It is heartbreaking, and yet so common, to see old men in the 70s manning construction and car parking sites in Japan, waving traffic control lights in blue uniforms and apologizing to passing-by pedestrians for the inconvenience, even under the...
The most inspiring academic conference I’ve attended was the “Scientific Society for the Life Circling Town of Minami-Sanriku” in Miyagi Prefecture on November 23, 2023. I joined 120 participants, a mix of researchers from various...
What is a Zero-carbon National Park? There are 34 national parks in Japan, covering about 5.8 % of its land, many of which include UNESCO World Heritage sites. Some of them are now going carbon-free, upgrading visitor centers, hotels and other park...
A soak in warm mineral waters has been the source of relaxation across difficult cultures, whether thermal baths in continental Europe or Japanese onsen hot springs. We now know that a stroll in the nature can also be therapeutic, for both our minds...
A childhood friend of mine was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 27. She was single, and after surviving surgeries, chemotherapy and other treatments, she said to me: “I guess I need to give up on the idea of getting married and having...
A number of businesses, startups and nonprofit groups are engaged in cleanup operations, but here is a superhero – Japan’s Ultraman – to the rescue as well. From samurai to Ultraman Masahiro Suzuki was born in Miyagi, not too far from the Pacific...
While Halloween celebrations have started to catch on in Japan, they are not necessarily for children to gather candies but rather for grownups to go out partying in costumes. Nonetheless, the Japanese kids grow up hearing plenty of indigenous ghost...
Japan is famous for its efficient and punctual public transportation systems. Bullet trains (shinkansen) are not only fast and frequent – departing Tokyo every five minutes and reaching Kyoto 450 kilometers away in just two and half hours – but are...
The decades-long and widespread sexual abuses of young boys by the founder of the largest J-pop agency, Johnny & Associates, have uncovered the need to protect children in the society otherwise considered peaceful. The number of child abuse...
The suicide rate in Japan is the highest among the Group of Seven economies, and the number of women who took their own life has increased for two years in a row from 2021 to 2022, at the level of over 7,000 a year (nearly 600 per month), in...