==JAPAN: KM== [Family]

What images of the Kyushu area do you have? You may think that it is provincial, that it is larger than Shikoku but smaller than Honshu and Hokkaido, and it had nine feudal clans once upon a time and has eight prefectures including Okinawa prefecture now. You also may think that it is warm because it is located in the south of Japan and has a lot of volcanoes. You are right. Besides eruptions, Kyushu is a passageway for many typhoons.
When I was a high school student, a large typhoon struck my hometown that is in Kyushu. One cloudy morning of October, the newscast said that a severe typhoon was approaching and that made me feel excited out of curiosity as if I were looking forward to a festival. Our school was closed on that afternoon. About an hour after I got home, my father had returned home much earlier than usual. He said to me, "Let's join up to prepare against a typhoon." Though I had been tired of his faultfinding behavior toward me, I agreed with his offer obediently. My family and I prepared against it by closing storm windows and fixing things that might be blown off. As it got darker, wind and rain became stronger. At supper, power service was suddenly suspended because of a strong wind, so we had supper by candlelight. It was fantastic. It seemed to me that dishes in candlelight were quite different from those in fluorescent light. In contrast with that, taking a bath by flashlight was weird and unpleasant. At that time, I realized what a blessed thing an electric light was.
About at nine o'clock, there was a loud sound above the living room where we were making ourselves comfortable and the roof let in the rain. Like an expeditionary party on a special mission, my younger brother and I took flashlights and went up under the roof from a corner of the living room to make the repairs. The space just a little above the place of our everyday life was dark, musty and very scary. With plastic sheets, we covered a leak in the roof hit by roofing tiles that had been blown off from some other house. Somehow or other, we managed to stop the leak. After a while, the wind and rain gradually went down. As it seemed to be peaceful outside the window, I went out into the garden. Silence settled in. What is more, to my surprise, stars were twinkling in the sky. The whole incident seemed to me like an ominous dream. The radio news said that we were just in the eye of the typhoon.
Before long, a bad rainstorm raged again. If the electricity had not failed, I would have watched television as usual. Instead of doing so, at that time, I spent a lot of time chattering with my family. I had rarely done it. It was unusual for us. When we were preparing ourselves for bed, we heard a siren blow intermittently from the direction of the river that flows through my hometown. We thought that it might be the notice that the river had risen considerably. The sound of a siren, especially on that night, was quite horrifying.
When I was dropping off into a sleep, a terrible noise came from the garage. We rushed to the scene. "Oh, my God!" I exclaimed, to find that about two thirds of the roof of the garage had been blown away. After a while, my father's sad voice reached my ears from the garden, "Oh, my tree! My pine tree!" As a matter of surprising fact, the pine tree that my father had made much of had been blown over. When I was on the point of turning back to my bedroom disconsolately, a blast of wind blew and I was nearly taken away. Optimistic as I had been, I got frightened indeed. The fearful idea that my house would be broken to pieces by a furious wind prevented me from sound sleep all night long.
The next morning, it was very fine as if nothing had happened, except for scars of the typhoon. The power that had failed was restored. It was reported on television that the roof of the gymnasium of the junior high school that was about two kilometers away from my house had been blown off and it was blocking the road that was about a hundred away from that school. Since that time, the information that a typhoon was coming has reminded me of that terrible experience and made me uneasy. Hateful memory that the typhoon was, it did a good deed. It blew away the wall that existed within my family.


"Getting It Together"

When I was a high school student, as was often the case, it was hard for me to be obedient to my parents. I always struck a pose of defiance particularly forward my father. But thanks to the typhoon, we got a chance to talk as a family. I was impressed with the value of communication. I realized that I had lived in a little world of my own, for I had communicated only with people of my generation. The typhoon made me more grown-up.
You probably have experiences that helped the development of your mind. If you will have to write essays, would you mind showing those experiences?