “pão“, which means “bread”. And 「カステラ」 (Kasutera) is the Japanese word for a type of cake that was introduced from Portugal called “Castella“.

There are many others. From English, Japan uses words like 「アイスクリーム」 (ice cream) and バスケットボール (basketball)*.
*(Foreign sports usually keep their original name in Japanese. An exception is 「野球」 (“Yakyuu“) for “baseball”. (lit. “field globe (ball)), which isn’t called by it’s English name because it was introduced to Japan during WW2 when America was considered an enemy.)

Some words are shortened. Such as テレビ (Terebi) for “television”. And some words have morphed into something unrecognizable to English-speakers, such as 「スキンシップ」 (skinship) for “bonding”.

But it works the other way too.
America (and other countries as well, I’m sure) have adopted Japanese words into the English language. Some have retained their original meaning. But others are used with totally different meanings than the “real” Japanese meaning.
And many “Japanese words” in English are pronounced so differently that a Japanese person wouldn’t recognize it.
For example,
★ 「アニメ」 (anime: Japanese animation)
★ 「マンガ」 (manga: Japanese comics)
★ 「オタク」 (otaku: is used as “fanatic” overseas, but “a Trekkie” is closer to the Japanese meaning)
★ 「カラオケ」 (karaoke)
★ 「さようなら」 (sayonara: farewell (not used in Japan in cases when you’ll be seeing the person again before long))
★ 「台風」 (taifuu: in English, the pronunciation morphed to “typhoon”)
★ 「きもの」 (kimono)
★ 「寿司」 (sushi: isn’t “raw fish” (that’s sashimi). Sushi is vinegared-rice with a topping (such as sashimi))
★ 「(お)酒」 ((O)-saké)
★ 「すき焼き」 (sukiyaki)
★ 「相撲」 (sumo: Japan’s national sport)
★ 「芸者」 (Geisha: aren’t prostitutes)
★ 「歌舞伎」 (Kabuki)

A promo poster for a Kabuki show

★ 「班長」 (hanchou: morphed into the English “(Head) honcho“)
★ 「津波」 (tsunami)
★ 「人力車」 (jin-riki-sha: morphed into the English “Rick-shaw“)

I’m sure there are more. This is all that I could think of off the top of my head.
Do you know some other instances of Japanese words being popularly used in English (or another language)?

News

Today, my oldest daughter leaves with her school class for a field trip to 京都 (Kyoto).

They’ll travel by 新幹線 (Bullet train) and stay in Kyoto for three days.

My daughter’s very excited! But, as for me, I always have mixed feelings whenever my kids go on a field trip…I’m happy that they get to see many great places and experiences—but I can’t relax until they’re back home safe!

Kyoto is gonna be nice for her to see. It was once the capital of Japan and is very traditional. Kyoto still has many 芸者 (Geisha) (or 芸妓 (Geiko) as they’re called on that side of Japan). There are still Geisha in Tokyo, but not as many as in Kyoto.

I can’t wait to see the pictures my daughter takes on her trip!

Next month, my second daughter’s class will take a three-day trip to 新潟 (Niigata).

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Last month, my wife started a small vegetable garden on our porch.

Last week, we ate 苺 (strawberries) from her garden and tonight we had a salad with ピーマン (green peppers) and トマト (tomatos) from the garden.

They were delicious!

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It was raining all day yesterday. Probably due to that 台風 (typhoon) that hit the Philippines.

I hope it doesn’t hit Japan! (By the way, did you know that typhoon is from a Japanese word…in Japanese, it’s 台風 (taifuu)).

Anyways, the weather forecast for Tokyo this week:

June 23:

June 24:

June 25:

June 26:

June 27:

June 28:

June 29: