Yesterday was The Day After Tomorrow
Yeah, I had to think about it too.
So Sunday morning I go for a walk and the weather is just OK, kind of cloudy but it feels like it is going to clear up and be pretty warm. There is an Arts & Crafts street festival on the main walk in Hachioji which is the town in which I stay. The last time they had one here, I met a Japanese man and his wife who had lived in San Francisco for 10 years but were now back in Japan and made jewelry that they sold at fairs across the country. Very nice people from whom I bought a bracelet for my daughter Shelby's birthday in April. Kaylee one of my other daughters, had said that she would like one as well on my next trip, so I was going to see if they were at this fair.
I head over to the fair around 11:00am but can see that some of the vendors are still setting up and I don't see the man or his wife. As I wander along, it starts to sprinkle a little and the vendors either start packing up or covering their stuff with plastic but by the time I get to the end of the last booth, the rain stops and everyone gets back to setting up their booths. I head off to the grocery store to get some food and then take it back to my room. Around 2:00pm I head back to the street fair and the sky is clear as a bell and it is getting warm. I walk the street again and finally find the man and his wife, we talk for a while and I buy a bracelet for Kaylee but it is getting too hot so I say my goodbyes and head back to the hotel.
I am in my room reading a book, for what couldn’t have been more than an hour or so when all of a sudden there is the sound of a huge explosion, I rocket off my bed and look down at the train station thinking that maybe there had been another accident but see nothing. As I am looking out the window there is another boom but this one is smaller and I can tell that it is thunder. All of a sudden the skies just open up start dumping what looks to be a continuous sheet of water on Hachioji, I can't see anything out my window. After a couple of minutes (the length of my attention span), I head back to my book and just get settled in when all of a sudden I hear things starting to hit the windows and since I am on the top floor I can also feel things hitting the roof . I jump out of bed again and head to the window. The sheet of water has now turned into a hail storm but the pieces of hail are about the size of a one Yen coin(Dime).
Being a little boy, I of course put on my shoes and head down in the elevator to see this for myself. It is awesome; the hail is hitting the ground and ricocheting all over the place. It is knocking the leaves off the trees and just generally reeking havoc. When It just starts to look like the ground is going to be completely covered with these little heavenly missiles, the hail turns to rain and starts to melt everything which kind of depresses me. The deluge of the rain and the melting hail almost immediately starts to overpower the drainage system and the street in front of me starts to look like a small river, so now I have a new natural disaster to keep me entertained. Unfortunately after a couple of minutes the rain finally lets up, the huddled masses emerge from whatever shelter they had found and there is no more carnage for me to witness. I head back to my room and back to my reading all the while hoping for a small tornado or something. About an hour later bored stiff, I head back outside and once again, the sky is blue, the birds are singing, the only evidence that anything happened is all the leaves on the ground.
I had forgotten all about the street fair people and the man and his wife, I didn’t go back there because it just would have made me feel bad because a lot of the vendors had very delicate paper based crafts, paintings, pottery, and blown glass. I hope they had all gone home before the Day after Tomorrow hit.
So Sunday morning I go for a walk and the weather is just OK, kind of cloudy but it feels like it is going to clear up and be pretty warm. There is an Arts & Crafts street festival on the main walk in Hachioji which is the town in which I stay. The last time they had one here, I met a Japanese man and his wife who had lived in San Francisco for 10 years but were now back in Japan and made jewelry that they sold at fairs across the country. Very nice people from whom I bought a bracelet for my daughter Shelby's birthday in April. Kaylee one of my other daughters, had said that she would like one as well on my next trip, so I was going to see if they were at this fair.
I head over to the fair around 11:00am but can see that some of the vendors are still setting up and I don't see the man or his wife. As I wander along, it starts to sprinkle a little and the vendors either start packing up or covering their stuff with plastic but by the time I get to the end of the last booth, the rain stops and everyone gets back to setting up their booths. I head off to the grocery store to get some food and then take it back to my room. Around 2:00pm I head back to the street fair and the sky is clear as a bell and it is getting warm. I walk the street again and finally find the man and his wife, we talk for a while and I buy a bracelet for Kaylee but it is getting too hot so I say my goodbyes and head back to the hotel.
I am in my room reading a book, for what couldn’t have been more than an hour or so when all of a sudden there is the sound of a huge explosion, I rocket off my bed and look down at the train station thinking that maybe there had been another accident but see nothing. As I am looking out the window there is another boom but this one is smaller and I can tell that it is thunder. All of a sudden the skies just open up start dumping what looks to be a continuous sheet of water on Hachioji, I can't see anything out my window. After a couple of minutes (the length of my attention span), I head back to my book and just get settled in when all of a sudden I hear things starting to hit the windows and since I am on the top floor I can also feel things hitting the roof . I jump out of bed again and head to the window. The sheet of water has now turned into a hail storm but the pieces of hail are about the size of a one Yen coin(Dime).
Being a little boy, I of course put on my shoes and head down in the elevator to see this for myself. It is awesome; the hail is hitting the ground and ricocheting all over the place. It is knocking the leaves off the trees and just generally reeking havoc. When It just starts to look like the ground is going to be completely covered with these little heavenly missiles, the hail turns to rain and starts to melt everything which kind of depresses me. The deluge of the rain and the melting hail almost immediately starts to overpower the drainage system and the street in front of me starts to look like a small river, so now I have a new natural disaster to keep me entertained. Unfortunately after a couple of minutes the rain finally lets up, the huddled masses emerge from whatever shelter they had found and there is no more carnage for me to witness. I head back to my room and back to my reading all the while hoping for a small tornado or something. About an hour later bored stiff, I head back outside and once again, the sky is blue, the birds are singing, the only evidence that anything happened is all the leaves on the ground.
I had forgotten all about the street fair people and the man and his wife, I didn’t go back there because it just would have made me feel bad because a lot of the vendors had very delicate paper based crafts, paintings, pottery, and blown glass. I hope they had all gone home before the Day after Tomorrow hit.
posted by Gas at 9:40 PM
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