Typhoon Evac Spurs Okinawan Adventure

Back last month in early October Japan was hit by Typhoon Hagibis. October is right in the middle of typhoon season, and it’s not uncommon for Japan to withstand many typhoons every year. However typhoon Hagibis was a different animal. According to everyone’s favorite and most reliable source Wikipedia, typhoon Hagibis was the most devastating typhoon to hit the Kanto region of Japan since 1958. It seemed that out of nowhere this storm underwent a rapid intensification from a small tropical storm to a category 5 super typhoon almost overnight. All in all, the storm ended up killing 95 total people, and another seven are still missing. Additionally, the storm caused more than $9 billion USD in damage. If that wasn’t bad enough, the storm triggered a tornado, and also caused a magnitude 5.7 earthquake to strike about a half hour before Hagibis made landfall. Even with all of this devastation Japan didn’t miss a beat. The day following the storm, it was as if everything was back to normal. People went back to work and it really seemed like nothing bad happened at all. 

Luckily for myself, I was tasked to evacuate the main island of Japan during the typhoon in order to save the airplanes. Apparently, sitting on the ground through a category 5 super typhoon is not good for a plane. Who would have thought? So I secured my house, hopped onto a plane and set course for Okinawa!

We left on a Friday, before the storm hit, and were tasked to come back Sunday after the storm passed through. That gave me Saturday to explore the island and be a tourist. My aircraft commander was a very active person who already had an entire plan laid out to ensure that we made the most of our off day. The agenda included lots of beach time, good eats, and a hike to a waterfall. The first place of note we went to was a sweet potato candy factory. Apparently, sweet potato treats are very popular in Okinawa. The cool part is that the sweet potatoes in Okinawa are all purple, so everywhere you look there is purple sweet potato ice cream, cookies, and other tasty treats. I know what you all are thinking, how can a potato make a tasty treat? I’m guessing it has to do with adding sugar, but whatever they do it works because the treats are tasty. The factory had all kinds of different snacks on the main floor, and then there was also a big window to look through to see them making the treats which was pretty cool. 

After we loaded up on sweet potatoes, we headed for the beach! Okinawa is a small island, so there are beaches everywhere you look. I think all in all we went to at least four different beaches to soak up the sun, and jump into the waves. The water was pretty choppy, due to the typhoon raging to the north of the island, but other than that it was a beautiful blue sky day. I felt a little bad chilling on the beach while everyone back in Japan was undergoing the typhoon, but it didn’t take me long to get over it. One of the guys I was with was undergoing a challenge with some of his buddies to see who could do the most push ups in one week. So we all joined in and were doing sets of 25 push ups on the beach every 30 minutes. We got some good pictures from it, and the push ups helped to offset the beer we were drinking. 

All in all the beaches were picture perfect. My only complaint was there was a lot of coral making bare feet in the water a little dangerous. I cut up some of my toes, but I survived. I did however almost step on a sea urchin, luckily I spotted it before it was too late! 

After the beaches we headed to Kangaroo Burger to grab a bite to eat. This was by far the best burger that I have had since being in Japan. There was a wide variety to include a chili cheese burger, bbq bacon burger, as well as a guacamole pineapple burger. I would post a picture of the burger but I ate it before I thought to take a picture. Even when you are surrounded by amazing Japanese food, the classic American burger never disappoints. After lunch we decided to go on a hike. We settled on the Henan River Ta-taki Waterfall trek about much debate. This trek was awesome, we hiked up a river all the way to the waterfall. I wish that I would have brought water shoes because the rocks in the river were slippery, but I took it slow and only almost fell a couple of times. The trail itself was not too crowded which was nice, but the entire thing was in water so maybe that scared the people away. 

Once we got to the waterfall, there was a small group of people taking in the sights, and to all of our excitement, waiting in line for the rope swing! We chilled at the waterfall for a good half hour, jumping off the rope swing, and swimming in the pool. At one point we all gathered up under the waterfall and stood up on some rocks with the water crashing down on us. It was quite a rush! After we were finished with the waterfall, we hiked back and decided to cap off our amazing day by watching the sunset on the beach. 

The following day, with the typhoon finished, we took off from Okinawa for Tokyo. The typhoon really does clear the bad weather out because the day following a typhoon is always some of the nicest weather you could ask for. Apparently, its tradition to have a bbq cookout the day following a typhoon due to the nice weather. I got several good shots of downtown Tokyo coming back in to land. The rivers were severely flooded and you could see the dirty river runoff staining the ocean. Other than that though, I wasn’t able to notice any damage from the typhoon. All in all it was a great trip. I got to avoid the storm and adventure on an island.