Floods

Blog entry for September 2015

Tochigi has been in the news, internationally even, for flooding. We had a (local) record-breaking amount of rain on Wednesday, causing problems at the nuisance level just about everywhere, but the serious problems are all from rivers further to the East. Our local river (2 mins from the house) is Akiyamagawa, and it looks angry and brown, but not threatening. The next big river to the East of Sano is Omoigawa, which has overflowed in many places; basically it has a much larger catchment area in the mountains far to the north. Then the worst appears to be Kinugawa (incidentally the -gawa or -kawa on the end already means "river"), which is the next to the East.

The BBC website has a comparison with some UK flood facts, but still doesn't mention the obvious fact that in England it rains practically every day, a bit at least, whereas here rain is always concentrated in the occasional downpour day... http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-34205879.

I did have my own little adventure on Wednesday night, which was the last regular practice session before our performance of Carmen on Sunday... suffice it to say that to get home I first had to wade through knee-deep water to get to the car park, followed by a long detour because of roads being closed. Carmen also means I will be completely tied up for the weekend. If you want to read about the last Oyama Carmen, it's here.