Mother Nature gave the Tokyo-area a dynamic wakeup call this morning.
After about a week in sunny southern California, I just arrived back in Japan last night. You can always count on at least a little jet lag after a trans-Pacific flight, and after getting back to my apartment in Kanagawa Prefecture I fell into a shallow, somewhat sporadic sleep.
Those sort of conditions can often produce strange dreams, and sure enough, I had one in which I was eating in a restaurant while a huge thunderstorm raged overhead. But while it turned out the meal was all in my imagination, the weather was very much real, as gigantic storms spewed lightning and dropped a staggering amount of rain on eastern Japan this morning.
Particularly doused was Kawasaki, the city sandwiched between Tokyo and Yokohama.
▼ “The street in front of my house is flooded. Is this the ocean?!?”
Due to its location, many of Kawasaki’s residents commute to its neighboring metropolises for work or school. For most of them, their ordinary routes are strictly land-based, but today was a dramatic, semi-aquatic exception.
▼ There are no doubt many days on which the open, airy experience of riding a scooter is a refreshing, invigorating way to kick off your morning. This was not one of them.
Seriously, this is the kind of weather that makes you want to call in sick. Sometimes, though, even staying at home doesn’t mean you can stay dry.
▼ “It’s pouring in Kawasaki. Here’s what’s happening to my house.”
Amazingly, while most of the pictures seen here were taken between 6 and 7 a.m., by 9 o’clock, the sun was out and the skies blue over Kanagawa. As of noon, though, dark clouds started to gather once again, with their rumbling thunder hinting at more rain to come, proving that there are few things harder to predict than the weather of a Japanese summer.
Source: Jin
Top image: Twitter/@2junya3 (edited by RocketNews24)
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