Japan Top 10

It is no fun to be outside in a typhoon. During the latest one – named “typhoon number 2” by the Japanese authorities – I walked to the office, and despite having an umbrella my trousers were soaking whet when I got there. The rain was literally horizontal. And the typhoon did not even make landfall – it just skirted past the Japanese coast.

But I got there. And so did most of my co-workers (usually I work from home but there was a special event this time). Japanese employees are tough – the only thing that can keep them out of the office is a typhoon or a major earthquake. And nowadays, when people work from home, that does not matter either.

In the old days, nobody would have been in the office when the typhoon hit. Nowadays, companies tell people to work from home when there is a typhoon approaching, but in the days when work was a place, the people would leave a few hours early (or not come to the office at all).

In the old days, you would be putting up the storm shutters when a typhoon was approaching. Nowadays, houses are built differently, and do not need srorm shutters. And it is more common that the “salarymen” live in apartments anyway. But even if modern doors and windows can withstand the rain and wind, you still have to clean up the yard. When the biggest typhoon in living memory hit Sendai, we found our snow shovel (which we had packed away for winter) in the next but one neighbors garden.

Typhoons are one of the two things that can make trains in Japan stop. The other is earthquakes, but you can see typhoons approaching for days, and follow them on the TV news who are only too happy to report the bad weather (since they get an opportunity to sell more advertising to an attentive audience). Nobody has figured out how to forecast earthquakes yet, so they happen when they happen; but typhoons will hog the morning newscasts for days.

With the typhoon season rapidly approaching (if it has not already started), you need to figure out what you should do. And that is what I will be writing about next. After I have finished some other things I already started.