My mother is visiting from the U.S. right now, having come to spend some quality time with the kids in their native habitat. We’ll also take her to some beautiful Japanese parks so she can enjoy the sakura, as the timing of her visit worked out great this year. (It can be quite hard to plan a trip to Japan to see the cherry blossoms as you’re never sure ahead of time exactly when they’ll bloom.) It seems that every time my mother visits Japan she experiences some of the more frightening aspects of the country, like the typhoon, earthquake and minor eruption of Mt. Asama that happened the last time she was here. This trip she might be in for an even more exciting time, as North Korea prepares to test fire one of its Taepodong-2 missiles, er, I mean launch a peaceful satellite, which has everyone here very jittery. North Korea has fired test missiles before, including one in 2006 that went over Japan’s air space, and Japan has threatened to shoot down any missile that approaches. Living in Japan is great fun, but being next to North Korea? Not so much.
Japan is nervous about a possible North Korean missile launch.
