C.W. Nicol - The Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Jan 3, 2015

Talking tanuki — or whatever you call them

After deer, easily the most commonly seen wild mammals up here in the Kurohime hills where I live, and in northern Nagano Prefecture in general, are the furry, short-legged burrowing creatures called tanuki in Japanese.

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Dec 6, 2014

Oh deer, what a waste of food and fashion

In summer this year, my photographer chum Conan Morimoto brought a fashion-designer friend of his by the name of Teruki Uchise to talk to me and visit our Afan Trust woods outside Kurohime in the Nagano Prefecture foothills of the Northern Alps.

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Nov 1, 2014

What's 'weasely' about wonderful weasels?

One of the mammals we're most likely to see in our Afan woods up here in Kurohime in the Nagano Prefecture hills is the Japanese weasel (Mustela itatsi). These wonderful little animals, known as itachi in Japanese, are master hunters that can run, climb trees, swim and dive and take down birds or other animals more than twice their size — which makes them pretty unpopular with chicken farmers!

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Oct 4, 2014

The bear cheek of our woodland friends

When I came to live here in Kurohime in the hills of northern Nagano Prefecture almost 35 years ago, I got a gun licence and joined the local hunter's association — not because I wanted to kill things, but to help me learn about the mountains, rivers, woodlands, plants and wildlife in this area.

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Sep 6, 2014

A tale of two parks, and their preservation

As I sit in my study here in Kurohime in the hills of northern Nagano Prefecture, through the window I can see 2,053-meter Mount Kurohime, a dormant volcano that's forested to the top.

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Aug 2, 2014

Toxic gypsy moths — a most unpleasant infestation

Living in the countryside, the usual casual greetings include an observation about the weather, but for the last six weeks around my home in northern Nagano Prefecture, everybody mentioned the caterpillars. Now it's the moths. I've never seen such a plague of them in the 34 years I've been here.

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Jul 5, 2014

Entertaining guests with a little horseplay

I had returned from a three-month trip to the Canadian Arctic and was in Vancouver, meeting up with family and friends before returning to Japan.

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

May 31, 2014

When industry works in step with nature

It was about 15 years ago when an old friend, Yoshito Umezaki, invited me to dinner in Tokyo to meet a friend of his named Masayoshi "Mike" Ushikubo — "a really great guy who loves mountains, travels all over the world and is a company president who has a little problem."

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

May 3, 2014

Oysters offer pearls of wisdom within

Since the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011, our C.W. Nicol Afan Woodland Trust, based in Kurohime, Nagano Prefecture, has been helping to relocate an elementary school in Miyagi Prefecture that was destroyed by the huge tsunami that followed.

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Apr 5, 2014

Horses power across time and places

As a wee nipper I'd sometimes be treated to donkey rides on our local beach at Port Talbot in South Wales, but the first time I sat astride a pony was near my home in Neath when I was 8. Around then, the old dairyman occasionally let me join him as he made his daily rounds with his horse-drawn cart collecting big metal churns of milk from the hill farms. On those great days we'd go from my grandparents' house on Llantwit Road up to my Auntie Peg Pritchard's cottage, then way up past the cemetery and the medieval-looking Ivy Tower, a stone folly from 1795 which to this day still overlooks the valley. The cart had a curved front and I would stand next to the old man as his horse plodded up the mountain road, imagining I was in a Celtic chariot riding into battle against the Romans.

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Mar 1, 2014

Going back to the Simien's future

On Saturday, Jan. 18, I set foot in Addis Ababa for the first time since I left Ethiopia in late October 1969.

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Feb 1, 2014

Japan: Why kill whales off Antarctica?

The Japanese whaling fleet — this year just a factory ship, three catchers and what is being called a "surveillance" vessel — left Shimonoseki in Yamaguchi Prefecture in secret on Dec. 9, 2013 bound for the Southern Ocean and its annual hunt that will keep it away from home through March.

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Jan 4, 2014

To the Simien and back — 47 years on

By the time you read this I should be in the Simien Mountains of northern Ethiopia. I have been asked to go back there to tell the nation's current generation what the forests and wildlife were like in 1967, '68 and '69 when I served the government of Haille Selassie as the country's first game warden and set up the Simien Mountains National Park.

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Nov 30, 2013

Christmas in Japan is only lonely if you let it be

Fifty-one years have rushed by since I first spent a winter in Japan, and 33 years since I first spent a Christmas and New Year in Kurohime, northern Nagano Prefecture. We got our first snows in early November, but at the time of writing, although the mountain peaks are dusted with white, the snow around the house has gone. Locals, including me, think the coming winter will be a severe one.

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Nov 2, 2013

Hybrid furniture and the working horse

Right from the outset when we started planning what is now our magnificent Afan Nature Centre that opened three years ago here in the Nagano Prefecture hills outside Kurohime, I insisted it should be built in wood — and that all the wood must be Japanese.

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Oct 5, 2013

Canadian sojourn helps to shake off Japan malaise

It was really good to escape the summer heat in Japan and spend two weeks in British Columbia with three of my grown offspring and five grandchildren, as well as with lots of friends both old and new.

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Aug 31, 2013

Hope blooms eternal for the Simien National Park

In 1967, Ethiopia was the last African country south of the Sahara still without any national parks — an embarrassment for a nation then entertaining ambitions to assume leadership of the continent.

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Aug 3, 2013

School wins prize for paddle power in its paddies

In mid-July, together with a couple of celebrities, a reporter and some staff from Aeon Co., Ltd., Asia's biggest retailer, I took a half-hour bus ride from Nagoya Station to the city of Aisai in Aichi Prefecture to visit Saya High School there.

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Jul 6, 2013

'Water of life' helps to keep spirits up

Back in 1980, when I first settled in Kurohime, up in the hills of northern Nagano Prefecture, I often had to go to Tokyo to meet editors. They were good times, as those office-wallahs would take pity on young struggling authors and use them as an excuse to visit bars.

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Jun 2, 2013

Finding ways not to say 'mottainai!' in the woods

The common Japanese term mottainai, meaning “what a waste,” has become an international concept.

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