After the Great Quake, a number of "prophets" assert they had announced the tragedy in advance. If they were right on the assertions, we should have no fear for future. But, it is almost difficult to show if they were right. If you have time to do so, it is much better to work as usual. All we can do is just to prepare for what is coming next, as we do daily. As Papa told a girl that lost her home, nobody cannot know God's will on it, and, we, therefore, have to pray. Pray and work; that's it! Don't you think so?

'Life lasts just for fifty years ...' This is a popular phrase of a Japanese classic play of Noh, "Atsumori", that is a story about a feudal lord of the Heike clan who faced a defeat of the last sea battle with the Genji clan in the late 12th century (two of my direct ancestors are recorded as participants in this battle; a paternal joined the winner and the maternal belonged to the defeated. What an irony to my parents, really!). I am approaching the age. Travel around the world is always risky. I well understand it. Involvement in quakes, floods, whatever is a part of my life.

I can count a bunch of dangerous events I met. In a flight from Budapest to Istanbul in 1991, a captain made a sudden announce in Turkish (maybe) that let everybody on board be silent off. Landing made passengers singing as a whole to thank Allah but for me. Can you understand this? I have not realized what happened even now. I could just guess it on the ground. My appointment of associate at a law firm located in Twin Towers on September 2001. I happened to turned it down and went to a PhD program in Japan. It was just before 911. Much worse things than natural disasters exist: human made incidents!

It is nice to predict a coming quake for everybody, if possible. But, even if you can do so, there is no guarantee not to be involved in it. Furthermore, you have to face it by your own will, when you belong to a vocation that you have chosen for living. I would like to know predictions that originate from God, if He may allow to do so. But, He just ordered not to follow such predictions coming from humans but not from Him. All we can do is to consider contingencies and prepare for them.

Sometimes, people ask me, if I may believe what those "prophets" tell or existence of "something spiritual". I believe in God, Jesus Christ as Savor of the Earth, and Holy Spirit. I believe in the unique and only true almighty existence beyond us, that is Lord. However, though I don't deny such phenomena of "spiritual" occurrences, I do neither believe nor even follow what happens like them. I just test what is right from the view point of the Catholic Church. Those happenings are just temptations that make us confused. No need to follow them. Just see what is going on and pray God to leave them off.  Strange things surely happen, but what kind of interpretation you give to them depends on your own free will before God. People often confuse what is happening before them with what is really right. We must be sober always.