C.W. Nicol - The Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Sep 3, 2016

On July 15, 2016, just a few minutes' gentle canter from our splendid Afan Trust Centre here in the hills outside Kurohime in northern Nagano Prefecture, we officially opened our brand-new, first-ever horse lodge.

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Aug 6, 2016

Edo Wonderland Nikko Edomura: the samurai era in town and country

A friend I've known for more than 20 years is now president of the Edo Wonderland Nikko Edomura cultural theme park in the Kinugawa Onsen area of Nikko, Tochigi Prefecture.

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Jul 2, 2016

The Imperial Couple's day in our woods

On Monday, June 6, Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko visited us here at our C.W. Nicol Afan Woodland Trust in Shinano, northern Nagano Prefecture.

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Jun 4, 2016

Forest horror led to an honor from 'foes'

As I write this in my home outside Kurohime, it's astonishing to realize it has been 36 years since I came to live in the hills of northern Nagano Prefecture.

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Apr 30, 2016

Hailing the benefits of raising a stink

In the 1980s, when I was living in northern Nagano Prefecture and hiking the mountains with members of the local Hunters Association, I was always making a lot of fuss about the depredation of ancient forests being instigated by the Forestry Agency — a branch of the national government that, at the time, had an independent budget and financed itself from the sale of timber. Of course, ancient timber was the most valuable, and although about 67 percent of Japan is covered with trees, less than 3 percent is old forest.

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Apr 2, 2016

A tipple that's close to my heart — and life

I moved to Kurohime in northern Nagano Prefecture in 1980, and three years later I bought some land here and built the first house I had ever personally owned. That was made possible by the Nikka Whisky Distilling Co., for whom I did my very first Japanese television commercial back then. What a cushy job that was: drinking whisky, being taken to northern India and Nepal for some of the filming — and getting paid for it!

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Mar 5, 2016

Our new school's on song despite cabals

Almost exactly five years ago, on March 11, 2011, an earthquake followed by a devastating tsunami wreaked havoc in the northeastern Tohoku region. Here where I live amid the faraway mountains of Nagano Prefecture, all of us connected with the C.W. Nicol Afan Woodland Trust wondered what we could do to help. Besides giving donations and joining the cleanup, I strongly felt there must be something that we were uniquely experienced to offer.

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Feb 6, 2016

Swans, and us, at risk as wetlands shrink

Soon after the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011, and the huge tsunami it triggered that killed almost 16,000 people and left more than 2,500 missing in the Tohoku region of northeastern Honshu, our C.W. Nicol Afan Woodland Trust contacted the many towns affected and invited survivors to spend a few days with us in the northern Nagano Prefecture hills.

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Jan 2, 2016

Teens find spicy 'udders' keep boars at bay

A couple of weeks ago, I came home in the evening and found a wild boar on the porch. It had been bled and gutted, but otherwise it was still whole and hairy. I was very busy as I had to head off to Tokyo the next morning, but that present from some kindly local hunter in the Nagano Prefecture hills had to be dealt with.

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Dec 5, 2015

All set for our woods' own horse power

Over the past three years, the C.W. Nicol Afan Woodland Trust has been bringing down people and horses from Tono and Morioka in Iwate Prefecture to help us take out trees we've been thinning from our woods here in northern Nagano Prefecture — and lately, too, from the adjoining national forest we've been asked to oversee.

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Oct 31, 2015

Deer and boar: from pests to the plate

For many years now I have been hammering on about Japan's runaway population of deer and wild boar, and about the huge damage they cause — especially to agriculture, silviculture, forestry and endangered wild plants in national parks.

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Oct 3, 2015

Sled dogs in an age of climate change

When I first went to the Canadian Arctic in 1958, sled dogs were a part of life for the indigenous Inuit and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and part of the scenery and the soundscape for everyone in those frigid far-northern reaches.

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Sep 5, 2015

All aboard for a California roll in the Arctic

In 1966 and then again in '67, I spent from May to September in Cumberland Sound, a large inlet of the Labrador Sea on the coast of Baffin Island in Canada's far-northern Nunavut territory — a region the size of Western Europe.

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Aug 1, 2015

Wine joins whisky in Japan's 'Napa Valley'

The small town of Yoichi in Hokkaido has become famous recently as the setting for much of an NHK TV series titled "Massan" that was screened every day, Monday to Saturday, from September 2014 to March this year.

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Jul 4, 2015

Sausages fire up venison campaign

These days, deer in Japan cause tremendous damage to fields, paddies, pastures, orchards, woodland and even wasabi water gardens. They are also wiping out many rare wild plants. Since the last known Japanese wolf was killed in Nara Prefecture in 1905, deer on these islands have had no natural predators. So, with the number of hunters long in steady decline, their populations have continued increasing at a phenomenal rate.

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Jun 6, 2015

Watch out — there's owls about

The hoot of Japan's most common owl is soft and sonorous, but it can be heard up to 2 km away. When I stay out in the woods at night, with a small campfire and something to sip on, I love to hear the owls calling ... "Ooooo-hoo-hoo." They don't make a lot of noise but when they do give voice, you know about it!

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

May 2, 2015

Spring legacy of winter's toll in the woods

As I write this, April is two-thirds gone and the snow around our house and in our woods has almost disappeared, leaving butterburs to sprout up everywhere. Today was quite warm and we heard the first songs of the bush warblers. The Torii River that flows right past my study and gym is swollen and rushing white with meltwater, though there's still plenty of snow on 2,053-meter-high Mount Kurohime.

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Apr 4, 2015

New neighbors, please go away

When I came to live in Kurohime in northern Nagano Prefecture in the late autumn of 1980, I was a bit awed by the amount of snow, which piles up and compacts to a depth of 5 meters in the mountains.

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Feb 28, 2015

Omotenashi — Japanese hospitality?

As the Tokyo 2020 Bid Committee's appointed "Cool Tokyo" ambassador, multilingual television journalist Christel Takigawa set media buzzing worldwide with her Sept. 7, 2013, speech to the International Olympic Committee in Buenos Aires in which she made great play of the word "motenashi" by attaching the honorific prefix "o" and enunciating it slowly as "o-mo-te-na-shi."

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Jan 31, 2015

Counting the blessings of sheep

I had been a long time away from my native Wales — in the Arctic, in Ethiopia and in Japan, where my books were beginning to sell and I was even being paid to appear in television adverts drinking whisky (not "whiskey," but Scotch), munching ham and wearing boots.

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