Politics & Diplomacy
Hashimoto to retract sex suggestion for U.S. military
Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto aims to retract his remark that U.S. servicemen in Okinawa should use its adult entertainment industry to avoid committing sex offenses.
Environment | WILD WATCH May 20, 2004
On the trail of Japan's odd woodland dog with no bark
by Mark Brazil
The first Ezo-tanuki (Hokkaido raccoon-dog) I ever found was a long-dead carcass along a woodland trail I used to frequent near Nemuro. After that I saw the remains of several more road kills, but the prospect of encountering a live specimen in the wild ...
Environment | WILD WATCH Apr 15, 2004
Fungal alchemists snatch bodies to live
by Mark Brazil
Step back in time a mere 1,000 million years and the three great domains of the Plantae, Animalia and Fungi shared a common ancestor. What’s even more surprising, though, is that fungi are more closely related to animals than they are to plants. That ...
Environment | WILD WATCH Mar 18, 2004
The wonder that is winter
by Mark Brazil
The seasons have a powerful effect on me, which perhaps explains my need to anthropomorphize and personify them. Temperate Japan’s six distinct seasons roll on inexorably: spring, rainy, summer, typhoon, autumn and winter. Though battered and bruised by the perceptible effects of global climate ...
Environment | WILD WATCH Feb 19, 2004
Distance lends enchantment
by Mark Brazil
Take a look at a map of the west side of the Pacific and you’ll find a fractured scatter of islands from the Kuriles south of Kamchatka, through Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia, New Guinea and New Caledonia all the way to New Zealand and ...
Environment | WILD WATCH Jan 15, 2004
An island alone that is worlds apart
by Mark Brazil
If it were possible to view the Japanese archipelago rising from the Pacific in profile, a distinct, lonely, broad cone would be immediately apparent between the high peaks of the Japanese Alps of Honshu and the even higher peaks of Taiwan. That cone is ...
Environment | WILD WATCH Dec 18, 2003
Cold feet over winter camp
by Mark Brazil
Camping is a wonderful way to unplug from the computer and e-mail, catch up on sleep, and escape the never-ending round of deadlines and commitments. While summer and autumn camps offer opportunities to “shoot the breeze” around a campfire, on dark evenings in the ...
Environment | WILD WATCH Nov 20, 2003
Relicts of the distant past
by Mark Brazil
Time passes; it flows on, sometimes seemingly at breathtaking speed like a mountain torrent, at others crawling like a meandering backwater. Personal time expands and contracts. Geological time is relentless; grinding, shaping, wearing; sufficiently prolonged to isolate islands, to raise landmasses, for sea levels ...
Environment | WILD WATCH Oct 16, 2003
Tyulenii fur seals are all washed up and in no hurry to go
by Mark Brazil
It felt as if we were an invading force as we set the bows of our black rubber zodiac boat for the shore. Tyulenii Island, a raised tableland of sandstone barely a kilometer long and less than half that wide, was our target. Winds ...
Environment | WILD WATCH Sep 4, 2003
Labrador tea and forests to walk on
by Mark Brazil
During the heat of a Honshu summer it is hard to imagine that there are hints of tundra here, or that refreshing tea might come from an unusual source. However, the alpine regions of high-altitude Japan, and small areas of the cool, fog-shaded regions ...
Environment | WILD WATCH Aug 21, 2003
Thrills on the hills
by Mark Brazil
It happened again. Underfoot was the crunching tephra of Akan Fuji, black tinged with orange; it stretched away on either side of me, an arid, seemingly sterile environment. I’d zigzagged my way almost to the skyline and the distant view was opening up. Behind ...
Environment | WILD WATCH Aug 7, 2003
Golden 'weeds' of wondrous ways
by Mark Brazil
It was a breezy day at Cape Notoro overlooking the Sea of Okhotsk on Hokkaido’s north coast. The sun was glinting on the waves below the cliffs and a skylark singing somewhere above was producing a cascade of summer sound. My previous visit had ...
Environment | WILD WATCH Jul 31, 2003
Busy by astonishing design
by Mark Brazil
Earlier this year, I watched a number of bumblebees droning back and forth over the ground cover in mountain forest near my home in Hokkaido. They were seemingly oblivious to me. Occasionally one would land, and disappear beneath the leaf litter, or go down ...