The weather is very warm today near Tokyo. In the seaside town I'm in, the warm breeze that's blowing across the trees is almost tropical. The plum blossoms have bloomed. The ripe mandarin oranges hang from the trees. The sun filters through the smoke from burning leaves.
There is chanting emanating from the Shinto shrine nearby. You can get to this shrine by climbing a long flight of stone steps.It's good it's in a high place--if there were ever an earthquake here the tsunami would thrash the seaside.
I don't know why I think about disaster in a scene so beautiful, but you have to understand that this type of thing is very likely to happen. The last time a major earthquake hit the Tokyo area was in 1923, and they say that there has been a mega-quake every 70 years. Which would mean we are seven years beyond the predicted time. But generations have continued to live along the seaside, knowing that there is likely disaster to come.
The beauty of the landscape fools us into thinking that we will somehow be protected. Or we just accept fate as something that cannot be stopped.
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