Where was this weather yesterday?

Typhoon Guchol has passed by with less than anticipated strength. The storm gave us very little wind and rain which resulted in almost no damage. Of course we are extremely grateful for the lack of damage because it is important to keep everyone and everything safe especially during the typhoon season. This morning we even woke up with a clear blue sky which had shown us that the storm had passed and we would be able to go back to our very warm summery selves.

This was, however, very short lived when a thunder and lighting storm moved in a few hours ago. Although we are not experiencing and wind we do have a great deal of rain and thunder we are experiencing right now which has made a lot of people wonder. . . . where was this yesterday? I myself wondered the same thing and discussed it in the video below.

Preparing for a Cat 4: Guchol kicked it up a notch

Waking up this morning I found myself making a regularly scheduled check on the tropical storm website that I check during this season. When I did I was surprised to find that the typhoon that is headed our way is now predicted to come at us at a category 4 (as of 0600 June 16). This was surprising to me because it is early in the season but nonetheless this doesn't change the fact that we have a storm headed our way. Before I continue on I feel that it is important for me to mention that there are a number of important facts to remember if you are reading this and are in Okinawa. First of all there is never a guarantee that the storm will follow the predicted path. We have these predictions to ensure that we have some warning and be prepared but there is still a chance that it could take a number of different paths or disappear all together.

Now that this is out of the way let's talk about what a typhoon is and what you should expect if you are here in Okinawa. To make it as simple as possible a typhoon is a wind storm which usually comes a long with rain although there are times when it doesn't and let me say that is an incredible interesting storm to experience (which I did the summer before last). They are incredibly easy to prepare for and are very survivable unlike some of the storms that you may encounter in the US or other countries. They are categorized according to the power of the wind that is traveling with the storm. There are tropical depressions and tropical storms which are the very basic warnings that there may be a typhoon on the way and then there are typhoons category 1 through 5. Category 1 is predicted to have approximately 90 mile per hour winds where a category 5 have winds over 156 miles per hour. All are possible and about 3 or 4 years ago we did have a cat 5 over here (which is also known as a super typhoon) but again you can prepare for these storms. In the case of this particular storm we are looking at winds to be approximately 130 miles per hour.

Being that you now understand what a typhoon is (roughly) let's talk about what is necessary to do in order to prepare for this type of storm. The first thing that you are going to want to do is ensure that you have enough supplies to get you through at least 7 days. These foods should be capable of being eaten with little prep time and should also be nonperishable. I understand that this may be difficult and therefore might not be as healthy as what you are used to but trust me when I say it is important to ensure that you have these foods. I am sure that there are some people out there who feel that 7 days is too long but the fact of the matter is that there are cases when you may be without food for this amount of time and so you want to be prepared. There was one storm a few years ago which had sat over us for 4 days and once it finally went away there was still over 24 hours before the roads were safe to drive on again and about 48 hours before the stores were open again. For some families, including my own, typhoon food is nutritious and as healthy as possible but I also take the advantage of getting some fun things to keep morale up because the fact is when you are in the house for more than 3 days non stop without being able to leave it can be difficult to handle and sometimes oreos are welcome. Of course it is also important to ensure that you have water available also. In some cases it is a good idea to ensure that you have the bath tub filled as well as bottled water.

There is also prep that needs to be taken care of outside of the house. When we have a storm, especially one cat 4, it is important to ensure that everything is taken into the house and/or storage rooms. There are also other helpful and interesting ways to put your outdoor items away like putting them in a car of van or in cases where you can not bring them in the house or put them in a secure area you can tie things down. Personally I feel that tying things down is not the best option because with steady winds of 130 to 140 miles per hour a cord is not necessarily going to keep things in place. I cannot stress how important it is to pick up your outdoor items. Any little doll or screw driver can be deadly during a storm like this and it is so important to ensure that you have taken care of your items in order to ensure that your assets are protected as well as the assets of those around you.

Overall preparing for a typhoon is relatively simple and can be done within a few hours (and your yard will look wonderful in the process so talk about a win win!). The most important thing to do, however, is to stay focused calm and do not worry about the storm. If you are going to focus energy focus it on the preparation and the rest of the storm will be a piece of cake!

