Rain

This tropical storm has been moving so slowly it has lasted three days, or is it four? For two days we had warnings issued by the Met Office, but nothing much happened. Then yesterday afternoon I went out to get an acupuncture treatment and then have dinner with a friend, and was relieved to see the warnings had been downgraded to 'advisories.' We had a lovely Chinese meal, in one of the big covered shopping streets in Osaka, and then I went down to the underground station to catch the train. The train went underground until two stops before mine, and when we came out above ground I was surprised to see it was raining hard. It had been raining a little when I left the acupuncture clinic, but nothing serious.

At my station it was raining very hard indeed. I stood under cover, waiting and hoping it was one of those brief squalls. Finally I got sick of waiting, and made a dash for my bicycle. I had an umbrella, but this was not umbrella sort of rain. My head stayed dry, or at least dryish, but when I got home the only option I had, really, was to strip off just inside the door and make a run for the bathroom to grab a towel for myself and a bucket to put my clothes into to get them to the washing machine without dripping water all over the floor. It was THAT sort of rain.

It's raining again now.

It has been a lot worse in other areas in Japan, and there have been mudslides and flash floods and so on. So far twenty-one people have died and fifty-four are missing.

It was not raining when I took this picture. I wish I'd had my camera instead of my phone, though. (For those who know Osaka, this is the crosswalk between the JR and Hankyu stations.)