Today when I woke up, it was hot and sunny. It didn’t seem possible that twelve hours ago, the biggest typhoon in sixty years was raging through Tokyo. So I went out to take a look at one of the places that had been evacuated – a neighborhood next to the Tama River.
The top map (below) is what the sleepy Tama-gawa is usually like – a narrow band of water, lined with parks and soccer fields, picnic grounds and baseball diamonds. On the bottom is how it looked during the typhoon. The river spread out to its farthest banks, and then some, flooding basement apartments and shops along the street that runs alongside it.
Reuters just published these astounding satellite shots of Tokyo* before and after the typhoon. I made them into an overlaid video (alternating between before and after) and marked where this area is, so you can see what it actually looked like from above:
And here are the zoomed-in areas that are marked with circles in the above photo:
I found a few pictures of the area on the net, and although they’re not taken from the same angle, you can get the idea of how much the place changed after Typhoon Hagibis had its little rampage.
But the typhoon clouds did have one silver lining: only in the aftermath of a heckin’ huge typhoon, can kids go FISHING in sidewalk puddles.
Oh, and guess what? I learned something new. I kept reassuring people that even though it looked scary on the weather maps, Hagibis wasn’t a hurricane, it was just a typhoon. Which I think of as a rainstorm that didn’t skip leg day at the gym.
But I was wrong! Turns out, the only difference between a hurricane and a typhoon is that hurricanes originate in the North Atlantic, and typhoons originate in the Northwest Pacific. Cyclones (I’ll tell you for free), are the same storm, but hail from the South Pacific and mostly wreak havoc in that other hemisphere.
And therein lies a nugget of useful wisdom amid this spectacularly Instagrammable disaster: most of the time, being in the middle of something that looks like the end of the world isn’t like that at all. Even the biggest typhoon to hit Tokyo in sixty years just felt like a heavy rainstorm with a side of annoying wind. The only hardship 99.9% of us in the big city suffered is that we had to soldier through without our iced lattes.
* Reuters credits Planet Labs Inc. for the satellite photos
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The Last Tea Bowl Thief was chosen as an Editor’s Pick for
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“A fascinating mix of history and mystery.” —Booklist
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Jonelle Patrick writes novels set in Japan, produces the monthly e-magazine Japanagram, and blogs at Only In Japan and The Tokyo Guide I Wish I’d Had
Only In Japan 
Thank you for the very good tour of the post-storm. I didn’t see such good information elsewhere. Jim in Bethesda, Maryland
Sent from my iPad
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Thank you, Jim. I’m sure there were as many different experiences with it as there are people who were were affected by this storm, but I’m glad you found my little corner of it interesting!
Great summation and photos. Quite a storm with amazing amounts of water. All our friends in Tokyo are fine.
We had one typhoon when we lived outside of Hiroshima and the streets were deserted when we went out. It felt like a rainstorm but nothing to write home about. I think because of all the water everywhere in rivers, ponds and where we were in the enaka, down every street, there is a history.
Glad all is well.
D🍂❣️🍵☕️
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Love ❤️ your posts 🥰
Yes indeed, I am glad you are okay Jonelle… My comment above sounds rather inappropriate for the post. It was quite the storm, and I’m sure not everyone came out unscathed. Thank you for sharing the pictures. I can’t help but think from what you have told me of Japan that they will have the cities put back together in short order, and much faster than it would happen this side of the globe.
Your comment wasn’t at all inappropriate! The thing is, in the part of Tokyo where I was, the typhoon didn’t seem all that scary. I wasn’t near a river that flooded, not any trees that spectacularly fell down, nor any roads that washed away. Despite all the dire warnings, our neighborhood didn’t even lose power. At the absolute height of the storm, I even tried to take a video of the trees thrashing around outside, but it looked so meh, I didn’t even post it. Not to take away from the truly life-threatening things happening in more rural areas, but Tokyo is surprisingly overengineered for natural disasters, so wwe didn’t suffer at all (unless you count doing without my iced latte FIRST WORLD PROBLEM).
Thank you, Suzy!
SO glad you’re okay, Jonelle!
Thanks, Libbi! Compared to the truly scary stuff happening in other parts of the country, Tokyo was pretty tame.
Thank you for sharing all of this. But most of all, I’m glad you are okay. ❤
Thank you, sweet friend. I was lucky not to be in parts of the country that were harder hit.
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