Shutdown

Today, Kyoto has shut down much earlier than usual. I went to town in the afternoon, and many smaller shops on Shijo street – one of the main shopping streets downtown – were closed already, and many more closed by 17:00. The cafe, where I usually meet my English student, closed much earlier than usual at 18:00.

Why? A typhoon is approaching Kyoto, and people wanted to go home safely. In fact, there are two typhoons approaching Japan, one, number 20, from the southeast, that will make landfall some time tonight, and the other one, number 19, is southwest of Korea right now, also moving towards Japan (although there, Korea lies on its path first, so it may lose force there before hitting Japan).Right now, there is not much rain, but we have wind speeds of 30 km/h with gusts of at max. 55 km/h. It doesn’t sound good up here in 5th floor, and I think it is a better idea to close all my windows over night. I hope everything will be over tomorrow. Typhoons 19 and 20, 2018