Typhoon #23

Okay, so now that the winds have died down, I'll tell you about the latest typhoon.

I walked to the board of education today, all ready to take my medical examination (everyone gets a medical exam once per year), being quite proud that I figured out how to use the stool sample thing-a-ma-bob, despite not being able to read the instructions, only to find out that the exam was cancelled on account of the typhoon. So, I walked to the junior high, and arrived after the morning meeting had finished. One of the English teachers approached me and asked "Do you understand what they say?" No, dumbass, you just saw me walk in the door. How could I possibly have understood the meeting that I was not present for? (On a downside, I think I've hit "culture shock", but on a plus note, I'll take it out here and with friends rather than on random Japanese people). Anyhow, I polietly responded "no", and then they explained that because of the typhoon, none of the student would come to school. The teachers still have to stay, of course, because the building would blow away without our extra weight (that's the only reason I can figure).
I asked the head of the English department what we were supposed to do, and he said that we would clean the school in the morning. Now, usually the students clean the school every afternoon after class. They do not come in on Sundays or Saturdays to clean, presumably because if no one is around the place won't get messy. But for some reason it was really important for us to clean despite the fact that the building had been cleaned the day before, and no one was going to use it all day. But I digress...
The cleaning itself was actually fun, because I got to shoot the shit with the one person in the school that I can (head English teacher). Before we left to go clean, I was just waiting to follow him, but there was uncomfotable silence. Then, he started to speak, and timidly said "we have to clean, but first, I want to go smoke". I burst out laughing. In his way, he was apologizing for delaying us from beginning to clean, perhaps not realizing that I really wasn't in a rush to start, and had only offered to do so because I was being polite.
After his smoke, we went and cleaned his room. When that was done, we cleaned the boys' bathroom (which, suprisingly, the boys normally don't clean very well). Then I acidentally smacked a teacher in the face with some phys. ed. equipment (everything has to be moved around or secured so it won't blow away). Then, back to the staff room where I fought off the desire to sleep with nothing but my bare hands. High point of the day: kyoto-sensei bought us all cake to reward us for our hard work in the morning. Low point of the day:
I was trying to take a nap (still a little sick) when the door bell rang. It was none other than my landlord, who I had met once about three weeks ago. He very quickly tried to explain something to me in very fast Japanese. All I caught was "important" "water", and him raising his hands as though we were about to be flooded. Being the responsible adult that I am, I decided to turn on the tv to the news station to try to figure out what was going on. All I could catch was "taifu" (Japanese for, you guessed it, "typhoon"), and "Mie-ken". A "ken" is a prefecture (kind of like a province, but way more Japanese), and Mie is the name of the one I live in. At first, I thought they were just listing the prefectures that were going to be hit, but then I noticed that they were saying "Mie-ken" an awful lot. So, I deduced that Mie-ken had either been selected to be miraculously sheilded by some new experimental anti-typhoon technology, or that we would be the hardest hit.
A little while later, the head English teacher called (which means that someone called someone else, who called him, probably because none of the someones felt confident enough to be able to explain to me what he was about to say). He informed me that I might have to evacuate my house. A van would drive around, making announcements on a loud speaker. So, if I heard a loudspeaker, and saw people running for their lives, I should join them. Got it. I might have to spend the night at the town hall. He said to please prepare anything that I might need to stay overnight ... or longer.
Being the responsible adult that I am, I decided to go take a nap, and hope that the whole problem just went away. Fortunately, my plan worked brilliantly. The winds have died down, and I decided to update my blog (I'm very far behind). Although the worst of the typhoon seems to have passed, another one should be here in a few days. Hu-zzaa!!

a bientot