hagibis
Typhoon Hagibis on Saturday. They said it would be the biggest in sixty years, and everyone believed them after last month.
Friday the supermarket had no bread and no water. I bought rice crackers and canned mackerel. Taped an X on the balcony window (the news says it does nothing, everyone does it anyway). Filled the bath. JR stopped the trains from early afternoon. The rugby in Yokohama was cancelled. All evening our phones screamed alerts about the rivers, the Arakawa.
At seven Hoshino-san came up the fourteen steps with a floor cushion and a thermos of hōjicha. Ground floor, alone, she said. She said it like a fact about the weather.
We sat at my low table with candles ready and the radio on. She talked about Niigata, snow up to the second floor, her husband's terrible singing. She looked at the pothos and said, "It faces the right way now," and I didn't ask what she meant.
Around midnight she fell asleep on my futon, on the oshiire side. Before she did she said, "It's warm up here. It was always warm up here."
The wind is dropping. It's a quarter past two. I'm on the cushions. The light outside hasn't come on.