One of the berms they built on the river yesterday partially collapsed, leaving a tracked crane stranded out on the water. I was driving by and saw as it happened. Now I have seen a lot of things swallowed by the river – houses, rice fields, even a brand new 350z, but a crane? That would be something new. But the owner of the crane wasn’t ready to give up on it yet. He sent his men out on a boat, and they probed the sunken area of the berm with bamboo poles. It appeared the road had sunk around half a meter into the river. One man got off…

In an official document today, I used the following reason for changing a parts supplier: “Supplier’s factory destroyed by typhoon.” The situation described isn’t funny; I just never imagined someday writing those words. The day of the typhoon, I drove right by that factory. That area got completely washed out when the river overflowed; if I had been there just an hour later my car would have suffered the same fate as the many others that had to be pulled out of rice paddies and sinkholes in the weeks to follow. Note: If you are interested, my Typhoon Tokage blog posts are archived here, and the liveblogging from my keitai…

First off, me and mine are OK. I know the rest of the world can hardly be expected to notice yet another typhoon hitting our little island this year, but let me tell you, this one was by far the worst. It has caused destruction on a scale I have not seen in person since the Hanshin earthquake almost a decade ago (although, luckily, it wasn’t nearly as destructive as that). The big river that runs through Sumoto overflowed for the first time in anyone’s memory (perhaps the first time, ever), as did most of its branches and tributaries. The city, for the most part, was not prepared for flooding…