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A powerful typhoon struck Okinawa Island in southern Japan on Saturday, injuring at least 17 people, while weather officials warn that the storm will tear the Japanese archipelago over the weekend.
The Typhoon Trami, which contained a maximum gust of 216 kilometers (134 miles) per hour near its center, was expected to hit the mainland early Sunday and cause extreme weather across the country on Monday.
Television footage showed branches torn off by strong winds blocking a main street in the regional capital Naha, as well as torrential horizontal rains and massive waves splashing breakwaters on an isolated island in the region.
Local police wearing rain jackets with chain saws were fighting the furious wind to remove the fallen trees. The bursts were strong enough to knock down a truck and smash the windows of a bank.
Some 700 people have been evacuated to shelters in Okinawa and electricity has been cut off in nearly 200,000 homes, according to the NHK public television channel.
At least 386 flights have been canceled, mainly in western Japan, according to NHK.West Japan Railway has announced that it will suspend all services in the Osaka area and cancel some Shinkansen high-speed trains before noon Sunday.
Seventeen people were slightly injured during storm-related crashes in Okinawa and several homes were damaged but no one was feared dead, local officials said.
"The number could still increase as we are sorting the numbers," said Masatsune Miyazato, head of the island's disaster management office.
"The people of Okinawa are used to typhoons but we urge them to remain vigilant," he told AFP.
The weather agency warned residents of Japan against high winds, high waves and heavy rains.
"There is concern that the typhoon is causing record rainfall and high winds over large areas," Yasushi Kajiwara, an agency official, told reporters.
"Please stay alert, evacuate early and ensure your safety," said the manager. After scouring the outer islands, the typhoon should pick up speed and approach western Japan on Sunday "with a very strong force". continent, he added.
There have already been heavy showers in large areas of western and eastern Japan, including the capital, while the storm was causing a seasonal rainfall front.
The weather agency warned of landslides in Wakayama, western Japan, where local authorities separately announced that a local river had reached "dangerous levels".
Fishermen in Kagoshima Bay, where the typhoon is expected to land, were already preparing their boats as Trami approached – even as forecasters warned another typhoon was on its way.
The angler Masakazu Hirase told AFP: "It is appalling because we already know there is another typhoon after this one, but you can not compete with nature. We are doing everything we can to limit the damage. "If the forecasts come true, it will be the last of a series of extreme natural events hitting Japan.
Western regions are still recovering from the most powerful typhoon that hit the country in a quarter century at the beginning of September. Typhoon Jebi killed 11 people and shut down Kansai Airport, the main regional airport.
Kansai officials were already preparing sandbags and warning that they might be forced to close the airport.
Record rains also hit western Japan early in the year and the country went through one of the hottest summers ever recorded.
Also in September, a magnitude 6.6 earthquake rocked the northern island of Hokkaido, causing landslides and killing more than 40 people.
