Posts

Kirk here with some information about evacuation sites. Kumamoto Prefecture now shows evacuation levels visually on a map. The page can be switched to English and also shows the location of evacuation centers. As I wrote before, even if you live in an area where evacuation is recommended, whether your not you should actually go to an evacuation center may depend a good deal on the characteristics of the particular location or neighborhood you are in. Still, I think this map should be useful if you're wondering whether or not your particular area is safe.
https://portal.bousai.pref.kumamoto.jp/

Fiona here. If the non-stop rain is leaving you with mountains of washing that just won't dry, it might be time to try out a Japanese 'coin laundry'. I experienced my first one today and was blown away by the stylish decor and relaxing ambience. If not for Corona I would have happily spent a couple of hours here reading a book, and I may do so in the future, with or without laundry. It's called The Laundry Lounge and is located in Asoda, Kita-ku, not far from Hikarinomori. Use of the dryer cost 100 yen for ten minutes, instructions all in Japanese I'm afraid, except for 'Push' and a 'How to use the washing machine' mural on the wall. The place also doubles up as a plant and furniture store, and has several shops nearby to kill time while you're laundry is spinning.
https://laundry-lounge.com/concept

Hi,friends,Atsuko here.
Let’s guess,where I was. (I took these photos on July 28.)
The straight road leads to ......
My school is along this street.
I miss the blue sky and white clouds and humid summer in Kumamoto.
We become little bit nervous because of Corona pandemic, heavy rain and the damage, vaccines pain...
Sharing blue sky photos with my hope to be fine for everything.
Please be safe, smile lots!
Who is the first one?
How many hint pictures you need to answer??
Please answer at comments.(*^^*)

Kirk here with a graph showing the amounts of rain that have fallen in the past three days as of 9 AM this morning. Kumamoto hasn't had the largest amounts -- Saga and Nagasaki have had more -- but records have been set all over. The numbers are in millimeters, so spots that have gotten the most rain would have close to a meter of water on the ground if none of it had drained away. There's a lot more to report but I'll stop here for now.
総雨量1000ミリ超えも　8月ひと月分の3倍の雨　川の氾濫発生　命を守る行動を(気象予報士 日直主任)
きょう14日(土)は、福岡県、佐賀県、長崎県には「大雨特別警報」が発表され、佐賀県内を流れる六角川で氾濫発生。今後も同じような場所で非常に激しい雨が降り、さらに災害エリアが広がる恐れも。命を守る行動をお願.....

Douglas here, posting this at Kirk's request. As a Scotsman, I like rain. I was born when it rained, I played in the rain and grew up in the rain and have, for the past 20 years, been enjoying the rain in Kumamoto. I realise that there is a dangerous and sad side to too much rain. But for me, rain let's me see things that most people miss completely. Yesterday Megumi and I went out in the rain and the following video is our first edit of the video sequences we shot at the Takahashi Inari Jinja , Kumamoto.
Takahashi Torrential Rain.mp4
The weather forecast for yesterday and the next 5 or 6 days was rain, rain, torrential rain and more rain. So, yesterday Megumi and I decided it would be a good…

Kirk here with news about COVID-19. Kumamoto hit a new record today: 207 new cases in a single day. The image is from the following NHK page:
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/special/coronavirus/data/
I heard on RKK that most of the new cases in Kumamoto are of the Delta strain. That report can be found here:
https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/a5c792c5434398b1f3e25bc07c75cacec588d04b
Speaking of the Delta strain, there was some important national news today that may come to affect Kumamoto. The following Japan Times article has the following headline:
First Japan case involving lambda COVID-19 variant linked to Olympics
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2021/08/13/national/lambda-olympic-case/
It's beginning to look like warnings about holding the olympics in the middle of a pandemic were correct. Here's a quote from another article:
"Some scientists have warned that the [Lambda] strain could be more transmissible than the Delta variant."
https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/lambda-variant/

Kirk with another update on the rain. The images are from the following TKU video (click on the click to view the Japanese video; it includes reports on several different kinds of damage). I heard on RKK that the rain loosened the earth that the roots were clinging to and that that led to the tree's collapse. If the tree had fallen in a slightly different direction, it would have damage the walls shown in the second picture. Those walls were severely damaged in the 2016 earthquake and repairs on them had just ended.
https://www.tku.co.jp/news/?news_id=20210813-00000007

Kirk here with a little video (in Japanese) about some damage (roads washed out, water outages, etc.) in Amakusa. My impression of the overall situation in Kumamoto is that the rain has taken many rivers close to flood level but, for now, most levees are holding.
熊本 川増水で道路崩落のおそれ 断水も
　熊本県天草市では川が増水し道路が崩落する被害が出ています。　この影響で水道管が破損し、およそ３３０世帯が断水しています。 　「恐ろしいですよ。こんなこと今まであまりなかったです。家の前が崩れていたの.....

