insights from frontier Japan

While enjoying a walk amid a refreshing breeze on a footpath that stretches from residential land in Chuo-ku in the city of Sapporo to the midst of the mountains, I hear the echoes of a black woodpecker in the distance.

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.

It is late autumn in the Pacific Ocean. In waters off the unpopulated Moyururi Island of eastern Hokkaido's Nemuro City, some ten or more sea otters gather together and float luxuriously on the water surface.