"Whatever happens won't be strange."
Thus the weekly Shukan Gendai sums up the prospects for the year now dawning.
Shaken by 2011, we face the blank slate that is 2012. Mankind's history of trying to read the future is very long. We've sought clues in animal entrails, the flight of birds, the pattern of tea leaves, the configuration of the stars. Nowadays we look to rational analysis. Is it any better? Not if 2011 is any indication. It was a jolting, jarring year, none of whose defining events, from sovereign debt crises to revolution to nuclear meltdown, was foreseen or prepared for.