Japan gears up for Super Typhoon Hagibis; residents stock up on food and supplies

By Tyra’nell Pille-Lu
EBC Japan Bureau/Eagle News Service 

TOKYO, Japan (Eagle News) — As “super typhoon” Hagibis threatens Eastern Japan, residents in the Kanto region — including but not limited to Tokyo, Chiba, Saitama, Yamanashi, Shizuoka and Kanagawa prefectures — take several safety measures to prepare themselves for this year’s most powerful typhoon.

Residents rush to the nearest supermarkets as they stock up on food, drinks, and other supplies ahead of the weekend when Hagibis is forecast to hit the greater Kanto region.

Several shelves of bread, eggs, meat, bottled water, packed noodles, cooked rice packs, flash lights and batteries — to name a few — in local supermarkets were emptied as people stocked up these basic commodities for a few days to a week of supply.

In western Tokyo, staff of a public after-school day care center in Ome City took down tents, and bamboo poles and kept them inside one of their classrooms. They also removed the school’s kids pool, stepping boards, sliding screen doors and other objects that might be blown away by the storm and kept them inside.

Even the service bicycles were moved inside and trash bags were securely tied on a safety space to prevent them from flying off the school compound.

The day care staff told Eagle News in their dialect, “this is a strong typhoon, so we have to remove everything we have outside. We have to be ready.”

The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said Hagibis is categorized as a violent typhoon, which is considered as the strongest on Japan’s scale for typhoons.

They predict Hagibis will hit the capital’s greater area from Saturday evening while several places will also start experiencing rain starting Friday night.