The next morning, once again, we woke up to pouring rain but we didn’t think much of it as we were on our way to Nagoya so it wasn’t going to spoil any sightseeing or us…. or so we thought!  Once we arrived at the station we realized that the trains weren’t running due to the heavy rain and we realized the severity of it once we realized the train sitting at the platform was the 6:20am train and we had come to catch the 9:37am train!  So basically no trains had left that morning and wouldn’t be leaving for a long time….

Japan is an island so naturally it is pone to tropical storms and typhoons, especially the southern islands (Okinawa, Kyushu and Shikoku).  As I type this now, Shikoku has recently been hit by typhoon 12 (meaning 12th of the year – they are given numbers not names) and typhoon 13 is out brewing in the Pacific. With improvements in safety and building, causalities are fewer than in the past but due to flooding and landslides, typhoons are still very dangerous.  Japan is very good at predicting and warning everyone about the typhoons but this doesn’t stop the cancellations of flights, trains and any other transportation possible. It’s something you have to take with a grain of salt which is what we did…

So in Takayama we sat at the train station for 6 hours (on the 6:20am train), others bailed and were going to try other modes of transportation but we thought it best (and safest) to just try and wait it out.  Once we finally started moving, although it was still raining, we ended up getting to Nagoya 4 hours later.  So a trip that should take a little over 2 hours took us 10 hours.  Needless to say, it was a long day. Riding on the train over the swollen river (repeatedly) was super scary and you really can see the power of water.  So while we didn’t get to see anything in Nagoya, we were safe.  Moral of the story: During a typhoon or tropical storm, stay safe!