Joe Tomei here, I'm not sure how many people are thinking of going out of country and considering trying to return, but I thought I would pass this group on, it was recommended to me by a friend (though I am pretty much staying inside the borders) Any Kumamoto related information, please feel free to put in the comments.

Kirk again. Lot's of rain. Apparently, Yamaga got a month's worth today. I'm sharing a few screenshots from videos that local TV stations have put up:
https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/d4b2adcc630a96f91dd7eeffb13e123290d8d245
https://rkk.jp/news/index.php?id=NS003202108121759250111
The one on top is from FNN, which is Teribi Kumamoto locally. The image is from Nankan-machi. The other two are from RKK. The red car is in Chuo-ku of Kumamoto City and the white car is in Yamaga.
The thing about the rain is that it's not over. We are expected to get more of the same until tomorrow so things could get worse. Take care!
P.S. On TV I saw people wading through ankle-deep water in Shimotori, a covered arcade that rarely floods!

Joe Tomei here with a post by Jason Morgan from his Kumamoto.guru blog. Enjoy!

Kirk here with one more point about the rain and evacution notices. The notices come as images from which the text cannot easily be copied and pasted. If you can read the Japanese, good for you, but if not, you're forced to find a workaround or suffer the anxiety of having received a very loud, heart-stopping message that seems bad but that you can't read.
One workaround is to put the Google translate app on your phone, take a screenshot of the annoying alert, open up Google translate, select the screenshot and then get it translated -- not exactly something you appreciate being forced to do in an emergency -- but a possibility. (The image shows how a warning that I just got comes out.)
I'm not about the extent to which this is an iPhone issue or an issue with how local governments send out warning, or both.
Carlton McCycle said that he can get the same warnings on LINE and then use LINE's translate function. I checked on my app but the only message I was able to find from Kumamoto City was slightly different.
I'd be interested to know if others out there find this as irritating as I do and if you have other workarounds.

Kirk here with a follow-up on the rain. I just got an extremely loud and (for me) rather annoying notice on my phone that elderly people in Mashiki need to evacuate (I don't even live in Mashiki, though I'm not too terrible far away). At any rate, the rain is coming down quite hard and I suspect (though I haven't had a chance to check) that river levels are rising.
When we have heavy rain and I'm wondering how likely it is to continue over the next hour or so, I often check Yahoo!'s "zoom radar" page:
https://weather.yahoo.co.jp/weather/zoomradar/
It not only shows the current situation but how things have changed in the last hour or so and what is predicted for the coming hour.

Kirk here with the weather and some COVID-19 news. The first colorful image is from the following page:
https://www.jma.go.jp/bosai/map.html#10/32.692/130.672/&elem=all&contents=warning&lang=en
It's calm outside now but more rain is predicted for the coming days. NHK was saying that the conditions are right in many parts of Japan for extreme amounts of rain. They mentioned Kumamoto in this regard in their national broadcast. Evacuations have been called for in some parts of Amakusa and the elderly in many areas have been encouraged to evacuate.
If you're new to this evacuation business, let me point out that a lot depends on your particular location. If you are in an area which is at elevated risk for landslides or in a flood plain, you should probably think seriously about moving to someplace safer. In my case, however, I live in an area that is higher than most of the land around us (we even have "yama" in our name), so I can't imagine any amount of rain making us evacuate. So, study up on your particular area.
Also, please be aware that you can't depend on me or other Kumamoto International editors for timely warnings. We do what we can but, since we're doing this as volunteers, we can't always just drop everything and send out warnings at the first sign of trouble.
Finally, Kumamoto set a new record for new COVID-19 cases today with 181. There's a video about that (from which I took the second colorful screenshot) here:
https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/f678b2b1c58e3e15d5d3c7695fc0d082d16bbda7

Chuck Waterman here:
I highly recommend Rendaiji Clinic to anyone who needs to get PCR tested and get the results back the same day.
https://goo.gl/maps/KrcUfGaKfrcNmh4z5
I arrived this morning just before 9 AM, let them copy my passport, filled out information on an uncomplicated form, got my PCR nasal stick up the nose and was out of there within 30 minutes!
I had to go back at 6PM to pick up my results, but - hey, same day is same day!
33,300 is a little expensive, but that includes
A) the test
B) getting a bilingual test results form and
C) getting it processed and given to you the same day you are tested.
蓮台寺クリニック · 3 Chome-4-3 Rendaiji, Nishi Ward, Kumamoto, 860-0055, Japan

