Nipponica

Six months after the major earthquake that hit the Noto Peninsula, one calico cat still won’t leave its damaged home. Named Mei, she lived in the house with her owner, who was killed in the quake, for about 10 years.

Takabayashi visited her mother, Kazue Ueno, then 86, on New Year’s Day. “Come back tomorrow with your husband,” her mother told her. Then after Takabayashi left, the earthquake struck. Her mother’s house was declared “totally destroyed,” though it has just barely managed to stay standing. Kazue was killed by a nearby building that collapsed on her while she was evacuating.

Animals are the best. Echos of Hachiko.

The landslide in Matsuyama, Ehime Prefecture, occurred as the weather agency warned of heavy rain mainly in western Japan, calling people to be on high alert for landslides and flooding in low-lying areas.

Hunters in northern Japan are refusing to take on the surging bear population, warning that “fighting a brown bear is like fighting a US military commando”.

With a record 219 bear attacks, including six fatalities, over the past year, rural communities are desperate for help – but hunters say the dangerous job simply isn’t worth the meagre pay.

Bear hunter is one of the professions that you should never underpay and never get on their bad side.

The poll also revealed 10 per cent of Japanese have set out to “tolerate” the heat no matter what in the coming months, while a further 33 per cent said they would try not to use the cooling device – but expected to relent if the temperatures become unbearable.

Alarmingly, most those saying they would attempt to get through the summer without air conditioning were elderly who live on pensions and savings, leaving them highly vulnerable to heatstroke.

This is more than just a climate crisis, it is now going to be a health and economic crisis.

An official of the prefectural government in charge of the issue responded to the question, saying, “Indeed, as you have pointed out, I feel it is very difficult to convey the message of how serious the harm is with the poster. I will consider fixing the matter.”

Click through to see the curious looking bear that does seem too tame to maul you. Good boy.

Nasu Animal Kingdom in east Japan's Tochigi Prefecture announced on June 24 that two Arctic wolf pups were born last month -- a first for a Japanese zoo.

Worth the click through to the article just to watch the video of the newborns.

The Nippon Foundation and the University of Tokyo together found deposits of some 230 million tonnes of manganese nodules on the seabed around Minami-Torishima, located roughly 1,900 km southeast of Tokyo, in a survey conducted between April and June.

In Japanese summers, the most common type of web, ones that are found ALL AROUND US, are in fact, horizontal “shelf” or “funnel” type webs. Though they are usually much more densely woven than the iconic “suspended” spider-creations, they often go unnoticed, lost in the greenery of the shrubbery in which they are set – and hard to see because of their horizontal “flatness”. But in the morning, when the dew has set in, after a rare summer-rain, or when the sunshine hits them just right, you can see that these webs cover almost every inch of the hedges and shrubbery (where left alone and untrimmed) – a veritable mine-field for unsuspecting insects who want to have a rest in the bushes.

From a local blog, a reminder from home. Do not click if spiders aren't your thing.

Heavy rain battered wide areas of Japan on Tuesday, disrupting bullet train services between Tokyo and Osaka and prompting the weather agency to urge caution for landslides and floods.