For Hayato Ishii's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
In a few years, robotic farming equipment will be able to plow and prepare soil while human farmers sleep. That is what Hokkaido University professor Noboru Noguchi and his team are aiming for as the nation's farmers age, with no successors in place. The improved use ...
Naha Airport in Okinawa is striving to become a new logistics hub in Asia and is preparing for an expansion in trade expected if the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal takes force. One day in late June, the airport in the prefectural capital shifted into business mode ...
Chidorigafuchi, a moat northwest of the Imperial Palace in central Tokyo, was packed with people trying to catch a glimpse of the magnificent cherry blossoms in early April, as in every year. "This is like a dream, it's too good to be true," Eiichi Niihori, ...
Shigeru Takabayashi, 85, is a living witness of the convoluted history of the English language in Japan around the end of the Pacific War. In spring and summer 1945, the last months of the war, Takabayashi studied English — an enemy tongue ostracized in wartime ...
A Japanese former volunteer in Africa has just published a dictionary of Swahili, convinced that speaking the local language is a must for mutual understanding. Midori Uno first encountered the principal language of Tanzania in 1967 and spent two years in the country as a ...
U.S. agronomist Norman Borlaug had deep links with Japan and helped crossbreed a wheat seed it developed with other varieties to help other nations boost food output. Borlaug, who became known as the "Father of the Green Revolution" and received the Nobel Peace Prize in ...
KAMPALA (Kyodo) At an elementary school in a small Ugandan village that has no running water or electricity, Eri Iwayama waits for rain. Early last year, Iwayama, a member of the Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers, planted upland New Rice for Africa, known as NERICA, in ...
When Hirokazu Kiuchi proposed six years ago that a farmers' marketing cooperative in Katori, Chiba Prefecture, start processing frozen spinach, he knew he was in for a fight. "We'll just lose money," one farmer groused. They had good reason to be wary. After all, they would ...
Although the Beatles split up in 1970, the Fab Four's music continues to attract new generations of fans in Japan. "I could hardly believe my ears," said Hidenobu Kondo, 44, recalling the day two summers ago when he heard his then 2-year-old son, Ryuichi, suddenly ...
Although the Beatles split up in 1970, the Fab Four's music continues to attract new generations of fans in Japan. "I could hardly believe my ears," said Hidenobu Kondo, 44, recalling the day two summers ago when he heard his then 2-year-old son, Ryuichi, suddenly ...
