A letter to the Earth. (地球への手紙。)

Dear Eurasian, Pacific, Philippines, and maybe even North American Plates:

Please stop it.

You've had your fun, you've proven your point, and now it's just getting a little ridiculous. We all know that Japan rests upon a precarious little spat of a land stretched over the miles and miles of your many converging intersections, but really. Must you prove it to us again and again that we are at your mercy?

After all, look at all Japan has done for you. If there has ever been a country more appreciative of its unstable tectonic position, I've yet to see it.

温泉 (onsen; hot springs)? We got 'em. We love 'em. We travel miles and miles to visit them when we aren't lucky enough to live close enough to walk to 'em. And when we don't have them? We make fake ones in order to simulate the effect your soothing, magma-heated waters have on our bodies. We build hotels around them. It is quite possible that people are more excited about an 温泉 trip than just about anything else, domestically that is. And that's thanks to you.

Not feeling appreciated yet?

Ok, how about the hot sand baths of Ibusuki in Kyuushuu? People are so enamored of this earth-born heat that we bury ourselves neck-deep in sand to benefit from it. That, my friends, is devotion. You won't find that just anywhere, you know.

And while we're talking about Kyuushuu, why not stick 桜島 (Sakurajima) in there as well? We all think it's pretty cool, for an active volcano, and the SEX MACHINEGUNS even wrote a song about it for goodness sakes. How many geological phenomena do you know with a theme song?



Still nothing?

Well, how about the fact that despite everything you throw at this country (The Kanto Earthquake, the Hanshin Earthquake, just to name a few) we still want to be here and make the effort to build our structures to sway, send people to emergency training facilities, and generally keep everything running in an orderly fashion?

We love it here, and we really don't appreciate you fucking with us when we've done so much to show our appreciation to this precarious situation we've been placed in.

So please.

Quit trying to impress your tectonic buddies by being the biggest and the baddest on the block.

And knock it off.

Sincerely,
Edo