Posts

William Nothing to mention about this except the delight of driving on remote Kumamoto roads. Slowness and caution are not just necessities but the point. I was once with my wife, our dog in the rear with the windows open, when I noticed in my back-mirror a dog chasing us, and I mentioned to her how it resembled ours. (He'd jumped out; we recovered him safely.) Hint: go mapless.

William The Kyushu Shinkansen connects Hakata and Kagoshima in 1 hour and 17 minutes at speeds as fast as 260-280 kph.

Kirk here with some thoughts on a linguistic issue that was driving me nuts until I figured it out (I think) a minute ago. In the image you see below, level 4 is listed as "All must evacuate." In the video on this page (URL below) the announcer says "everyone must evacuate" with no qualifications:

Kirk here with a slightly premature (?) post-mortem on the typhoon. I just happened to watch part of a live press conference with officials at the JMA (Japan Meteorological Agency) where they were explaining why the typhoon wasn't quite as bad as feared. I was watching with NHK's app on my phone but I found the same content (recorded, not live) on YouTube here:

Kirk again. I think this English-language video report from NHK WORLD-Japan is very good:

Kirk here with some more about the typhoon:

Kirk here posting again about how to interpret evacuation levels. For those of us in Kumamoto City (which currently at Level 4), Level 4 does NOT mean that we all have to evacuate, regardless of our housing circumstances. If everyone attempted to do so, that would itself be a sort of disaster. To determine whether or not you need to evacuate, you need to look at the flowchart in the following post:

William If you desire a diversion while we're hunkering (and as long as electricity and Internet access hold up), enjoy Windfinder: https://www.windfinder.com If our luck holds, the majority of the winds will be concentrated on Kyushu's east coast and blunted by the mountains.

Kirk here. This link came to me in an e-mail from the Kumamoto International Foundation:

Kirk here with an Aljazeera article. The image is similar to one in an NHK article I posted but the content is somewhat different.

Kirk here. Directives to evacuate (hinan shiji) have already been issued for Amakusa and Minami Oguni:

Kirk here with a video from NHK WORLD-Japan. They say that the bullet train (Shinkansen) will not run between Kumamoto and Hakata tomorrow afternoon.

Kirk here with more about the approaching typhoon. According to TropicalStormRisk.com it is currently a category 4 cyclone. That's the category just below a so-call super typhoon. A category 4 storm has "1 Minute Maximum Sustained Winds" of 209-251 kilometers per hour -- more than double typical highway speed. By the time the typhoon gets to Kumamoto it should have settled down a bit but TropicalStormRisk.com is predicting that we have a better than 50-50 chance of experiencing category 1 or above winds. Category 1 winds are between 119 and 153 kph -- highway speed and above.

Kirk here with a little screen capture video of gust speeds (in kilometers per hour) that are projected for tomorrow starting at 11:00 AM. These images are from Ventusky.

Kirk again. I just posted about checking out your area to see how prone to flooding it is:

Kirk here. In preparation for the approaching typhoon, I'd like to introduce (re-introduce, actually) Kumamoto City's hazard map:

William My paternal grandfather was an arachnologist, a person who studies spiders and other venomous lil guys. He did much work on tarantulas and the black widow (former: docile, good pets; latter: very dangerous). But he lived to be 95, so perhaps the venom he exposed himself to was actually healthy.

William Heads up on the typhoon. It seems to be gaining strength as it barrels straight towards us. Take precautions and ensure you have stuff for the next few days as infrastructure disruptions may render your convenience store less convenient..

William There are multiple fascinating places to visit in Kyushu, which got a write-up on Japan Today. A favorite of mine is 都井岬宮崎 (Toi Misaki, Miyazaki - or Cape Toi), which is known for its feral horses. They are housed but head out each morning to spend their days keeping the grass short and making new horses. They are generally tame and allow themselves to be approached. Some say they are descendants of horses brought by Ghingis Khan during his invasion of Japan. Pretty much only accessible by car, this site south-east of Kumamoto should be on your bucket list. https://blog.gaijinpot.com/5-historical-and-quirky.../

Kirk here with news about Kumamoto City's YouTube channel, which was discussed recently in the City Assembly. This is the channel's most popular video with 397,341 views. That's pretty good, I guess, but the price tag was ¥11,990,000, which works out to about 30 yen per view and is more than a typical person earns for a full year of work. The member of the council who brought up the topic of the channel seemed to be concerned that the city wasn't promoting their videos effectively. Quite a few videos have fewer than 30 views each.