We should be aware that anything could happen

These days, I feel like there's a manual for everything, and people always go by the book in Japan. For example, shop staff is first educated according to the manual. Since Japanese society always requires all the shop staff to provide a certain level of service, the manual might be necessary and useful.　However, I think that people rely on the manual so much that when unusual things happen, they often don't know what to do and how to deal with them. Needless to say, it's very important to judge a situation well and decide what to do by yourself both in daily life and at work.   I feel that now is is the perfect time to acknowledge that fact.

After the 3/11 devastating earthquake and tsunami hit Japan, the Japanese phrase 想定外/souteigai is often heard. This means beyond what we predicted or beyond our assumptions. I'm tired of hearing that the 3/11 earthquake was a lot more powerful than many specialists had predicted, and the tsunami was much higher than their assumptions. Those things are true, but I think that they shouldn't be used as reasons to explain things.

http://www.tokyo-np.co.jp/article/education
/naruhodo/CK2011041902000096.html

Great efforts made in Kamaishi/釜石, Iwate prefecture/ 岩手県 by Professor Katada from Gunma University /群馬大学 have drawn considerable attention since the 3/11 earthquake occurred. According to the news, the due to great efforts, all the children from the 14 schools there could escape from the huge Tsunami. In the past few years, Professor Katada would often visit the schools to teach the children what to do in the event of a massive earthquake. When conducting an evacuation drill, he'd insist " When you evacuate, you don't need to follow the manual which you've learned from the drill. The drill says that you should evacuate to the community center on the hill. However, tsunamis are extremely powerful. Tsunamis much bigger than expected could hit your town. Nobody knows how far you'll have to go to be safe. The drill isn't perfect. You have to judge the situation by yourself and decide where to evacuate by yourself. When you evacuate, you have to focus on protecting yourself from Tsunami".

Japanese people sometimes cannot evaluate risks properly because they are afraid of facing the true danger that might be in store. Some of them seem to think that things which they can't think of couldn't happen. That's not true. There are various kinds of people in the world. It's sometimes very hard for us to understand the things some people do. There are things that science cannot explain. So, we should be always aware that things beyond our expectations could happen. Even if we don't know what to do when these things happen, it's very important for us to be aware of the possibility. At the same time, we should establish or get more used to a habit of taking the best actions based on our own judgement and taking responsibly for our actions under any circumstances.