Notwithstanding the best efforts of Typhoon Jelawat, which swept over Osaka on Saturday night, the 13th Osaka International Music Competition was held over the weekend, with more than 800 musicians from around the world competing in 40 categories and age groups.
The winner in the piano, 11-to-12-year-old division, was a young Japanese-American named Umi Garrett, who, on the way back to her home in Orange County, California, stopped by the Tokyo offices of The Japan Times earlier this week.
"I almost flew away in the typhoon," the diminutive Umi says with a giggle, before going on to explain that in the competition she had played Frederic Chopin's famously cheerful Waltz Opus 42.