"Typhoon in the Morning"

This is Kelly, and that is our forecast on Accuweather today - typhoon in the morning.  I have never seen that forecast at home!  Today is Mon, Oct 6, and it started raining yesterday morning.  The rain is supposed to continue until about noon today.  Traci received a call that school would start at 11:00 today for the students, as the center of the typhoon should be past us by then, but teachers needed to come at the normal time.  It is wet outside, but not very windy.

My mom and I arrived late on Saturday night, after an 11-hour flight, 2 trains, and a taxi.  After we flew past the Aleutian Islands and headed south towards Japan, the headwinds increased to 150 mph, and our speed decreased to 400 mph. I think this was the influence of the coming typhoon.

At the airport, we got onto the N'Ex Direct train bound for Shinjuku station at the west end of Tokyo. Shinjuku is known as the world's busiest train station, with 2 million a day moving through it.  From there, we had 15 minutes to get to the next platform (it took us 10 min) and catch the Super Azusa bound for Kamisuwa, which is just a few miles from Traci's town.  Not every Azusa train stops in her town, so that's the one we had to take.  The hardest part of the trip, was staying awake the last 45 minutes on the train!! We didn't want to miss our stop! My mom had been awake for 24 hours or more, and I had only a couple naps on the plane. We managed to be awake at our stop, and Traci met us there. YAY!  Outside was 1 taxi, and the driver spoke English!  A short drive around part of the lake, and we were deposited at Traci's apartment building.

We spent Sunday visiting, resting, and staying out of the rain.  Traci and Grandma went for a walk to the lake before it started raining heavily.

The apple orchards are full of big red apples, and they sell them directly from the orchard next to us.  We plan to go buy a few and try them, they look tasty!  Oishii!

Traci is at work today, so we plan to go shopping, and grocery shopping, and see what we might cook up using the fish oven. After work, we'll try to secure some rental bikes for our stay here.