My very first typoon!

Tropical storm Talas approaches!  We thought that it might cause school to be cancelled today, but it didn't .  The students are hoping that school will be cancelled tomorrow, but since tomorrow is my day off, I'm not affected.  So far it's just been windy and raining off and on, but apparently it's supposed to hit land early in the morning.  According to the Japan Meteorological Agency, the center (do tropical storms get "eyes"?) will past about 50 mi/100 km west of here.  It's kind of exciting.  You know, provided the house doesn't blow down or something drastic like that.

I don't know how you're supposed to deal with a tropical storm, so I just got some extra chow and plan on spending tomorrow with a good book (or three or five) watching the rain and the wind.

So, the first two days of school were quite good.  Practically the first thing upon arrival I met two of our foreign exchange students for the year, which was excellent for me, b/c we got to calm each others first day jitters and cheer ourselves on while we made speeches and stuff (I talked for under a minute.  I guess I can't really call that a speech).  They seem quite cool.  Then I was recruited to help with some interviews for Japanese students who were applying to go overseas.  Then I went home.

As I was walking up the street I saw a lady feeding several of the random cats around here.  It made me happy.  Maybe they were hers, but I don't know why she feeds them by the side of the road if that's true.

Today I was more certain that I would get to school at a reasonable time, so I got up at 5:30 instead of 5, which is really terribly exciting when you think about it.  Of course, I then got terribly turned around in Umeda and ended up on the wrong end of the station completely (read: 15 min out of my way) and when I got off at my subway stop I started walking down the road in the wrong direction (but only for a little ways).  On my way back, a friend showed me a quicker way to get around Umeda that actually involved going outside for part of it.  I was amazed.

So we met some more with the exchange students, who are awesome, and then my fellow ALT and I spent about 4 hrs planning one lesson.  Well, we were doing some other things like having a break for lunch.  (Sat with several students who had just spent time in Canada and apparently are very talkative, but suddenly claimed they couldn't speak very good English and were very quiet.  I don't know why.)

Anywho...I should probably go to bed soon.  Here's a pic of Talas:

Also, I think the rain has settled in for the duration.