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A sit-in by visa violators and their families entered its second day Tuesday in front of the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau with protesters seeking government good will. The action at the bureau in Minato Ward is being organized by the Asian People’s Friendship Society, ...
Kazuhiro Shiraishi, 66, is a guest-house manager in the Izu-kogen Highlands, a famous resort area on the Izu Peninsula of Shizuoka Prefecture. Looking out onto the Pacific Ocean, and just 90 minutes by train from Tokyo, Izu has a warm climate all year round ...
“I was stopped by two men in a government-registered vehicle, blindfolded and dragged off the street. They took me away to a house in a place I did not know. I was forced into a room with blood all over the walls and floor, ...
Takashi Miike's blood-soaked vengeance tale, one of two Japanese films being shown in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, draws the biggest boos so far, with critics savaging it as overacted and cliched.
Have you ever given your best effort while striving to achieve something but felt like what you were doing was futile? That’s the feeling I’m getting about Tokyo’s bid to host the 2020 Olympics. With just over three months to go until the IOC ...
When did you last go out into the woods at night? In this age of media-induced fears, and with far more than half the world’s population now being urban- dwellers, fewer of us brave the outdoors even during daylight hours, let alone at night. ...
An indefinable quality in the light somehow signals the air temperature. Airflows from the north and northwest have, for many days this late February just gone, kept Hokkaido frigid. An intangible crispness in the atmosphere combines with the luminosity to forewarn of seriously subzero ...
In a rush of small wings, a fluttering, chirruping, congregation of familiar birds — Eurasian tree sparrows — descended on the bush in front of me. They chattered noisily among themselves, each shifting its position almost constantly as if unsure whether it had the ...
I enter the forest and soon the rhythmic swish-swish of my skis over the snow mesmerizes me. This is my first foray of the new year in Hokkaido, making tracks in the lowland forest of Nopporo close to home just east of Sapporo. As ...
With temperatures falling steadily, amazing things are happening in the natural world. Among plants, insects, birds and mammals there are so many different strategies for coping with the cold season that my head spins trying to grasp them all as wildlife sightings change week ...
On my most recent journey overseas, to southern Brazil, a fellow traveler gave me a large Moleskine-brand notebook. Though grateful for the present, at first I was uncertain what to do with it. I generally use a particular-size pocket notebook to write up all ...
To be brutally honest, wildlife photography is mostly about having the means to get to amazing places, where wildlife still abounds. Then it takes heaps of patience. And the final ingredient is a good eye to capture the moment. Oh, yes, and a camera. ...
“Life works by making lots and lots of different kinds of living things, and every one we lose impoverishes us and the world. Every single species, obscure or common, funny or dull, gorgeous or LBJ [the bird-watchers' abbreviation for "Little Brown Job"], is a ...
“Life works by making lots and lots of different kinds of living things, and every one we lose impoverishes us and the world. Every single species, obscure or common, funny or dull, gorgeous or LBJ [the bird-watchers' abbreviation for "Little Brown Job"], is a ...
High in the fork of a tall tree on a wooded slope close to narrow rice paddies on Sado Island in the Sea of Japan off Nigata Prefecture was a flimsy, ragged nest made of twigs. It didn’t look like anything special, but its ...
The phenomenal diversity of Japan, in its landscapes, climates, ecosystems, fauna and flora, has enthralled me for more than a quarter of a century. For part of each year I am extremely fortunate to be able to travel the length and breadth of the ...
In ages past we humans relied on natural phenomena and omens from nature to guide us in our understanding of seasonal events and our attempts to make predictions about the uncertain future. There can have been few greater mysteries affecting us then than the ...