Typhoon???

 There's a massive, powerful, slow-moving typhoon forming south of Japan.  Depending on which app or news feed I check we are either going to be spared the storm altogether, get the edge of it or get hit really bad!!  It's predicted to hit on Tuesday!

As always I'm more worried about our neighbors than the storm itself. The three closest houses all have nice cars parked outside, I worry that stuff from our yard could fly and damage their cars!  A few weeks ago David cut down some of the trees and bushes outside but didn't clean up, so there's a lot of branches lying around. We got some of them moved but still too many for me to feel that it's okay if the typhoon hit.  So this morning Mikey, David, and Christopher were tasked with cleaning up as much as possible.  While they were doing that Hannah cleaned the living/dining area and I did the kitchen and made lunch. Nice, productive morning. After lunch, Mikey and Christopher took the trash to the other house to burn!  I'm not sure how much they could burn because about an hour after they left we had an incredible thunderstorm!  The storm has passed and the temperature is a lot cooler, about 27C but humidity is high! Still, it feels a lot better than 35C.

Hannah took these photos the other day when she went to the special needs school.

Winnie the Pooh on the fence

She thought it was kind of cute. I like the fact that the photos show how interesting the houses are in Japan. The wooden house in front is old, maybe 40 or more years old.  The ones that look like boxes are very new, it's a style that is very popular at the moment.  The houses are next to a field, that looks like a rice field, this is also normal here to have a mix of fields and housing. And of course, no pavement to walk on, in most rural or semi-rural areas cars, buses, trucks, bikes and pedestrians share the road.  In larger cities, there are pavements (sidewalks) and bike lanes but in the countryside, it's a bit hit-and-miss!