For a typhoon that still hasn’t shown up, typhoon 14 has been all anybody has been talking about today. It is supposed to be the same strength as the hurricane that went through New Orleans recently, but I think that Japan is a little more used to weathering big storms. Everybody at school was expecting to get a typhoon warning – once that happens everyone can head home.
All the students wanted to go home. All the teachers wanted to go home. Yet, we stayed. The warning never came, although the typhoon was still bearing down on us. It was moving slowly, and just before I left school they said that it was turning north towards the Asian continent and away from central and northern Japan. That means that we’ll just catch the edge of it sometime in the middle of the night, and we should be OK to go to school tomorrow. Staff and students were highly disappointed in the news.
I had two classes today – one with Miyake sensei and one with Tsutsumi sensei. This was the first day back for Miyake sensei and it was good to catch up with her. I heard stories about her vacation and it sounded like she took an English study break, which she deserves. Our class went really well together, and I could tell she was happy to be back in front of the students like I was.
After school we all left early just in case the typhoon was speeding up, and so I got home around 5 p.m. Kuniko sent me a message saying that she would handle dinner, so I did a few chores and secured some things on the back porch just in case.
Kuniko cooked up buri teriyaki and tofu for dinner. The buri (yellowtail tuna) was in filets and she sauteed them in a pan with some teriyaki sauce, and then combined with the tofu we had a very healthy dinner. I was impressed with the buri – it had really good flavor and was very tender. It was also really inexpensive – that’s the nice thing about buying fish in Japan. It’s always reasonably priced and always fresh.
For dessert we had some Haagen Dazs ice cream (classic chocolate and mango/vanilla). Outside the wind is starting to blow a little harder, but it’s still dry out there. We’ll see how things go tomorrow!
