I sometimes take cab to go back home after work. It is not because I am lazy to take a train, but I am just too late for catching a train after work… The day before yesterday, I took a cab from Yoyogi-Park area to Shinjuku station. A cab driver started talking to me.

“Sir, it seems typhoon no.9 is coming.”

“Yes, it seems so, when will be the hardest time, do you know?”

“I am not sure, I am not following weather forecast.”

“See, but the weather was bad today, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, indeed. there was just squall before you got in. One of customers said, it is like being in Indonesia!”

“Yes, it is like we are in tropical zone.”

“You know, my customer, I remember when I was a kid, we used to check temperature on weather news every morning because we were so excited about swimming classes at elementary school.”

“I did that, too.”

“I remember temperature we used to see was always ranging between 28 and 30 during summer. It rarely went up higher than 32.”

“Yes, but driver-san, we see 35, 36, or even 37 in these days. This is something.”

“That’s right. Climate is changing.”

“Well, it will be a crazy day tomorrow because of typhoon. Take care. Thank you for the ride.”

Tokyo gets heat-island effect during summer. And it has become more intense over the years. Lots of people are anxious about it. And people in Tokyo have started Uchimizu project ^[1]in 2003.
They basically set up special Uchimizu weeks from the end of July to mid August, and splash water on the street all at once. It actually cools down tokyo for few seconds.

I think this is a cool collaboration project that let people know one of the facts about Tokyo and big city in general. But, heat-island effect should be tackled by facilitating exhaustive and reliable plan like this one ^[2]in Seoul.

Anyway, this Typhoon no9 seems to bring the beginning of autumn as well. But, firstly, I hope people careful about this typhoon and will be fine when they get out of house after it passes away.