TOKYO - Japan's deadliest storm in more than a decade unleashed flash floods that washed away entire hillsides, killing up to 54 people before it veered east into the Pacific Ocean on today. At least 29 people were still missing.

Rescue workers and Japanese troops dug through mud and debris and combed flooded rivers and coastal waters to search for the missing, Japanese media reported. Authorities said the storm's death toll was the highest since 1988.

"The death toll is likely to keep rising, as we take stock of the damage," National Police Agency spokesman Kojun Chibana said.

Typhoon Tokage blasted across Japan on Wednesday before being downgraded to a tropical storm. Early today, the storm headed east to open seas, its fury spent.

Television footage showed powerful gusts uprooting huge trees, flash floods submerging cars to their windows and entire hillsides crumbling away in landslides across southern and central Japan.

Nationwide, more than 15,700 homes were flooded and hundreds of others ripped apart or buried, Fire and Disaster Management Agency spokesman Akihiko Oda said. More than 13,000 people across the country were staying at temporary shelters, officials said.

Tokage, the Japanese word for lizard, was the record eighth typhoon to hit Japan this year.

HAVANA - President Fidel Castro tripped and fell after leaving the stage at a graduation ceremony, but later returned to say that he was "all in one piece."Castro's off-camera tumble after the Wednesday night speech in the central city of Santa Clara was certain to launch a new round of speculation about the 78-year-old communist leader's health after 45 years of rule.There was no official word from the government on Castro's condition after he left Santa Clara, about a three-hour drive east of Havana, in his regular black Mercedes Benz.Speaking live on state television less than a minute after his fall, Castro told television viewers across the island of 11.2 million people that he thought he had broken his knee "and maybe an arm ... but I am all in one piece.""I will do what is possible to recover as fast as possible, but as you can see I can still talk," he said, sweating profusely into his olive green uniform as he sat in a folding chair.An Associated Press photographer at the scene said Castro tripped on a concrete step after he finished walking down the stairs from the stage, then fell onto the ground on his right side, first hitting his knee and hip, and then his elbow and arm.