Joe Tomei here with something that our intrepid Atsuko Kumabe found, which is the upcoming mandatory bicycle insurance for the prefecture!
https://www.pref.kumamoto.jp/soshiki/54/85371.html
Unfortunately, the page is in Japanese, but to briefly summarize, bicyclists will be required to be insured from 1 Oct of this year. The website uses automatic web translation or you can paste the link into google translate.
A second page here (unfortunately also only in Japanese)
https://www.pref.kumamoto.jp/soshiki/54/51723.html
lists insurance providers as well.
This is rather important, if you don't have insurance and have an accident where someone is hurt, you will be liable for damages. My wife tells me that the insurance was recommended for both my daughters when they started JHS.
At this point, as I am not a bicycle rider, so I need to crowdsource from all of you recommendations and help to get such insurance.
I recall when I first came to Gakuen, one of the exchange students had an accident on a bicycle that was not covered by insurance. I don't remember the details, but I do recall appeals made to the faculty for donations because of the amount the student would have been liable. The webpage gives two incidents that required 95 and 92 million yen respectively. So if you have any information, please drop it in the comments or send it as a DM to the page. Thanks in advance.
「自転車保険」に加入しましょう - 熊本県ホームページ
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Kirk here with a postmortem on the typhoon: The approach didn't cause serious damage in Kumamoto on Sunday but points west of us were hit harder.
Yayoi Kusama Outdoor Pumpkin Sculpture Damaged During Typhoon in Japan
The work had been installed on Naoshima Island since 1994.

Liz here, next time you are downtown , please admire the impressive artwork of Antonin Raymond , a Czech-American architect, which graces the facade of the Taigeki Kaikan at the entrance of Shimotori. (check out Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonin_Raymond
and this link
https://www.lib.city.minato.tokyo.jp/yukari/e/man-detail.cgi?id=135
for more detailed information on him and his work.)
There was an article in the Kumanichi in June (I think that is correct)
https://nordot.app/781444286556160000 regardiing the renovation of this work of art. There are others more
qualified than I am to translate it, but the art is amazing even without the historical background. The first photo shows our two downtown landmarks, the castle and the Taigeki facade

Kirk here with some photos shared earlier in a comment by Billy Bento (thanks Billy!). The photos show some of the devastation of Kumamoto toward the end of WWII. More famous tragedies (Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the fire bombing of Tokyo, etc.) seem to have caused what happened in Kumamoto to get less attention than it otherwise would have. While Kumamoto's experience may seem insignificant in comparison to that of Hiroshima, for example, accounts I have read in Japanese have helped me understand how horrible the end of the war was for many of the people here.
By the way, speaking of Hiroshima, I heard an interesting interview on NPR (public read in the US) about John Hersey's report. Highly recommended. Here's the URL for that:
'Fallout' Tells The Story Of The Journalist Who Exposed The 'Hiroshima Cover-Up'
https://www.npr.org/2021/08/06/1025059199/fallout-tells-the-story-of-the-journalist-who-exposed-the-hiroshima-cover-up
https://mainichi.jp/english/graphs/20200709/hpe/00m/0na/002000g/1?fbclid=IwAR1tna2NLuwP0xC7Emu1_bmCOYsQHpMaCL2_Xsa4sVnT9kdPlpSJd200hiI
In Photos: Discovered photos show destruction of US WWII air raid on SW Japan city - The Mainichi
The Sakuramachi area in Kumamoto's Chuo Ward is seen from a U.S. bomber on Aug. 10, 1945, in this image owned by Takao Imayoshi and William J. Swain,

In college, I had to take a laboratory science, so I took geology - so called "rocks for jocks" as it was considered the easiest. But as with many things in life, it took a felicitous turn, spurning a life-long love of all things rock. Kumamoto is a paradise for geologists, and I'm not exaggerating here: many from around the world come to study the tortuous contusions that created our world. The best place to check this out is Amakusa. You can find pretty much all of every rock kinds there - igneous, sedimentary, metamorphic - you name it, they've got it. I mean, look at the photo below: you could spend a lifetime studying this! Geology is fundamentally a window back in time, a lot like reading tree rings. Take your opportunity during the summer holidays to check out the geology of Amakusa (Aso is too recent). My habit angers my wife as I spend so much time analyzing rocks, but I think it secretly pleases her (geology is, like marriage, complicated). - William