Typhoons, Floods, Earthquakes and Tornadoes: Not a Great Day for Japan (Patreon)

So today has felt like quite a long day.

First off, thanks to everyone who reached out to myself and the team asking if we're all ok. Natsuki, Ryotaro and I are all doing well and have been relatively unaffected by the events of today. And by events, I mean the smorgasbord of natural disasters that Japan has endured in the last 24 hours.

At about 3pm this afternoon Typhoon Hagibis tore through the Kanto area (greater Tokyo) and caused a great deal of rainfall and flooding. By 9pm, winds made venturing outside a frightening prospect due to debris being flung around at high speeds.

Right now as I type this, it sounds like the window beside me is putting up a good fight against the air pounding into it. It all feels like the start of a bloody Roland Emmerich movie.

Spare a thought for the folks across the country who've had their homes flooded beyond repair by the 100 or so rivers that couldn't contain the rain water, the 340,000 people who had to evacuate the coastal city of Iwaki - the very city which I filmed in for the Fukushima documentary just a few weeks ago - and the man who lost his life when a tornado flipped his in a field this morning. I suspect by tomorrow morning there'll be more casualties along the way, especially given there are currently several dams that are under threat from bursting.

Finally, just as things couldn't have got worse for the people of the Tokyo area, a magnitude 5.8 earthquake shook the region as well in the early evening.

When you experience all this nightmarish chaos in one day, all at once, in the same country, you can see why Japanese people tend to be so resilient and stoic. Without that mindset, regular natural disasters such as these would be unbearable. Let alone 3 in one day.

Part of me wanted to run out and film it this evening - after all, I am the muppet who filmed a North Korean missile warning instead of seeking immediate shelter - but the winds were so strong even I felt uncomfortable at the prospect of a lone roof tile flinging off and finding its way into my face.

I'll walk through Fukushima's exclusion zone, climb a cliff face with Ryotaro, or ski-jump into a swimming pool at a moments notice, but screw going out into a blizzard of rain and wind on a pitch black night, with houses made of paper and bricks.

If you're currently in Japan this site is offering regular updates:

http://bit.ly/2M8GVuW

For now though, I certainly hope you guys are having a better weekend than we are here!

I'm off to see if I can sleep, despite it sounding like the end of the world outside.

(And to dream about a world in which Youtube promoted my Fukushima documentary instead of suppressing it due to its controversial nature).