Japan, of course, is a very seasonal place, with a strong tradition of doing different things during each of the “four” seasons. In reality there are more like eight seasons in Japan, since the dreary rainy season in June-July is nothing like true summer, and the super windy period in December called kara-kaze is very different from real winter. September is typhoon season, when most storms blow up from the Pacific to wreak havoc on Japan, usually hitting the southern islands of Okinawa or Kyushu but often reaching the more populated areas around Osaka, Nagoya and Tokyo. Yesterday Typhoon no. 17 (also known as Typhoon Jelawat, though Japan always uses numbers instead of names) made landfall smack in the center of the country, with 180kph winds that broke trees and downed lines and washed one unfortunate man out to sea. It also overturned an itasha car decorated with characters from the Clannad anime, to the general horror of Japan’s anime blog readers.
September is ‘typhoon season,’ and very dangerous.
