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August 31, 2025
 

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More Environment stories

Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / ANIMAL TRACKER
Oct 10, 2007
Freshwater blue goby
By Rowan Hooper
* Japanese name: Ruri-Yoshinobori * Scientific name: Rhinogobius sp. * Description: Gobies have a slender body with a rather large head, bulbous eyes, fleshy cheeks and a full-lipped mouth, giving them something of a cartoon appearance. Males have shining bright blue spots on their cheeks and body....
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Oct 3, 2007
Wild orangutans 'facing extinction within 15 years'
By David McNeill
PANGKALAN BUN, Borneo — Homeless, semiparalyzed and blind in one eye, Montana faces an uncertain future. Even if his human friends find somewhere for him to live, the 15-year-old has been weakened by years in assisted care. The lethal dangers of readjustment to life in his natural habitat include not...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK
Oct 3, 2007
'Stoopid ninja' keeps on learning
By C.W. Nicol
T he first time I ever heard cicadas was in 1963, during my very first summer in Japan. I was wandering through a small mixed woodland where some small boys were flitting from tree to tree, playing ninja. I, as a strange young foreigner passing through, became their target for assassination. Being just...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / ANIMAL TRACKER
Sep 26, 2007
Horned turban shell
By Rowan Hooper
* Japanese name: Sazae * Scientific name: Turbo cornutus * Description: One of the most prized of all marine gastropods, the horned turban shell — more familiar to sushi aficionados as sazae — has a large, thick, green-gray shell and a snail-like body. The shell has about five spirals, which turn...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Sep 26, 2007
Turning waste into rich resources
By Stephen Hesse
Visit Calcutta, even briefly, and you soon learn the rules of the road — or rather that there aren't many, if any. You will also meet some of the planet's most resourceful people, from street children to scientists who are masters of making very little go a long way.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Sep 19, 2007
Serendipity twice over
By Mark Brazil
On a calm evening, I looked out from my balcony toward the mountains to the west, beyond Sapporo. Those distant peaks stretched in an apparently unbroken chain, from the gently sloping flanks of volcanic Mount Tarumae at the southernmost end, rising and falling northward in a bold, time-weathered horizon...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Sep 19, 2007
Tokyo sanctions an extended cull of Taiji dolphins
By Boyd Harnell
The photos accompanying this article were shot covertly despite escalating intimidation by members of the Isana Fishery Union in Taiji, Wakayama Prefecture, who appear to be increasingly fearful that continuing publicity in Japan and abroad will threaten their widely condemned but profitable annual dolphin...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / ANIMAL TRACKER
Sep 12, 2007
Carp
By Rowan Hooper
* Japanese name: Koi (Nishiki-goi) * Scientific name: Cyprinus carpio * Description: A big, colorful fish, with large scales and barbels (those are the "whiskers" growing down from the upper lips). They can grow to well over a meter in length, and live for more than 15 years. They are related to other...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK
Sep 5, 2007
High times away from summer's heat
By C.W. Nicol
Early in August, when Japan's big cities were really beginning to cook and parasols were in full bloom in the sultry streets, we again invited a group of children to escape the stifling lowland heat and come up to our woods for a few days.
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Aug 22, 2007
Can others save Earth despite Big Oil's blinkers?
By Stephen Hesse
How can an economic superpower founded on progress and innovation be so averse to change that would cut the greenhouse-gas emissions that are spurring global warming and climate change?
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / ANIMAL TRACKER
Aug 22, 2007
Spot-billed duck
By Rowan Hooper
* Japanese name: Karugamo * Scientific name: Anas poecilorhyncha * Description: A medium-sized, mainly gray duck that has a pale head and a black bill with a bright yellow tip. At 60 cm long, and with mottled "scaly pattern" plumage, it looks and sounds similar to the more familiar mallard, but the...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Aug 15, 2007
Bliss for a Lazy Birder
By Mark Brazil
Birders are often motivated by their species list — often something akin to their meaning of life.
Philippine bid to acquire used Japanese warships gains steam
Tokyo is looking to transfer Abukuma-class vessels to the Philippines as part of broader efforts to boost the defense capabilities of like-minded neighbors amid growing Chinese military assertiveness in the region.
Japan to launch broad review of immigration policies amid rise in foreign nationals
Foreign tourists at Narita Airport in June. A report released Friday stresses that Japan is at a turning point and that current ad-hoc measures on immigration are no longer sufficient.
Top Japan trade negotiator canceled U.S. trip over rice, report says
Ryosei Akazawa
Most Japanese teens struggling with school find end of summer ‘painful’
Some 93.1% of Japanese teenagers who struggle with school life said they felt like they “wanted to disappear from the world" at the end of summer vacation ahead of the start of a new term, according to a recent survey released by Yokohama-based nonprofit Daisan Kazoku.
Most Trump tariffs are not legal, U.S. appeals court rules
Workers hang a large poster of U.S. President Donald Trump on the facade of the Department of Labor headquarters building in Washington on Wednesday.
Japan to launch broad review of immigration policies amid rise in foreign nationals
Foreign tourists at Narita Airport in June. A report released Friday stresses that Japan is at a turning point and that current ad-hoc measures on immigration are no longer sufficient.
YouTube Music Weekend is where Japan’s internet-born performers go global
Headlining the second day of YouTube Music Weekend is Vocaloid artist Kikuo, who, with 1.46 million YouTube subscribers, is one of the most popular artists in the genre.
Japan looks to build drone ‘shield’ in record defense budget request
A group of Ground Self-Defense Force service members discuss drone operations and capabilities at a joint static display during the Orient Shield 24 opening ceremony at the Yausubetsu Training Area in Hokkaido in July last year.
Can anime carry the memories of World War II?
Many schools in Japan show "Grave of the Fireflies" as educational material to tell the emotionally grueling story of a boy who has no means to prevent his sister from starving to death.
Jesse Kirkwood: ‘Languages are entire cultural universes with all sorts of baggage’
Jesse Kirkwood is part of a vibrant field of translators who have nurtured what might be called a “post-Murakami era of Japanese literature and translation,” one book at a time.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Longform

Tetsuzo Shiraishi, speaking at The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, uses a thermos to explain how he experienced the U.S. firebombing of March 1945, when he was just 7 years old.
From ashes to high-rises: A survivor’s account of Tokyo’s postwar past
By Alex K.T. Martin

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Tokyo Gas lights the way to carbon neutrality
Tokyo Gas lights the way to carbon neutrality

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