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Japanese Macaque along a busy hiking trail This is the final part of my 4-part blog series on wildlife photography in Japan. After visiting some of Japan’s wildest peninsulas and islands in part 3, I return to the Japanese mainland to look at a transformation unfolding in the countryside as the population ages and shrinks.

Rhinoceros Auklet This is Part 3 of my four-part series on wildlife photography in Japan. In Part 2, I wrote about Japan’s winter bird spectacles, some of them sustained by supplementary feeding. In this post, I turn to animals that must fend for themselves: brown bears, seabirds, and whales on Japan’s northern and southern frontiers.

This is Part 2 of my four-part blog series on wildlife photography in Japan. In Part 1, I described how the COVID years turned me into a bird photographer in Tokyo, following pond and shorebirds through parks, rivers, and Tokyo Bay. In this post, I head north and south in search of Japan’s great winter bird spectacles. Click here for Part 1 Steller’s sea eagle with its catch on the drift ice

How COVID Turned Me into a Wildlife Photographer What began as a way to get out of the house during COVID turned into a new life in Japan. Grey heron in Sumida park, Tokyo

Some wisdom from Japan

I just spent three days at Kyotographie, an annual photography festival held in Kyoto between mid-April and Mid-May.

Everyone was excited as we reconnect ourselves through a get-together with UNICEF retirees in Japan. Where have they been hiding? Even cherry blossoms agreed to full blossoming to celebrate the reunion

Article shared by Nuzhat Shahzadi Dear Editors, This heartbreaking news (source CNN) caught my attention. Medical research has beaten plague, cholera . . . checked many bacterial and virus-borne illnesses like Covid, RSV, Strep, as well as NCDs, etc. that have prolonged life, possibly? 

News shared by Niloufar Pourzand Nihon Hidankyo, the Japanese atomic bomb survivors’ group, has won the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize “for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons”. The group received the honour “for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again”, said Jorgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, awarding the prize on Friday at the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo. The committee said it wanted to “honour all atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki who, despite physical suffering and painful memories, have chosen to use their costly experience to cultivate hope and engagement for peace”. August 6 2025 will be the 80th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Click here for our August 2020 article on the paper cranes of Sadako Sasaki "Peace Orizuru - A Somewhat Complicated Tale"

August 6, 2023 marked the 78th anniversary of a tragic day. The US dropped its first atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Over the next two to four months, the effects of the atomic bombings killed between 90,000 and 146,000 people in Hiroshima. Three days later a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki killing another 60,000 to 80,000 people in Nagasaki, roughly half on the first day. Now a young university student from Hiroshima is working to preserve the memories of the last survivors of that day by colorizing the early photos and meeting the few survivors still alive to discuss the results. Ms. Anju Niwata, a university student from Hiroshima, Japan, is working on the “Rebooting Memories" project, using artificial intelligence (AI) technology to colorize black-and-white photographs of Hiroshima’s atomic bomb survivors. Over the years, many atomic bomb survivors (hibakusha) have overcome hatred and sadness in hope that human beings should never repea...

Sadako Sasaki What follows is a somewhat complicated story - one with a simple beginning, but as the years pass, becomes more complicated with the twists and turns of politics and money. The idea?  Use sports and more specifically the Tokyo Olympics as an opportunity to build peace. We might start this story with another story - that of Sadako Sasaki, who was born in Hiroshima in 1943.  Here is her story as told on the Peace Orizumi website: "Have you ever heard of Sadako Sasaki? Sadako Sasaki was born in Hiroshima in 1943 during the Second World War. When she was two years old, the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and she was exposed to radiation. Sadako grew up as an active girl who was good at sport, and she studied at the Noboricho Municipal Elementary School in Hiroshima City. One day, about ten years after she was exposed to radiation, she was diagnosed with leukemia and was admitted to the hospital. Prayer expressed through a thousand cranes ...