Typhoon 101...What's in a name?

Are you ready for a science lesson? Today’s topic is typhoons –just the name ‘typhoon’ refers to something quite specific though the phenomenon has other names…

“Typhoon is the name for a tropical cyclone with sustained winds of 74 miles per hour (65 knots) or greater in the western North Pacific Ocean. This same tropical cyclone is known as a hurricane in the eastern North Pacific and North Atlantic Ocean, and as a cyclone in the Indian Ocean. (weather.com)”

Since there’s one howling outside as I type I can present you with some first hand information. It is astonishing how strong the wind is. The bursts are so strong sometimes the house actually shakes. We can see sheets of water blowing – I mean being blasted -past the middle school (it is doing a great job of blocking some of the direct hits of water and wind but there’s still plenty moving around it). It’s almost like the wind has picked up the ocean and throwing it at the land.
Fortunately, the Japanese, who’ve had lots of experience with these, have done some things to their homes. First, we have easy to close storm windows – metal sheets that simply slide on the tracks over your windows. The wind and anything that is picked up is held back from the windows. Does make the house quite dark but at night it makes no difference. We kept the windows open so we could watch until it got dark outside. Also, the doors throughout the house have little hooks on the bottom of them. On the floor, against the wall, is the doorstop – complete with a small wire that hooks over the aforementioned hook on the door. Eliminates all the banging doors when the wind hits (works for earthquakes too).
Back to the lesson. They measure the wind speed in knots. Now I saw 75KT and I was thinking 75 miles per hour. However, it’s actually closer to 90 mph when you finish all of the calculations. The storm could easily dump 20 inches of rain – the trains and busses are usually stopped and sometimes certain areas are evacuated.
The weather bureau/government keeps an eye on storms and issues “keiho” (warnings). You listen when they do. They called one this morning at 8:15 and all of the schools were expected to close and send everyone home. What a mess! The kids had just arrived and we turned around and sent them home at 10:00 (it took that long to call all the parents so that there’d be someone home for them). What a day!!! The storm actually started at about 2:00 so it was a good thing we sent them off.

Placing flowers on a sheet of rice paper. The pictures were taken with the cell phone masquerading as a camera. 

Large outdoor vat where they boiled the husks. 

Paper Making

It was so cool to watch them make paper. They begin with boiling the husks in a huge outdoor pot. The charcoal (made in the shop down the road) is shoveled in under the vat and the husks are put inside and simmered. Once they’re ready, the fibers are hand separated and then mixed into a pulp. I’m sure there’s a bit more to it but my Japanese leaves much to be desired so my knowledge comes from the available photos and watching the women working.
They eventually pour the pulp into a large holding tank and mix it with a lot of water. They have a very shallow prepared tray they use with bamboo mats. They swish the tray through the water a number of times before they pull it up to drain. They then open the tray and pull up the bamboo with the wet sheet of paper on it. It is put upside down on the rack and then the bamboo sheet is carefully pulled up. Next the woman adds dried flowers that she had and then repeats the process to create a sheet with the flowers embedded. Fascinating to watch. Once she has a complete stack created, she puts them in a press to squeeze out the water. They had a large curved, heated metal sheet that they took the pressed papers to and laid them against the metal to dry completely.
There you have it….paper making 101!

This was a working waterwheel that was attached to the building where they were making paper. They also had some huge koi in the pond. 

A shot of the very overgrown graveyard perched on the hill above the river. 

Asuke

Asuke is really a cool place to visit. The Japanese Maple trees there are fabulous and HUGE – nothing like the small ones we generally find in the states. There’s a large river that runs through the area – nice for wading into to cool off when it’s very hot. It does run quickly so you can’t swim very much. The bridges that span it are very picturesque.
There are a lot of hiking trails in the area. We took the large, main trail that meandered down the river to a shrine and a craft area. I’ll post a couple of pictures to show some of the things we saw.
The shrine is not particularly large but it does have more than one building in the area. The amazing thing is the extensive cemetery next to it. The headstones are found all over the hill, some with vines growing on them much like you would expect to find in a rainforest. They range from very simple, tiny stones to fairly large monuments. We walked through the area, wishing we could read more of them to know how old they were. Many had fresh flowers on them…one had an ornate tea cup on one side – and a can of Asahi beer on the other!!
The craft village was fabulous. They had craftsmen working inside each building. We first stopped at a woodworker – he was creating bowls from very large, dried bamboo pieces. The color that was in the bowl was the natural color of the bamboo and he cut and worked on it to keep some and take off some to create a beautiful bowl! He also had many beautiful (and expensive) bowls from wood I couldn’t identify. Next there was a charcoal kiln. Here the man burned the wood and then, at the proper time, he removed it, cooled it, and then cut it up for charcoal (we used some for the fire at our camp area).
They had a group who were working on creating the paper umbrellas the Japanese use. The work that goes into creating each and every spoke for it and the paper (hand painted, of course) and how they laid it out on the spokes. It was nothing short of remarkable. They are still purchased and used here – traditional weddings always use them. Other crafts included knife making, dyeing, boat making, weaving and, my favorite, paper making. (I’ll have to do a whole new entry on that).

The falls were gorgeous. This area had 2 falls cascading down from the alps. The water was cold but very clear. 

The mountains were shrouded in clouds but they towered around us on the walk. Many great views! 

