Dear Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Yoshiaki Takaki,

You've been busy these past few weeks, I'm sure, working with Prime Minister Naoto Kan to deal with the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear reactor crises that have devastated the northern part of the country. Like most people south of Tohoku and outside of the Fukushima evacuation, I've been busy as well . . . worrying, mostly.

However, while I've been watching Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano and Minister of Defense Toshimi Kitazawa on television and wondering whether or not the Tokyo Electric Power Co. will be able to get its reactor cores and spent fuel storage pools under control, I've been thinking about what Japan can do to rebuild once the initial recovery operations have returned the affected regions to a semblance of normalcy.