Click here to find out more about Japan! Especially since the friendly Japanese man next to me had just explained what was going on: Typhoon Lan had been upgraded to a Super Typhoon and would hit Osaka on its way to Tokyo over the next few days.
The day before I had already fled to Okayama kilometers to the south-west for a day using the Shinkansen, and had thereby learned how much of a difference a rather small change of location can make in such cases. It was not only calm there, but even almost cloudless. Those are so common that the population just has to accept them, otherwise nothing will ever get done.
In the case of a super-typhoon, this means that people stay out of the house and continue all their normal activities until it gets really impossible to continue doing so.
The sticks make a metallic sound when smashed against each other. Even though the wind was too weak at first to blow the ball away, the waves came dangerously close to the pitch already. What do the Japanese do in such a case? Exactly, give the safety personnel some shovels and buckets and turn them into dam constructors. The angular, super lightweight construction is said to be able to withstand magnitude 7 earthquakes and wind speeds of up to kilometers per hour.
While I had already struggled with just walking against the wind, or staying on course when it blew in my back, they were getting married down there. And I thought to myself: if the Japanese can easily endure this, then I as a big, strong European should also be able to do so. So I packed all the gear into the backpack, put the rain cover over it, and went down to the beach.