Magome to Tsumago

Magome-juku is a small town in Kiso Valley, a couple of hours north of Nagoya. The valley is in the Japan Alps, and is one of the old post roads that connected Edo (Tokyo) with Kyoto in the Edo period. (If you want the details, ask Jeff. He knows them all!) The towns of Magome and Tsumago were built to be “post-towns” - places where travelers could stop to rest and eat and be safe. At the time, the warlords were supposed to spend a good portion of their time in Edo (allowing the emperor to keep an eye on them). It meant the roads were used quite frequently. It would have been a very long trip to have had to make the journey every year. The road now is partially paved with blocks from an earlier construction cemented into the path. Parts of the path actually go through people’s backyards!!! It was a good thing they had signs or we would have turned back, thinking we had missed the road!
Tsumago-juku is the end of this trail and is another of the post-towns, (juku means post-town). It’s a cool place because they’ve worked at keeping it old looking – it’s supposed to be just like the old cities in the Edo period. They don’t allow telephone poles, tv aerials, modern buildings or modern signs in the town. There are some wonderful old homes there and beautiful koi ponds/waterfalls all integrated into the landscape. I found the one I want to retire to! There are many waterways coming down from the alps in the area so they’ve simply used what is coming anyway as a part of their landscape. It’s really quite beautiful!

Denny's

Yes, you've read correctly. We ate at Denny's. This is indeed a Denny's never to be found in America. The menu includes tasty morsels such as spaghetti with three truffle sauce. The salad was great - the veggies were roasted (including lotus root). They also had pork curry, a fried mushroom dish and chorizo with squid rings (they look just like onion rings from the pictures). We had a great time just reading the menu and looking at the pictures. I want to go back for the sundae. Oh my gosh I have never seen anything quite so big in my life. I think it would take at least 2 determined people to eat it. Care to join me?

Nagoya tower from Sakae. We're on top of a dome structure over an open shopping area. The pool is only inches deep and you can see the water from below. 

Nagoya by Car

Imagine any large city at rush hour. Now, imagine driving through that city with completely indecipherable road signs, signs written in a totally random script. Add to that the fact that there are very few road names anyway, readable or not. Give yourself a map that shows the basic layout, without road names, and in the same indecipherable language. Add to that mixture, driving on the wrong side of the road. Add drivers who weave down the road to continuously get ahead. That just might give you a rough idea of driving into downtown Nagoya…an experience not to be repeated.

We have come to the conclusion that the subway system is the only way to go.

He looks so high - and this was on the way back down!  

They had up to 6 up in the air at one time! Really spectacular. 

She was playing with the orca with the hoop and ball. She patted him on the nose when he gave them to her and then fed him some fish. Quite a playmate! 

Nagoya Port

It may have taken well over an hour to arrive at Nagoyako – bus, train and subway – but it was well worth the trip. The Aquarium is spectacular. As you walk through the doors, you are greeted with a view of dolphins cavorting in the large, expansive tank. The animals enjoy performing, diving, jumping, gracefully swimming on their backs and coming right up to the window to watch you, watching them. They’re magnificent.

There’s also an orca whale swimming through the different tanks, always with a small dolphin by his side. It’s spectacular to watch him fill the window as he moves from one area to another.

Traveling up to the 2nd floor, you can see the open tanks and the ‘performance’ area. The tanks are all interconnected, allowing the animals to move from one to another, or to be isolated for training – or waiting to perform. We watched the keeper playing with the orca. The whale brought a hula hoop up to her and played with it, teasing her and not letter her have it. Finally, the trainer quit playing and used hand signs to have the whale give it to her, which he did (and, of course, got a fish in return).

The actual show was fabulous. The dolphins were the stars. They cavorted about the tank, jumping and flipping in unison – including 6 of them jumping out of the water together. Pretty remarkable what they can do – and they seemed to love doing it.

More to come….the aquarium was huge!

Under the windows are the airconditioner/heater units for each classroom. Note the hangers from the ceiling - they can move back and forth on the track! 

School

We finally made it! We are in the building and what a building it is. There are some features that would make a teacher fall in love. First…there is storage – floor to ceiling along one whole wall. Second…there’s a sink in every room WITH counter space. Third…there are hangers along the ceiling that can be used to hang things – and they can be moved along the track wherever you want them. Fourth…the wall are completely ‘spongy’ so that you can put thumbtacks in anywhere you want. Fifth…they are big (larger than Chinook’s). Sixth…there are about 14 kids in each classroom. Seventh…the science room is really a science lab with everything you need to conduct hands on experiments. This is just heavenly.

Getting into the building has been really difficult. Today was our first day in and they had organized about 100 kids, alumni and parents to come help move everything. The problem was that there was also a typhoon headed our way. Instead of working all day, it was called off at 1:00 so that everyone could get home before it hit (we’re actually on the outer fringe of it so it’s not that bad but there are definitely high winds outside.) My library has a lot of the furniture and chairs and a good part of the AV stuff already moved in. We have all of the books to move but with the wind and rain coming down they didn’t want to get everything soaked. There are still a lot of boxes left in the gym to be moved. I did get a chance to get some of the AV stuff out of boxes and on shelves or checked out to people (the more they take, the less I have to shelve). I will be barcoding a lot of stuff here because most of the AV stuff is not barcoded. It will take a while but with only about 25 classrooms it won’t be difficult to get it done. Some stuff gets shared because there is not enough for one a piece but everyone is flexible. Already found the ‘tech’ guy who likes to hang onto the Elmo to “make sure it’s not messed around with”. It’s fine because he uses it frequently.

I now have all of the boxes in the library – hundreds of boxes – looks like thousands of boxes. I have to wonder when it will all end. At least there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

The storage unit - found in every room. The counter on the left is the sink.