A derelict wooden boat washed ashore on Monday on Miyazawa beach in the northwest of Japan’s main island Honshu. The boat’s only cargo was eight skeletons. Evidence suggests that the boat and the bones came from North Korea. This boat is … Continue reading
Tag Archives: Japan
I love stumbling across bits of history that are completely new to me. The Japanese galleon San Juan Bautista is a good example. The San Juan Bautista was one of the first Western-style sailing ships to be built in Japan. … Continue reading
Hashima Island lies nine miles off the port of Nagasaki, Japan. Between the seawall which encircles the small island and the abandoned apartment blocks rising from it, many think that it looks like a battleship, earning the nickname, Gunkanjima, or … Continue reading
In the last two months, eleven wooden fishing vessels have drifted ashore from the Sea of Japan on the Japanese coast. On board were 25 badly decomposed bodies. The vessels contained nets and fishing gear and are believed to have come from … Continue reading
In March of 2011, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was hit by a tsunami triggered by the magnitude 9.0 Tōhoku earthquake. Three operating nuclear reactors suffered partial meltdowns and a fourth reactor which was not in service suffered hydrogen explosions which … Continue reading
UPDATE: Between the effects of the explosion, fire, and water put aboard in firefighting the Shoko Maru subsequently sank. The 2,242 DWT Japanese product tanker, Shoko Maru, exploded and caught fire Thursday morning, local time, while anchored about 5 kilometers off … Continue reading
Despite domestic and international protest, the annual mass slaughter of bottlenose dolphins is underway in a cove near the Japanese village of Taiji. In 2010, The Cove, a documentary about the yearly slaughter, won the Academy Award last night for best feature … Continue reading
On Sunday, the government of South Korea announced that it was extending its air defense zone to include Socotra Rock, a submerged pinnacle in the Yellow Sea. The Korean air defense zone now overlaps with the air defense zones already … Continue reading
After a two year suspension, Iceland has resumed hunting endangered fin whales. Photographs taken by undercover Greenpeace activists show a harpooned fin whale being cut up for meat, likely to be exported to Japan. Meanwhile, environmentalists are fighting whaling in … Continue reading
Things are getting tense again in the East China Sea, specifically between the Chinese and Japanese. The dispute is over a small group of uninhabited islands that lie between Okinawa and Taiwan and are known as Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyu … Continue reading
Every year in the village of Taiji, Japan there is a yearly hunt which results in the slaughter of over a thousand dolphins. Despite international protest including a 2009 documentary film, the Cove, which graphically displayed the mass dolphin killing, and won … Continue reading
Tensions are rising in the South China Sea, where at least a half dozen nations are asserting a jumble of overlapping claims of sovereignty, fishing and mineral rights. China is now ramping up their claims by announcing that as of … Continue reading
Earlier in the month, we posted about a a 66 feet long, 165 tonne, starfish and barnacle encrusted, steel and concrete floating dock that washed up on Agate beach, south-west of Portland, Oregon. We were surprised to hear that the dock, torn free … Continue reading
Tropical cyclone Marwar ended attempts by two solo British rowers to row across the Pacific this week. Sarah Outen, 27, was attempting to traverse the globe using only human power, by either rowing, kayaking or cycling. She began her … Continue reading
Seventy yeas ago, the Japanese and navies of the United States and Australia fought the Battle of the Coral Sea in the waters southwest of the Solomon Islands and eastward from New Guinea in a series of naval battles from May … Continue reading
One year ago today, the largest earthquake in Japan’s history, measuring 8.9 on the Richter scale, struck 70 miles offshore, triggering a 23-foot (7-meter) tsunami that washed far inland smashing towns, airports and highways across the north-eastern Japanese coast. Over 16,000 people are known … Continue reading
Cosmo Power, a Japanese engineering company, has developed the “Noah” a four person mini-ark to help residents along Japan’s coast survive a future tsunami. The “Noah” is a four foot diameter bright yellow sphere made of fiber-reinforced plastic. It is self righting … Continue reading
Japan’s whaling authorities are suing the Sea Shepherds in US courts to attempt to stop the violence directed by the organization against the annual Japanese whale hunt. The Sea Shepherds claim that the annual hunt is illegal, but prefer what they … Continue reading
Two stories about flotsam and ocean currents. The first flotsam from the earthquake and tsunami, which struck Japan on March 11, is beginning to arrive on the West Coast of the United States. A large black float, believed to have floated from Japan, was … Continue reading
Within hours of the tsunami that struck northern Japan last March, the internet was abuzz with the somewhat bizarre suggestion that the earthquake and wave which followed might be some sort of cosmic retribution for Japanese whaling. Regardless of what one thinks of that suggestion, … Continue reading