C.W. Nicol - The Japan Times

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C.W. Nicol

For C.W. Nicol's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Feb 7, 2010

Winter warmth, home and away

A friend just sent me a satellite photograph taken last month of the whole of Britain blanketed in white, and wrote about the homeless folk dying in extremely cold weather in Poland. Perhaps some people will doubt that global warming is happening at all after this winter — little realizing that it should more correctly be termed "climate change."

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Jan 3, 2010

Nature's oaken towers of power

Have you ever looked closely at the peak of a Western general's uniform cap — or that of an admiral or chief of police — or at their epaulettes?

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Dec 6, 2009

Clubhouse rooms with a view

Over the last 22 years we have had many guests visiting our woods up here in the Kurohime hills of Nagano Prefecture. However, their numbers have shot up since we converted our holdings into being The C.W. Nicol Afan Woodland Trust in 2002.

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Nov 1, 2009

Wildlife returns to our well-kept woods

Our Afan Woodland Trust here in the Kurohime hills of Nagano Prefecture has entered into a joint project with the Department of Wildlife Ecology and Management at Azabu University to study woodland biodiversity and the results of our methods of woodland management.

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Oct 4, 2009

A pig of a weed — I kudzu you not

Looking out through the large picture window at the back of my house, I had a view through a little wood of Japanese oaks, mountain cherries and chestnuts of our small vegetable plot, a lovely wide hay meadow and more woods clothing the foothills of Iizuna mountain that rises on the horizon.

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Sep 6, 2009

My key connection

It was 1954 and the summer holidays were over. The family had moved a few miles south from Tewkesbury to Cheltenham in the beautiful county of Gloucestershire in the west of England, and I had been transferred from the one town's boys grammar school to the other's.

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Aug 2, 2009

My 'honey trap' sauna

In the little woods just behind my house I have a big wooden outdoor bath and a sauna, with lockers beside the sauna door for people to put their towels and clothes in.

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Jul 5, 2009

Mud, mud, marvelous mud

About 20 years ago I had a large pond dug in our Afan woods up here in the Nagano Prefecture hills. It was in a place that was always waterlogged when the snow melted, and in spring there were lots of puddles that became home to thousands of tadpoles. But then, as the weather warmed up, the puddles would dry out and the tadpoles would die.

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Jun 7, 2009

Anybody for chips?

In national parks, gardens, woodlands and any other places where people frequently walk in natural settings, the pathways and places where they gather pose many problems to owners, managers and anybody who is concerned with the comfort and safety of the visitors and also the integrity of the habitat.

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Apr 5, 2009

Swapping snow for a rain forest

Although there was very little snow this winter here where I live in the Nagano Prefecture hills, it was still good to have an excuse to get away from the cold, and the excuse this time was to present a prize for the writer and illustrator of a book for little children.

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Mar 1, 2009

Our woodland trust just keeps on growing

Last month, thanks to a very generous donation, we were able to add another whopping 119,088 sq. meters to our Afan Woodland Trust down the road from my home in the Nagano Prefecture hills outside Kurohime. This brings our total to 296,070 sq. meters — about twice the area we had when we set up the trust six years ago.

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Feb 1, 2009

Mucking about with horses

In Britain when I was a lad in the 1940s and '50s, horses were still a common sight in the streets. Although horse-drawn carriages had pretty well vanished except for those used for ceremonial purposes, delivery wagons ladened with milk, coal and beer were commonly pulled by horses.

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Jan 4, 2009

You can't beat country life

I was down in Kyushu with some Japanese friends last year, just sipping a few drinks and chatting. The conversation turned to kabu and became very serious and somewhat gloomy. Quite honestly, I wasn't really following it all, but I felt I had to put in my two-pennies' worth.

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Dec 3, 2008

Oh, no: It's not a Christmas pud

The Christmas season may be grinding ever closer, and the creation in the photograph below is almost the right color and shape, but it's most certainly not a Christmas pudding.

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Nov 5, 2008

'The proudest day of my life'

Apart from a few experimental trees, it is not our policy to grow non-native plants in our woodland trust here in the hills of Nagano Prefecture.

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Oct 1, 2008

Helping a healthy river flow

My eldest daughter, Miwako, gave birth to twin girls in March of this year, raising the number of my grandchildren to five. So, when my busy schedule finally permitted, I recently nipped over to Vancouver to see them all and to help out Miwako and her partner, Don McCubbing, by being houseboy and chief bottle-washer for a while.

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Sep 3, 2008

Thinking out of the box

Twenty something years ago, when we started to buy badly abused and neglected woodland here in the Nagano Prefecture hills, one of the problems that became very obvious was the lack of housing. Not for me, but for the woodland creatures.

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Aug 6, 2008

In June this year I took a group of Japanese friends and members of our Afan Woodland Trust up here in the Nagano hills on a trip to Britain. We went on an All Nippon Airways tour designed for people with an interest in ecology and nature restoration, and we visited our "twin" forest, the Afan Argoed Forest Park, in South Wales.

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Jul 2, 2008

The right way to reconstruct rivers

It's the end of June and, after three weeks of travel, I'm back at my desk in Kurohime up here in the beautiful hills of Nagano Prefecture.

Japan Times

ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK

Jun 4, 2008

To cage or not to cage?

I was born in 1940, in Neath, South Wales. My father went off to war and my mother took me to live in the relative safety of rural Suffolk in eastern England, where the Luftwaffe's bombers seldom attacked. There, she worked as a nanny for rich people's offspring. It was pretty tough for my Mum, but she managed to get a small house in the town of Ipswich, which was where I first went to school.

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