My Hotel Was Swaying Like A Huge Concrete Tree

APART from the spatterings of rain on the glass window of my hotel room on the 29th floor of a city centre hotel in Tokyo yesterday morning, there was little sign of the highest category super typhoon to come.

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At that stage trains were running and there were a few cars on the roads. In fact, for some time the only other reminder of the monster Typhoon Hagibis heading our way was a sheet of paper slipped under the door with reassurance to guests from the Park Hotel’s general manager.

It said that while the typhoon “may cause some noise and tremors to the building”, it has “a seismic structure designed to withstand strong winds and earthquakes”.

Even by early evening, while the wind had picked up considerably, it was still possible for me to walk onto the pavement outside the hotel without being blown off my feet.

I returned to my room thinking the storm might even have veered off course and missed central Tokyo.

Suddenly, a magnitude 5.7 earthquake jolted the city – and then Hagibis struck.

Its pent-up mega-force energy sent our 33-floor tower above Shimbashi station pitching and rolling like a ship in the eye of a storm.

The girders creaked as the 120mph wind and torrential rain tore at the outside of a building which was now swaying like a huge concrete tree.

It felt as if the most savage of beasts spawned by Mother Nature was surging all around, enraged at not being able to uproot everything in its path.

Thankfully, it was not quite powerful enough to snap the steel-reinforced infrastructure of a tower which had a concrete foundation four floors deep sunk into the Tokyo soil – although sometimes it felt like it might be strong enough to render the whole structure above the ground into a pile of rubble.

Trying to write this while the earth was moving under my feet was an eerie sensation, but with fear sensors on full alert and adrenaline starting to kick-in, it was a relief to be fully engaged in doing something.