Sapporo 2019: When the typhoon caught up to me

I woke up the next morning to heavy rain outside the hostel. Back when I was in Nikko I had seen on the weather satellite imagery that another typhoon was starting to cross over Japan and for about a week I had managed to outrun it but when I was in Sapporo it finally caught up to me. Granted, by the time it had reached Sapporo the storm had lost much of its strength but it still had a ton of water to dump on me. Nothing could be done about the weather, so after eating breakfast I gathered up my stuff and headed out into the rain. The next part of my journey would take me deep into the interior of Hokkaido and I needed to pick up my rental car.

Also, I remember that morning there were two main news stories on Japanese TV: the damage caused by the typhoon, and videos of drunken Irish hooligans reveling in the streets following Ireland’s victory in the previous night’s rugby match.