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Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH

Oct 21, 2012

Singing the praises of greenery

By Mark Brazil

This year's annual hop between the hemispheres in my capacity as a globetrotting nature-tour guide took me to my namesake country, Brazil, with strange and unusual hopes.

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Oct 7, 2012

Minamata: a saga of suffering and hope

By C.W. Nicol

The last job I had that paid me a real salary was with the Canadian government's Environmental Protection Service in the mid 1970s.

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / BACKSTREET STORIES

Sep 30, 2012

Casting around for the past on Fish-basket Slope

By Kit Nagamura

Hoping to find traces of the fishing village that was Edo (present-day Tokyo) before the first Tokugawa Shogun chose the site for his new political capital in the early 1600s, I head to Gyoranzaka (Fish-basket Slope) in the city's central Mita district.

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT

Sep 30, 2012

Time seems to slow as Joei-ji Garden comes alive

By Stephen Mansfield

"The whole countryside was full of snakes sunning themselves along the roads and swimming in the ditches and newly flooded rice-fields. ... Out in Sesshu's old garden behind the temple, the pond was starred with tiny twinkling water-lilies." Such was, in part, how Glenn W. Shaw described the rural outskirts...

ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH

Sep 23, 2012

Japan's nuclear phaseout: Is it all smoke and mirrors?

By Stephen Hesse

On Sept. 14, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's administration announced that Japan would end nuclear-power generation by 2040. Five days later his Cabinet failed to endorse the new policy; but on the same day, Sept. 19, Trade Minister Yukio Edano insisted that the government would still act "based on"...

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH

Sep 16, 2012

Living the botanical high life

By Mark Brazil

Japan, though it has a very different image, is on the same latitude as southern Europe and North Africa, while my nearest city, Sapporo, is oddly enough on the same east-west parallel as France's boisterously cosmopolitan second city of Marseille on the Mediterranean.

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Sep 2, 2012

Goldenglow may be a treat for the Cherokees, but it's a pest for Old Nic!

By C.W. Nicol

Summertime here in northern Nagano is very pleasant, quite unlike the muggy ovens of the big cities. This year, after living here for 32 years, I was persuaded to install a fan. We certainly don't have a cooler. At night, or while working in my study, I leave the windows open to let in the sounds of...

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / BACKSTREET STORIES

Aug 26, 2012

All the fun of the fair — and that's just the temples

By Kit Nagamura

Inspired by this summer's Olympic quest for gold medals, I opt to go for the gold myself. Toshimaen amusement park in Tokyo's northwestern Nerima Ward is home to Carousel El Dorado, one of the world's oldest hand-carved wooden merry-go-rounds. Named for an imaginary city of gold sought by 16th-century...

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH

Aug 26, 2012

If we ruin the air, what will our children breathe?

By Stephen Hesse

Watching the sun set into the Pacific Ocean from a hotel tucked in among the dry scrub hills of San Diego, I have a chance to reflect on life here in Southern California, on climate changes and on what's in store for future generations.

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH

Aug 19, 2012

The air around us is teeming with life — it's just too tiny to see

By Mark Brazil

As I approached the top of Mount Tarumae's western peak, located in Hokkaido's Shikotsu-Toya National Park, for a brief moment I thought an early reward was awaiting me in the form of clusters of ripe blueberries in the bush tops. At first glance it appeared that the bushes were in fruit, and it was...

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Aug 5, 2012

Easy-money stream scheme risks a torrent of wrath

By C.W. Nicol

A watercourse runs between our Afan Trust woods and a national forest up here in the northern Nagano Prefecture hills — passing, for just a few hundred meters, through our property as well.

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT

Jul 29, 2012

A heavenly retreat amid the bustle of Kyoto

By Stephen Mansfield

On my first visit to the ancient pond garden of Kajuji, it took me a devil of a time just to locate it. Alighting at Ono, a subway stop on Kyoto's Tozai line, there was nothing to suggest the area might be of interest to visitors, that it could have any serious historical or cultural credentials.

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Visitors walk past Sou Fujimoto's Grand Ring, which has been recognized as the largest wooden structure in the world.

Can a World Expo still matter? Japan is about to find out.

By Tomoko Otake

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

BOARDING & INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL DAY 2025 (Sunday, April 20)

BOARDING & INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL DAY 2025 (Sunday, April 20)

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