As I was heading home tonight, I noticed that the sky was growing more and more threatening. When I walked in the door, I felt lucky to avoid being rained on–but as it turned out, rain was not on the menu. Lightning was.

Soon after I sat down to relax, I noticed some lightning outside. Well, nice and normal–I like lightning. I like to listen to the thunder, too. Once there was a lightning storm at my work, real close by, and I went outside to watch and listen. One bolt cracked down and hit a lightning rod atop an apartment building just a block away, right in my view–the blast of sound was just about instantaneous. Now, that’s entertainment!

Tonight, it was far away, but something was strange. I noticed some lightning out of the corner of my eye as I sat in my living room. Then again a few seconds later. Then again, and again. I thought I was imagining it–sometimes, reflections off the frames of my glasses can appear to be something else. But when I went to the window, I was right–there was a hellacious lightning storm going on in central Tokyo

Lacking my digital video camera (at school, for a project), I got out my trusty digital camera and took some shots of it (above right, and below). Unfortunately, it was hard to catch the full feeling of it–it was far too light for a good time-exposure shot. But the camera has a movie mode, so I took several 30-second movies (the time limit for higher-quality movie files). I then edited some of the shots together; they are available here. Like with the Bon Matsuri movie, you must have Quicktime and/or the ability to view MPEG-4 files. This movie is only about 500KB in size, and is reduced in size–but you’ll get a better idea about the storm from it.