Seeking death...

Living in Japan, I have come to enjoy and take the safety level here for granted. I can walk the streets not having to think about being mugged or something. However, as in elsewhere, you can get robbed or killed if you walk into the wrong place at the wrong time.

It is common knowledge that Iraq is in a rather anarchic state that one must be quite crazy to go there for a visit. When two Japanese men and a woman were captured by some splinter group a while back, the Japanese people were caught flatfooted.

Some top officials commented that it was self-responsibility. You got in there on your own accord, you find your own way out. Anyway, the government managed to bring them out unharmed. A second case followed shortly with two men being captured.

Now, we have a case of a 24-year-old Japanese man who wondered into Baghdad alone. I wonder what in the world does he want to do or see there. He now asks the Japanese prime minister to help him. And ended his plea with “sumimasen deshita”.

I pray his captors would release him immediately as they are going nowhere with their current cruel methods. However, as in Japan, if you are not careful, you are walking into your own graveyard.