I think I live in what was base housing. . . .

Let me first start off by saying that I do not live in what is a "traditional" japanese style house. To be honest I am not even sure that there are any more traditional japanese style houses in the southern part of Okinawa. Yes some of them have been preserved and rebuild but they are not the majority of what you will see here. Of course this is not something that you would have to search the history books for because the houses are clearly different from what you see in the parts of Okinawa that were not so much affected by WWII. I also live very close to the base fence line like many other people in Ginowan and yesterday I noticed something interesting. When walking up the road to get back to my house I found that one of the tombs along the left side of the road had been cleaned up. The wall is usually covered in growth but someone usually comes by and takes care of it. Yesterday, however, it had been cleared out all the way down to the stone wall itself and I noticed that it said painted in stencil yellow it said "SLOW DOWN 5 MPH". This was very interesting to me because first of all there was no Japanese that was painted on and the us of MPH rather than KPH.

Now for those of you who may be reading this looking for historical value I am going to be very up front. At this time  I honestly do not know the factual information about the location where I live as far as what it was before the past 10 years. Okinawa is a very difficult place to follow especially when it comes to some of the places like MCAS Futenma. Many of the articles that I can find about the location are focused on certain topics and it in the past 24 hours has not produced information regarding the actual layout of what the base used to be in the past. What I do know is this, MCAS Futenma during WWII was build as a "temporary" air station. The land was leveled to allow for American air planes to land and assist in the war efforts. At some point I do know that the American Military opened some land back up for the people of Okinawa to live back in again. This is basically the extent of what I know. Well that and the fact that MCAS Futenma is still here. (**For those of you who are reading this who are aware that there are a lot of other facts regarding what was and may never be recovered from MCAS Futenma's "settling" in Ginowan please know that I do know that information and have not chosen to go into that type of detail for this particular article. In the future I may take the time to put together an article with that information, however, I would like to devote to it the proper time and research to ensure that all of my facts are right rather than just pulling it together carelessly. Thank you for your understanding**)

So, we're walking past this sign and I say to my husband "I bet we live in base housing" to which he stops in his tracks and said, "wow I bet we do". There are a few clues to this which become clear when you take a look around. First off there is the structure of the base housing. Even if you are not a military member you would be familiar with this structure because of the houses near the fence line. These houses are usually one story, concrete and have a roof which is I can only describe as what you would see on a house of cards. Flat across with an overhang around the sides. This is the same style of house that you can find in certain areas around the bases in the MCAS Futenma area. Although some of them have been changed understandably since the 1970's when I imagine most of these were built you can still see the distinct similarities. These houses are small, maybe two or three rooms but enough that a small family can live there or maybe a small group of Military personnel.

The road that I live on is also quite curious. As many of you who may have seen my videos before know that it is small and leads to nowhere really, except for houses and to be completely honest it is not large enough for more than one car to go down at a time with few places which allow for a turn off. There is, however a road that is on the base beyond the fence line which runs parallel with the road that I live on. I imagine that at one time the fence line went further down maybe all the way down to 58 at which point it would have perfectly met where the MCAS Futenma sign sits today. Maybe this small neighborhood (and many others) were part of that on base land and then were given back and the fence line moved back? I truthfully have no idea. If this was the case I find it quite sad. The reason being is that there are tombs throughout this entire neighborhood which means that if this were to be part of the base at one point families would have been unable to visit the tombs of their loved ones which is a rather big deal here in Ginowan. Now I do understand that this was and is still very much the case elsewhere on the base right now but still the thought of this land being off limits does still strike a cord with me. Now, it could have also been the case that this was base housing which was constructed outside the base. This was something that I understand was also done during certain time periods. Even now this same type of thing happens where housing is built targeting the American Military members. The potential difference is that now you can rent the houses where as there may have been housing that military members used without paying at some time in the past.

Regardless what turns out to be the actual factual information (which I will hopefully find some times in the future) this is an interesting thing to ponder around.