Super Typhoon

They've been saying on the news that the rainy season in Japan came a couple weeks sooner than usual this year. Well apparently it came with a major bang in the form of a super typhoon that's supposed to plow over okinawa today. But with the rainy season here, you know what that means...

Shogun! Bring out the umbrella brigade!!

I've determined that Japanese are, contrary to popular belief, descendants of the wicked witch of the west. Whenever it even so much as mists, every person in this country whips out umbrellas sometimes out of nowhere!

Ok actually theres an old wives tale in Japan that if you get caught in the rain you'll catch a cold. Apparently this is super effective (50 dmg!), because you can generally spot the foreigner as the only person in a crowd without an umbrella.

Here's an example - one evening on my way home from the supermarket, I was was waiting at a stoplight while it was a tad bit sprinkling out. In front of me stood a mother and her two young children, both huddled under their (slightly overweight) mom. When the boy got tired of trying to fit underneath the umbrella (which didn't seem that effective anyways), he stepped out for a moment, only to have his mom quite literally yell,

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! GET BACK HERE! YOU'LL CATCH A COLD!!"

Now don't get me wrong, I commend her for being a good mother, it's just that from my position and given that it was barely raining it seemed somewhat silly. By the way, I had no umbrella at the time, hah.

You should see the scramble crossing in Shibuya when it's rainy out though. It really looks like two umbrella armies clashing against each other. I'll have to find and post a video later.

Edit: Delivered!

Anyways, although theres been a ton of talk on the news about generators and solar panels selling like hotcakes, so far no updates on whether or not we're going to be doing planned outages in the summer or not. The whole country is pretty much in full blown energy saving mode, with trains and stores cutting the lights still. I have a feeling we might just barely get by since the culture is incredibly cooperative, but we'll see. Fortunately it's still cool outside, so I'm trying to enjoy our current cool weather + electricity situation while I can.