Nature & Culture of Japan

To make your trip to Japan more interesting

A cricket species telling us to prepare for winter

Because there are many speies of crickets in Japan, it is difficult to tell the speies name from their songs. However, when it can be overcome by training, there are various discoveries. In Japan, there are some crikets which repeat…

The queen of the alpine plants Dicentra peregrina “komakusa 駒草”

The pretty flowers of alpine plants heal the hearts of climbers. I want them to stay there forever. However, there are bad people who steal and take them. Dicentra peregrina , which is called as the queen of alpine plants…

The Meaning of “Tsunokakushi”, a hat for women on wedding

Gender equality is being promoted worldwide. But Japan is one of the lagging countries. It used to be typical for women to do housework and raise children at home after marriage and for men to go out to work and…

A hot spring (Onsen) where foreigners can enjoy without hesitation

Hot springs are said to have medical uses to cure illness. The basis is unknown, there are hot springs that are said to be good for heart disease, cancer and gout. I don’t think how much they are as effective…

Koshien Stadium is the sacred place for Japanese baseball

Although baseball is a sport that originated in the United States, it is very popular in Japan. It came into Japan in the late 19th century. Student baseball games were started first. Then the Professional baseball began in 1936. The…

Sapporo is a city where food manufacturers try to sell new products

I lived in Sapporo for 6 years at the end of the 1980s. Since I was a person from the countryside, the city was big enough for me, if not as big as Tokyo or Osaka. The history of the…

Alpine Zone in Japan; where it is so cold that no tree can grow.

The trees that grow in the coldest places are coniferous trees such as firs and spruces, which can widely be seen in extremely cold regions such as Siberia and Canada. Further north, trees cannot grow and lichens form a tundra…

Smokybrown cockroach

The scientific name is Periplaneta fuliginosa. It is no doubt that this is the most hated insect by people in Japan. It is true that there is a possibility that it may come to our food, taking pathogens that are…

Nine-spotted Ladybug

As the name suggests, the seven-spotted ladybug (scientific name: Coccinella septempunctata) has seven black spots on its red back. It is widely distributed from East Asia to Europe, and now lives in North America as an exotic species. It is…

A strange name of fungi – Monkey’s stool?

Sometimes we can find strange names in books on natural science. Fungi belonging to the family Polyporaceae are called “monkey’s stool=サルノコシカケ saru-no-koshikake” in Japan. This summer, I went to a mountain in the inner part of Wakayama prefecture to investigate insects….