Thirteen-year-old diver Rikuto Tamai advances to final Olympic qualifier
Rikuto Tamai, Japan's 13-year-old men's national diving champion, overcame his nerves on Sunday and earned a spot in April's Diving World Cup, the final qualifying event for this summer's Tokyo Olympics. Tamai, who was too young to compete at last July's World Aquatics Championships, won ...
Young female divers help keep tradition alive
As Japan's ama (female divers) numbers dwindle, younger divers strive to find ways to pass down the culture.
Newly minted teenager Tamai becomes Japan's youngest national diving champion
First-year junior high school student Rikuto Tamai became Japan's youngest national diving champion on Monday, the final day of the national championships. Tamai, who turned 13 on Sept. 11, won the title with 498.50 points at Ishikawa Prefecture's Kanazawa Pool. According to the Japan Swimming ...
Men's synchronized divers Ken Terauchi and Sho Sakai on Saturday became the first Japanese to qualify for next year's Tokyo Olympics in any sport. The 38-year-old Terauchi, already a five-time Olympian, and his 26-year-old teammate punched their tickets to the Olympics by finishing seventh in ...
Month under the Med: French divers launch daring deep-sea expedition
A team of French divers took to the sea off Marseille in a canary yellow capsule on Monday to spend a month exploring the deep waters of the Mediterranean, without decompressing until the very end. Laurent Ballesta, the marine naturalist and underwater photographer leading the ...
Rikuto Tamai becomes Japan's youngest indoor diving champion
Although it will not earn him a berth at the world championships, 12-year-old Rikuto Tamai announced his name as one to watch on Sunday after winning Japan's indoor diving championship. The 143-cm Tamai, a first-year junior high school student, won with 474.25 points at Tokyo ...
Can dolphins teach humans how to come up for air?
A look at new dolphin research may help Japanese pearl and seafood divers and other free divers learn more about countering decompression sickness.
The Shima Peninsula, where life is built on oysters and seafood
Shima Peninsula may be most famous for pearls, but the true treasure is its bountiful natural environment and a plateful of fresh oysters.
Scuba diving in Japan: Beneath the sea, a paradise of color and life
A carpet of sand stretches into the distance below me. As clear and still as the water, the light seems muted, creating a peaceful, subdued scene. Surrounding each rocky feature are small oases of life. At one, there are two nudibranchs (sea slugs) and, as ...
Home of the cultured pearl, Toba in Ise-Shima has both history and living tradition
"To Bond," Ian Fleming wrote in his 1964 novel, "You Only Live Twice," "they all seemed beautiful in the soft evening light ... the gleaming, muscled buttocks, cleft by the black cord, the powerful thong round the waist with its string of oval lead ...
While the city of Shima in Mie Prefecture is famous for its tradition of female ama divers, men have similarly been hunting the depths without the assistance of breathing devices.
Ise-Shima's traditional seafood foragers come up for air
When I arrive at the entrance of Hachiman-kamado, a women divers' hut in the village of Osatsu along the jagged coastline of the Ise-Shima region in Mie Prefecture, matriarch Reiko Nomura and three of her junior female free divers welcome me with beaming smiles. The ...
