Alec in Japan

We recently got hit by the big Typhoon Man-Yi here in Okinawa. It was about Level 5 and came straight through Okinawa and even hit the mainland pretty badly.

Before it came I’d not experienced a typhoon, earthquake, volcano or any other serious weather like that so I wasn’t really sure how big it was going to be. There had been such a build-up to it that I expected chaos, cars rolled over, roofs thrown off and things like that. Fortunately for Okinawa, that didn’t happen, even though this it was the biggest typhoon to hit Okinawa in two or three years.

I took some photos documenting what happened in the the leadup, during the typhoon, and in the aftermath.

This first photo to the left is one I took on the day before the typhoon was due to hit. It’s a photo of the hotel beach and you can see the dark clouds hovering overhead. There were black clouds like this for two days before the typhoon and even people who’ve never experienced a typhoon before (eg; me) could tell something big was coming.

This photo on the right was taken from my balcony at 10.20. The only cars on the road were of people who absolutely had to travel as in serious typhoons like this, holidays are declared so no one has to risk going to work or school. We weren’t sure if our minibus to work would come because of the weather, but sure enough it did and I went to work where shops and restaurants were open, but no one was allowed to use the beach or pools. This pic on the left shows the bus ride; the bus was shaking side to side in the wind, and we had to stop a couple of times. Traffic lights weren’t working due to blackouts, and there was some debris from trees on the road.

Here you can see the huge windows of the hotel sprayed with sand which had been blown against them. After the typhoon, sand was layered up pretty high on outside the hotel and had to be shovelled back into the sea. Even now, about 3 days after the typhoon, I can find sand in a lot of places and trees blocking paths in some places; it’s a lot of work to clean up after a typhoon.

These are the front doors of the hotel with Natalie and Ines, the bell girls. Usually the doors are electronic and shiny and pretty; today they were taped up in case they smashed and their electricity was turned off so the two girls had to open them by hand whenever someone came in and out. That day only three people checked in as so many flights were cancelled, and many people would’ve been stranded at the airport anyway.

To see the strength of the typhoon, look at this video of marines fighting it. The following five photos are photos I took of the aftermath. The typhoon didn’t cause a lot of damage, but it does cause a lot of inconvenience in the way of power cuts and difficulty of leaving the house and actually going anywhere.

Some staff at the hotel were given rooms to stay in for the night so they didn’t have to take the risk of trying to return home. None of the gaijin staff were given rooms (even I who finished work at 11pm on the night of the typhoon) and no one in my gift shop was (gaijin or Japanese). At the gift shop everyone received sheets to fill out on our experiences of the typhoon; was it dangerous, were we scared, and - most importantly - do we think we should’ve been given a room. Of course, all of staff banded together and agreed to write about how terrible it was and how we need to be given deluxe suites next time!

When I was filling out the form, I asked a coworker when the next typhoon might be and he told me next month probably. You hear a lot about natural disasters in Japan, but actually being here makes me realise how big of an issue it is. Yesterday, only a couple of days after the typhoon, a level 6 earthquake hit the area around Nigata. Seven are reported dead and 820 injured. The ever voyeuristic Japanese news just showed video of an old woman trapped in the rubble of her own house and the men rescuing her.

Have any of you had experiences with typhoons, earthquakes, bush fires, floods or anything like that?

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This entry was filed under Big Events.