So we've had another typhoon. This one was the 23rd of the year, and it was an especially serious one with over 50 people killed. It was really strong even here, but nothing was especially damaged in Saitama because we are so far inland. The biggest noticable effect was that the rivers were all really full. Koshigaya has a really complicated system of water routing and storage and even so, all the rivers and drainage canals and reservoirs were right up to their banks. I gotta say that I am really sick of typhoons. Rainy days just really suck, espcially in the morning, because there is no way to avoid getting your legs all wet riding a bike to school. The upper half of me is okay, because I have gotten pretty adept at riding a bike while holding an umbrella, but that doesn't help with the lower half. More annoying than that is the fact that everyone insists on driving like idiots, so the road is always full of all sorts of random cars going all sorts of random, dangerous directions.

So I have a contest going at school right now. The kids have until Halloween to draw me a picture of a monster. Then after Halloween, I will give them all pictures of monsters that I drew. I have already gotten about 10 monsters, even though this week is mid-term tests and no one should be wasting their time drawing monsters for me. The ones I have gotten are all really cool, so I wll post a gallery of them as we get closer to Halloween. Although some of them were obviously dashed off in five minutes by slacker 3rd year boys just to get the prize, some of them are really intricate and skilled. By the way, in case anyone is interested, I posted a gallery of all the images that are being used as the little top headers on this page, if anyone wants to look at them all.