Almost two months after revelers in most of Japan began partying beneath cherry blossoms in mid-March this year, we hardy northerners in Hokkaido were still waiting patiently for warm zephyrs to waft in with a late promise of spring. When I returned home on ...

Kan Yasuda's art somehow draws in the landscape, and entices in people, so that it is natural to explore the view through his structures and keyholes, to sit awhile atop a sculpture or to pose within their frames.

An unseasonably cold spring wind blasts in from the north shaking all before it. Oak trunks tremble; mast-like young white birches sway alarmingly and ineffectively rattle their branches at it.

When a thing of beauty is perceived, the observer experiences some kind of a reaction; but what defines “beauty”? Is it art?

It was cold and snowing and my mind was far away: I was already imagining returning to the warmth and color of the indoors after this, my latest winter sortie outdoors. It was only the rhythm of my skiing that was keeping me on ...

In a dry, dusty, desert landscape, the clamoring of cranes seems so surprising. I am used to the great winter assembly of more than 10,000 cranes in Kyushu at Izumi, where they congregate on winter-fallow rice fields; and I regularly frequent the winter gatherings ...

A ripple flows gently inland across an expanse of dark-gray mud. It washes in, then drains back, dampening the surface; it briefly fills, then empties from, tiny holes made by innumerable small crabs. The ebb is over, and the flow tide has begun. The ...

Travel is an addiction for which there seems no cure. Once under its sway, it is best just to ride out the alternating fevers and chills and see where they take you. Around nontravelers or infrequent travelers, I find that my tales of far-flung ...

The final months of the year seem something of an afterthought following the delightful palette of autumn colors; they offer only fickle moods and fickle weather. On November or December days of crisp, cold sunshine, when distant views beckon and late-flying dragonflies and late-flowering ...

It is 50 years this year since the best-selling band in history, The Beatles, released their first single, “Love Me Do.” They were set to catapult Britain into the Swinging ’60s and launch a global musical phenomenon. It wasn’t so much that many of ...

I have spent the last four hours perspiring under the summer sun, moving slowly and photographing wildflowers. Having hiked the circuitous, twin-peaked route around the caldera of constantly active 1,041-meter Mount Tarumae, I then loped up and down a small peak known only as ...

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. Following the almost unprecedented heat of this year’s August in Hokkaido, I wondered if, for once, September’s ...