When typhoon number 10 of this year, or Shanshan as it is called, approached Kyushu the other day, the anticipated trajectory would put us close to its path and as the typhoon grew in strength, businesses and the city government prepared for its arrival. And so did we. Many shops and medical clinics contacted its customers regarding closure, and so did schools and kindergartens. We prepared by making sure we had batteries and flashlights and enough to eat and drink in case of an emergency, and pulled down the shutters in front of our windows and waited for the storm to arrive.
My son and I followed the path of the typhoon on the map provided by the Japan Meteorological Agency, and to our relief we could see, as the typhoon was approaching, that it took a more southerly path than we had feared. Looking at the images on TV it was clear that it was a very violent storm that hit Japan and caused a lot of destruction, as well as injuries and deaths. We felt very lucky sitting in our house with just a little bit of heavy wind, a short power outage and lots and lots of rain.
Being not sick and still having to spend two days indoors however, is not easy for a young boy who is growing day by day and has the need to move a lot. But somehow the days passed quite smoothly, we played with cars and LEGO, we cleaned and play catch with balls, we read and did some little dad-son-art together. Having recently bought new indoor shoes for kindergarten since the old pair was to small, I thought it would be fun to use the old ones before throwing them away so we decided to play with colors and make patterns from different objects we found around the house. Our favorite became painting the tires of a toy car and running it over a paper, as well as painting the old worn out indoor shoes and use them as a stamp.
My son was very happy with the result so we hung a few images on the wall and my son proudly showed his art-loving mum the pictures when she finished work. And we decided that soon we would do art the three of us together.
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