The Tokyo Station...
Review of 2011
According to The Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper of Japan, the top news stories of 2011 chosen by the Media of developing countries are as follows:
1. Japan's Great Tsunami and the Fukushima Daiichi Accident
2. The Arab Spring
3. Removal of Osama bin Laden by US Special Troops
4. Occupy Wall Street Movement
5. European Financial Crisis
6. Bugging Scandal by a UK Media Company
7. Death of Steve Jobs
8. The First Space Docking by China
9. South Africa's Entry into BRICs
10. Global Population Reaching 7 Billion
It is hard to predict what will happen in 2012 that might shake the world.
But, at the end of 2000, nobody foresaw the 9/11 Terror would be successfully carried out by AlQaeda and Osama bin Laden, while the terrorist group was intensifying their anti-American activities. At the end of 2007, the foreclosure statistics were indicating an alert level and the oil price was ever increasing, but nobody thought that Wall Street would go on the verge of its ruin with Lehman Brothers disappearing and GM going bankrupt in the fall of 2008. Yes, after the 2004 Sumatra, Indonesia, tsunami, the 2008 Sichuan, China, earthquake, the 2010 Haiti earthquake, and the 2010 Chile mine accident, no Japanese dreamed that an M9.0 earthquake and once-in-1000-year tsunamis would attack the Fukshima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant and coastal areas facing the North Pacific Ocean. Indeed, people could not see with their eyes every portent the God significantly put before them beforehand.
Any way, in my feeling, pious people will try to be more pious while bad guys will be spurred on into more evil deeds. So, maybe an important concern must be how both the bright side and the dark side will balance with each other.
With a focus on categories of events, people will naturally check economy or otherwise security. The economic state of the world is so crucial for everybody's life now that the trend of globalization connects every market of each country with one another so tightly. And security matters can also involve hundreds of thousands of innocent citizens as the War on Terror has proved. Presently the main attention is drawn by Iran due to its nuclear program. In addition, even one of the poorest country in the world North Korea can be regarded so much by world major players due to its nuclear development venture. In this context, the nuclear crisis is really a blind spot for all the people in advanced countries as well as developing countries. The nuclear technology occupies the highest level of weapon systems. It also symbolizes a cutting-edge state of energy technology applied to real economy. It is also directly based on the level of science mankind has ever acquired. Implication of the nuclear accident in Japan is deep and wide. But, are there any other technological fields that might send a shock wave to the world comparable to that by the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident?
In either case, a big or decisive event for mankind might fall on the world from the clear blue sky in 2012 wile everybody is watching it regardlessly.
(to be continued...)
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On a certain beech of the coast lines of Japan attacked by great tsunamis on March 11, there was a pinewood with 70,000 pine trees.
In the samurai era, that is, centuries ago, local people, including wealthy merchants, planted manually nursery pine trees one by one as a means to prevent damage by a tsunami. But all of them except one were washed away by the 3/11 Great Tsunami. The remaining one encouraged residents so shocked and overwhelmed by the scale of the natural disaster they experienced. But, recently it was found that the great pine tree was also dying due to damage at its root.
Yet, some people picked up seeds from the remnant of the pinewoods to grow them in pots. Others are trying to graft small branches of the remaining and dying pine tree on other young pine trees. The spirit of survival and recovery is going to be relayed.
Mar 12:29 And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord:
Mar 12:30 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.