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Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH

Jul 18, 2002

Trees' wondrous ways of turning over a new leaf

By Mark Brazil

Now, at the height of summer, when the fresh green of the spring leaves has darkened, I will start this week's column with a question: "Why is it that northern Japan's Mongolian oak and Europe's common beech retain their rustling brown leaves all winter, while sharing their temperate forest habitat mainly...

ENVIRONMENT

Jul 18, 2002

'Factory' fishing threatens marine stocks

By Amanda Suutari

Ever evening at sunset, Maruyama Keizo, 64, and his brother Motoichi, 54, of Minabe, Wakayama Prefecture, take their boat out and return the next morning at dawn with their catch: either flatfish or sardines, depending on the season. In his 50-year working life, Maruyama has seen shrinking catches, the...

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / ANIMAL TRACKER

Jul 12, 2002

Giant centipede

By Rowan Hooper

* Japanese name: Oogeji * Scientific name: Thereuopoda clunifera * Description: Someone went a bit leg-crazy when naming these animals. Although they are called centipedes (the name means "100 legs"), oogeji have only 15 pairs of legs. They are not insects (all of which have just three pairs of legs)...

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / GARDENS FOR ALL

Jul 11, 2002

Osaka's peaceful heart

By Gerard Taaffe

In 1972, two years after the Japan International Exposition in Osaka, redevelopment work began on the site. The result, eight years later, was the 260-hectare Expolands Green Oasis, which has now matured into a wonderful parkland with a wide range of attractions and facilities.

ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH

Jul 11, 2002

Diving and biking to eco-awareness

By Stephen Hesse

Excuse me for a moment if I boast, but I am delighted with the progress my backyard is making in its quest for biological diversity. No doubt my neighbors view my garden as unruly and overgrown, but as it's no bigger than a parking space, I let it have its way.

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT

Jul 11, 2002

Knowing the silent sense of self

By Laura Spinney

At birth, an infant has only the sketchiest notion of its own body. Only from moving its arms and legs and sensing the effects on skin, muscle and joints does a baby learn what belongs to itself and what to the external world. By the age of 9, a child's body image is more sophisticated, consisting of...

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / ANIMAL TRACKER

Jul 5, 2002

By Rowan Hooper

* Japanese name: Kiageha * Scientific name: Papilio machaon * Description: There are several species of swallowtail butterflies in Japan, all of them easily recognizable by their swallowtails -- the tail-like appendages on the edge of the hind wings. Body length is 36-70 mm. Swallowtails have fully...

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH

Jul 4, 2002

Welcome to the world's most successful societies

By Mark Brazil

Ants have an amazing lineage. They have been around for at least 100 million years, since the middle of the Cretaceous Period, and for at least the last 50 million years they have been among the most abundant of all insects. We think we're successful? Our population has recently topped 6 billion, but...

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Jul 4, 2002

A woodland to call not my own

By C.W. Nicol

On May 31 this year, our woodland here in Kurohime was finally designated as a Nagano Prefectural Trust, whose aim is to foster the rehabilitation of abused and neglected woodland, and to return it to greater and balanced biodiversity through continuing research and education.

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / GARDENS FOR ALL

Jun 27, 2002

A temple, park and Heian pond in one

By Gerard Taaffe

Daikakuji Temple in northwest Kyoto started life in the lyrical Heian Period as Saga-in, the Detached Palace of Emperor Saga, who reigned from 809 until he abdicated and went to live there permanently in 823. Then in 876, his daughter Princess Shoshi designated Saga-in to be converted into a Buddhist...

ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH

Jun 27, 2002

Swimming against the tide of marine good sense

By Stephen Hesse

Several years back, the Fisheries Agency of Japan began claiming that whaling is necessary to protect valuable fisheries. The agency argues that if we do not kill whales, they will eat millions of tons of fish that are rightfully destined for human consumption. Since some whale populations are increasing,...

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT

Jun 27, 2002

Japan's farmers start to go green

By Megan Rowling

Hardly a week goes by without the emergence of some new scandal in the Japanese food industry. But whether it's the use of illegal additives or the mislabeling of imported meat as domestic, the outcome is the same: further breakdown in trust between consumers and the farmers and companies involved in...

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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