insights from frontier Japan

A banner celebrating tennis player Osaka Naomi’s second Australian Open women’s singles title was hung from the City Hall building in the city of Nemuro in the eastern Hokkaido region on February 21.

Coronavirus vaccination of healthcare workers began in Hokkaido on February 19. Deliveries of the American-made Pfizer vaccine began in the morning, at 7 target medical facilities.

A student networking event was held online on February 13, linking Wakkanai Hokusei Gakuen University located in northern Hokkaido's Wakkanai City and Sakhalin State University located in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk City, Sakhalin Oblast, Russia. The students exchanged opinions under the theme, "How young people see the future of Hokkaido and Sakhalin Oblast".

Koli Kamal Raj (27) immigrated to Japan after marrying a Japanese woman from southern Hokkaido's Assabu Town. He is working hard at stockbreeding at Shimokawabe Ranch in the town. Toiling away at heavy physical work with a smile, Raj says with a gleam in his eyes, "I want to participate in the local festivals as well and really get to know everyone around here."

　A special exhibition titled ‘Hokkaido’s dinosaurs’, in which the fossils of seven varieties of dinosaurs studied in Hokkaido have been gathered, began at the Hokkaido Museum in Sapporo on the 12th.

In January of this year, two foreign students from Mongolia joined the new Hokkaido Sakae High School sumo team that started last spring. According to the Sumo Division of the Hokkaido High School Physical Education Federation, this is the first time foreign students from Mongolia have joined a high school sumo team.

‘ICT Park’, a base for the utilization of information and communication technology (ICT), maintained by NTT East and other companies in a city center building in Asahikawa in northern Hokkaido, was unveiled to the press after it opened on February 7. ‘Kokugeki’, an e-sports stadium that has introduced the country’s first next-generation 5G communication standard, will form the core of the facility.

In the February 13 Novel Coronavirus Pandemic Countermeasure Headquarters Meeting, the intensive measures period originally scheduled to last until February 15 was extended by the Hokkaido prefectural government to March 7 to align with the National State of Emergency Declaration period that targets areas such as the Greater Tokyo Area.

"Niseko Shootout" is a photograph and video contest for skiing, snowboarding, and natural scenery. The prize winning works in the photograph category were announced on January 20.

Asahikawa Airport in northern Hokkaido became a snow-covered winter wonderland on December 4, 2020. At just after 6 a.m., before sunrise, snow removal work was being carried out on the runway.