Typhoon Kompasu

Ohayo Gozaimasu! (Good Morning)

Well my nice beach vacation in a tranquil hut on Torii beach has been cancelled, for the time being. Mom and I were looking forward to some tasty margaritas on the front porch of our little cottage and some quiet time, instead we are gearing up for a typhoon. Oh well, mother nature has her own twisted sense of humor sometimes. It's interesting that we didn't even know a typhoon was approaching until we visited the commissary on Sunday and they had a TCCOR (what does this stand for anyway?) 3. The storm was due to hit in 48 hours and was still referred to as Typhoon Eight. We turned on the news (what passes for news here anyway) and found no information. We checked the Kadena Air Base weather readiness website and nothing was being reported there either. So we went to weather underground on the web and finally found a bit of news. By Monday, the thing had a name and we were at TCCOR 2, which is basically batten down the hatches, or secure anything outside, high winds may arrive in 24 hours. So we went to the South East Botanical Gardens, which is fortunately only 5 minutes away from Dawn's because as soon as we arrived the torrential rain began and we decided to head to the Hundred Yen and the Do It Yourself Store instead.

You have never seen a more organized hardware store in your life. All of the plumbing fixtures are neatly arranged in bins, I'll see how mom's pictures turned out and post them on Facebook. It was interesting to see all the space saving furniture, the cabinets and toilets. They have a toilet that you wash your hands under the faucet that fills the toilet back up! Talk about eco-friendly. They also had the most beautiful orchids, which sort of made up for the botanical gardens being rained out. After that we went to the Hundred Yen store which the kids always enjoy and then home for lunch and naps. We attempted the botanical gardens again in the afternoon and were worried that we might get rained out again, but it managed to hold off. We got to see some beautiful flowers and HUGE lily pads. After dinner and putting the kids to bed we had a girls evening of scrabble and margaritas, not quite the same as the beach but we still had fun.

This morning we have moved to TCCOR 1, which is fill up the bathtub, sandbag the doors and wait, we might have high winds in 12 hours. I guess they move through several phases of TCCOR 1, one of which is not going outside, so we are kind of stuck here on base. With our luck we would leave and not be able to get back on! We'll see what happens with Typhoon Kompasu. The kids are a little anxious but it looks like just another hot and sunny day outside with a slight wind.