What a sad, sad country this is. What sad shape it's in, as this Year of the Dragon draws to a close. Economically, politically socially, individually, it is merely scraping by, surviving rather than living.
Last Jan. 1 a Japan Times editorial commented, "It is impossible for people in Japan to put 2011 behind them." That remains true 12 months later.
This year was spared upheaval on the scale of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdowns that will forever define 2011. Symbolic of 2012 is the collapse on Dec. 2 of ceiling panels in the Sasago Tunnel in Yamanashi Prefecture, which killed nine and reflected gradual crumbling rather than explosive cataclysm. A subsequent frenzy of belated infrastructure inspections turned up a plethora of defects pointing to similar accidents waiting to happen. West Nippon Expressway Co. and Metropolitan Expressway Co. both began removing concrete panels from tunnels they operate. If not for Sasago, of course, they would not have.