Japan crisis

The tragedy of Japan, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake followed by a tsunami and complicated by a nuclear accident at a tremor and tidal wave damaged power plant, brought the remarkable resilience of the Japanese. Japan's resilience is not the reason for the country's current state. Complex tsunami an earthquake early-warning systems that Japan has in place saved tens of thousands of lives. Now as Japan struggles to overcome one of the worst natural disasters in human history, it will need much more hardship to go through to remake the nation. Japan is a country that lives on the brink of danger. Earthquakes come and go in this earthquake prone area with the one of the most unstable tectonic plates in the world.

Expressions of grief have been restrained in the worst effected zones. Instead of the wails of despair heard in the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake last year, thje Japanese survivors are responding with expressions like 'shoganai' translated, "there is nothing you can do".

The earthquake and tsunami was very costly to its economy, the total damages to be about 300 billion US dollars. But the death-toll was not nearly as high as expected of a disaster of this scale. Japan is the only country on the planet with an earthquake early-warning system in place. It is also the only one with a truly successful tsunami-alert scheme- 300 sensors in the ocean that detect a tsunami in minutes. Tsunami escape routes are posted up and down the coast for easy evacuation.

The spirit of the Japanese nation is truly impressive and leads people to wonder, is there something special about the Japanese people, are they different in some way. The preparation of their government is also something to think about, their readiness for disaster. Countries should learn form this incident in Japan, not just in nuclear wise, but also how Japan reacted.