In my last column of 2014, "Twelve ways to spend 2015 with nature," I mentioned the possibility of taking a whale-watching trip to the Ogasawara Islands. Ignore the international media hype about the country's pelagic whaling industry — it's a dying custom; instead, focus on the fact that Japan has a wonderful array of whale-watching opportunities up its sleeves. Commercial tourism ventures offer trips to locations scattered along more than 3,000 km of the Japanese archipelago, from Shiretoko Peninsula in northeastern Hokkaido to Zamami Island, Okinawa, in the deep south.