Sometimes there are things you don’t always think about needing on a trip when you go to a place with weather vastly different from where you are coming from. On a recent trip to Japan in August my family found out about the typhoon season and how summer rain there can literally come out of nowhere even if it feels sunny and incredibly hot. I wish I’d thought of ordering waterproof hiking shoes when I shopped adidas before we went on our trip but now I’m shopping for them for Seattle fall. I brought two pairs of running shoes with me and almost brought my adidas Hello Kitty shoes (they aren’t available anymore-these are also cute) but I didn’t have enough suitcase room. (Shopping in Japan was pretty phenomenal too and we even ended up having to buy a bag to bring everything we bought home)
August in Japan is typhoon season
We were in Japan when there were two typhoon warnings and we arrived just after a major earthquake. I hadn’t really planned for either of these things but both of them are part of being in Japan and typhoons often happen in August. Something I didn’t think about was that transportation could be really affected by weather. Many trains were cancelled and roads were closed right before the typhoon was expected to arrive. We flew from Tokyo to Singapore just as a typhoon reached Tokyo and flights out of the country were cancelled the next day so we were lucky we were able to travel.
On the second part of our trip we were doing a lot of driving in Shikoku Japan. We had to watch the weather when we booked our Shinkansen trip back to Tokyo after we returned the car because a typhoon was on its way-it arrived two days after we got back to Seattle and it was such a big storm. I’m thankful we managed to miss it but it really made me worry about our relatives who live in Japan. They are definitely prepared for weather like this, but these storms can be so devastating.
We spent one night in an area called Fukuyama as part of our trip. We arrived on such a sunny afternoon and then out of nowhere the sky turned dark, lightning flashed across the sky and we had to run through a giant rainstorm to get to a mall where we were going to do some shopping. On our way to the mall we tried to use an underpass to get across a busy street but the underpass had already filled up with a few inches of water even though the storm had been going on for less than an hour. It would have been really helpful if we were wearing waterproof shoes and I don’t know why I hadn’t thought about this when we packed for our trip.
So what waterproof hiking shoes am I buying?
I decided on the Terrex Free Hiker 2.0 Low Gore_Tex Hiking Shoes because I like their color and I think they will also be great for hiking in our local mountains this fall. I also saw that the cloudfoam pure shoes (they are not waterproof but light, comfortable and great for most travel) that I bought earlier this year and wore so much this summer were also on sale (they may or may not be on sale when you see this post, but it pays to keep checking the site-there are often sales near holidays) and I’m so tempted to get them in another color now too.
With everything I’ve purchased at adidas this year (including the waterproof hiking shoes), I’ve ended up with enough adiclub points to redeem for a year of the Calm app. Have you ever used this app? And do you think about the weather when you travel? (If you are looking for Japan travel in August, I’ll have more posts about our trip up soon. )
Terumi Pong is a Seattle-based family travel writer and mom of twin teenage boys. She loves coffee and pastries, shopping local and looking for greener ways to live. She is also known as Scout’s mom (Scout is a 5ish pound little black yorkie-poo)