TOKYO, Sept 5 (From AFP) - Torrential rains lashed Tokyo overnight, killing one person, flooding homes and cutting off power to thousands as a powerful typhoon headed Monday toward Japan's main southern island of Kyushu, officials said. A 61-year-old man was found dead late Sunday on a flooded road in Saitama outside Tokyo after he rushed to help his son whose car was stuck, police said. The meteorological agency said over 100 millimeters of rain was dumped on the capital overnight, disrupting late night train services. Nearly 2,000 homes were flooded by the powerful storm and 7,000 households were left without electricity in the Tokyo area, police said. Public broadcaster NHK said 300 flights were grounded across Japan. The heavy rain was caused by powerful Typhoon Nabi, which was churning Monday toward the southern land mass of Kyushu, about 900 kilometers south of Tokyo, the agency said. Packing winds up to 162 kilometers per hour, Nabi, which means butterfly in Korean, was located off the coast of Kyushu's Kagoshima province, 950 kilometers south of Tokyo, at 12:50 pm. The typhoon was moving northwest at 15 kilometers per hour and was expected to hit Kyushu early Tuesday, an agency official said. In Kagoshima, some 480 people voluntarily evacuated their homes to public schools while over 8,800 households had no power Monday, local officials said. Japan was hit by Typhoon Mawar last month, which brought heavy rains and fierce winds that left at least one person dead and injured four others. The country was struck by a record 10 typhoons last year. One of them, Tokage, was the deadliest typhoon in a quarter-century, killing 90 people.

These two Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) images acquired on 03 and 05 September 2005 show Typhoon Nabi (centre image) along the south coasts of Japan. The coastlines have been highlighted in red to define their locations.