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| 13:47, from Sendagaya looking toward Shinjuku |
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| 17:02, same view |
I was just about to go out for a walk on the most beautiful afternoon of the year so far when I looked out the window. Yikes! The Shinjuku skyline was all but obliterated by this yellowish, greenish, fast-moving haze. I've never seen anything like it. Miyazaki, where I used to live in Kyushu, gets an annual blast of yellow sand from China, but it never looked like this. Everyone assumed at first this was a sudden storm of the kousa mixed with a little PM2.5 smog-wave from China stirred up with a hearty dash of cedar pollen, but the Japanese news said it wasn't. It said, rather, that it was dusty haze. Or hazy dust. 煙霧。(The dictionary defines enmu as "haze; mist; fog; smog.") The initial reported statement from the weather bureau was simply that it would dissipate soon. The closest I could make out to an answer was "chiri nado," or an anemic "dust etc." I don't think I'm the only person unsatisfied with the information available so far. Pay no attention to the apocalyptic cloud! It may be a long night of fury and joy for the conspiracy-minded.
My Twitter pal @BurritoJustice animated these Tokyo smog-dust-haze storm pictures on his Tumblr.
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