It looks terribly scary. Floods do so much damage, and the clean-up takes so long afterward. I remember the hurricanes that hit my grandparents' home as a child, and how the smell lingered into the next year. By the time the fetid air had fully been exhausted from the area, a new storm was on its way.

That picture--is it downtown Hiroshima? It seems familiar from when I visited long ago. And all the descriptions of Kyoto and pictures of Osaka too remind me that I walked where there is now water.