Ten years have passed; clouds rise into the deep-blue sky of an Indian-summer day.
10 years ago, on January 17, I was in Tateshina, Shinshu. I owned a small ramshackle house and was staying there. With neither television nor radio, it was an ideal place to escape the everyday overload of information.
Still, food was necessary. On the morning of the 17th, I happened to be in Chino to buy supplies. When I entered a shop, flames were showing on the television.
At first, I had no idea what it was. I watched it intently for a while, and only then understood that a major earthquake had struck Kobe.
10 years have passed since then. At the time, I took reasonable precautions, such as sleeping with sneakers beside my pillow, but somewhere along the way I stopped doing so. It is said that a major earthquake in the Tokyo metropolitan area will occur in 2005, plus or minus 5 years.
I pray for the souls of those who lost their lives in the Great Hanshin Earthquake, and believe that we must remain vigilant so that their sacrifices are not in vain.
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