Yahoo News

During his five-month captivity in northern provinces of Kunduz and Takhar, the freelance journalist thought he would never get out alive.
"I thought I would be certainly killed, so I tried to prepare myself to face it," he recalled. His fear reached its peak in late June, when the captors issued an ultimatum to the Japanese government, threatening to kill him if their demands were not met within 72 hours.
When the time passed, and there was no sign they were going to kill him, he started to think he could survive and gain freedom at some point.
"Although it was frustrating that I didn't know when that might be, my fear of death gradually faded and I felt better," he said.
Tsuneoka said after that, anger rather than fear helped him survive the ordeal. Even though his captors fed him well and never used violence, he repeatedly thought about how he could retaliate against them.
"They are a bunch of thieves just trying to extort money from Japan," he said.
The rest was boredom. He had nothing to do but sleep, gaze out the window to see birds or count ants crawling on the dirt floor, when the young militants were not around to talk.
Tsuneoka was kidnapped in April, when he traveled to a Taliban-controlled area in northern Afghanistan, and was released Saturday night to a Japanese Embassy.



Man... imagine that.