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September 11, 2001

Unbrella

It's been crappy weather for the last few days; pissy, noncomittal rain in fits and starts all weekend, and somehow the climate's managed to be uncomfortably humid without being noticably warm. Tokyo's been feeling the leading edge of the latest typhoon (nowhere near as much damage as the last one, thankfully) and it finally hit the capital properly today.

This morning I caught myself doing something I swore I never would: fighting to control an umbrella in the high wind. I hate umbrellas, won't normally use them, but I must have gone soft over the last few months. I battled it into the lee of a doorway, flapped around with it briefly and then just stopped and thought, no pun intended I swear, "blow this". I stuck it under one arm, made sure my trenchcoat was fully buttoned, and strode the remaining two hundred meters to the office through the thick downpour. I got soaked, but I will NOT let myself be humbled by a 200 yen piece of shit plastic parasol. No. It ends here, and it ends now.

The torrential rain carried on all day, until suddenly at about 5:30 I got dragged out onto the fire escape by a colleague to witness one of the most spectacular sunsets I've seen in a long time. The storm had passed just like that and the view west across Tokyo, back along the line that the typhoon had travelled, was superb - the sky over the horizon was red and amber, the ranged buildings were varying shades of brown and ochre, and the clouds were tinged orange against a darkening blue sky. Freaking awesome. We jogged up six flights of stairs to the roof and realised we could see Tokyo Tower and the NTT DoCoMo building in Shinjuku, right on the other side of town.

Oh yeah - and Mt. Fuji. Partly hidden thought it was by a nearby apartment block, there's no mistaking it in silhouette: a chuffing great, perfectly symmetrical trapezoid, towering on the horizon and always, always far bigger than you expect it to be. Just awesome.

Posted by chris at September 11, 2001 10:19 PM | Permalink

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