Japan's "Water Day" events focus on finiteness of water for today's daily life

August 30, 2017

Japan's "Water Day" events focus on finiteness of water for today's daily life

August is the hottest month of the year in most parts of Japan, and Japanese people get attracted to rivers, lakes, waterfalls and other water-cooled locations to dodge from the heat of the summer.

Japanese have seen themselves surrounded with abundant fresh water, notably river water, underground water and subterranean stream water, as the greater part of Japan's national land is occupied with mountains and forests in the Asian monsoon zone.
Japanese had so far felt that drinking water is not exhaustible, just like air, and free of charge, but they have come to believe that the supply of water is not unlimited any more. This reflects the years of urbanization since the 1960s and the influence of environmental pollution. They think that they have to adopt a water-saving lifestyle now.
The first day of August is designated as the "Water Day" in Japan. Various kinds of events and campaigns, mainly led by public organizations,  are held across the country in order to increase people's awareness about the finiteness of water for people's daily life.
The Water Day campaigns call for, in part, actively using rain water and recycled water for domestic use.
As of 2010, the use of rain water and recycled water at major facilities came to 260 million cubic meters a year. This accounted for 0.3 percent of the total amount of water supplied for domestic use across Japan.
A government-organized event for the Water Week, the week from August 1, calls for reviving the centuries-old custom of sprinkling water on the road in front of the house and elsewhere.
The custom, called "uchimizu," is expected to contribute to appeasing the effects of the heat island phenomenon and reducing the emission of ozone-depleting greenhouse gas from air conditioners during the summer time.
At a time when Japanese believe drinking water is not free any more, the consumption of mineral water is increasing steadily year by year. The per capita consumption of bottled mineral water grew to 19.6 liters in 2007, an increase of about 12 times from 1.6 liters for 1990. Today, water has become "a thing to buy" for them.
The use of mineral water is expected to increase further in the years ahead, but at the same time, Japanese are also becoming aware of the need to preserve precious water resources across the country.

Hot weather threatens volunteer work in flood-hit areas in southwestern Japan

July 30, 2017

Hot weather threatens volunteer work in flood-hit areas in southwestern Japan

The two local high school girls were serving bottles of cooled drinks to volunteers on their departure to assigned places in areas hit by recent floods and landslides in Fukuoka Prefecture, Kyushu, southwestern Japan.
They looked proud of their job which helps protect volunteers' physical condition amid a long spell of very hot weather toward the end of July.
The girls, accompanied with their boss, were manning one of the booths set up at the main volunteer reception facility in Asakura City, hardest hit by the disaster. The heavy rainfalls, which continued for a few days from July 5, triggered floods and mudslides in riverside areas  in the city and neighboring regions. leaving over 40 persons dead or missing and hundreds of houses damaged and inundated.

Kyushu, a largely rural region, has been ravaged by natural disasters twice in two years; an extensive killer earthquake hit Kumamoto Prefecture in April 2016.
Related local authorities and organizations appear better prepared than before to manage the post-disaster mess,  but the situation remains to be fully improved, for example, in terms of systems to sort out volunteers and properly support their jobs at the affected places, experts say.
Volunteer reception points in Asakura were flocked with volunteers on the first and second weekends after the disaster and as a result, some of them remained unregistered to be sent until in the afternoon. One volunteer was hit by a heatstroke and taken to a hospital.
Individual volunteers came up on weekdays and on weekend, while groups of volunteers came usually on the weekend.

As relief work made progress, many volunteers came in groups to the affected areas after being processed by dispatcher organizations. The system must be improved mainly for accepting individual volunteers on weekdays.
Individual volunteers must be divided into different segments--first-timers or not, and volunteer policyholders or not, and then, first-time volunteers receive orientation before being matched with others to be a team of 10 or so under a mutually selected leader.
"We have accepted 400 to 500 volunteers  a day this weekend, but there was no problem, because they had been well organized by a volunteer dispatcher before coming to us," said a leader in one of the affected communities.
"We could let them start their jobs quickly only after giving them a brief explanation," he said.  
Those dispatched for relief work in the community were mainly students attending a high school of Fukuoka City, the prefecture's capital.
The students kept working under a scorching sunlight as dust rose from the dried mud.
Some of them tried hard to take out mud from under the floor of inundated houses. Others collected the debris from the flooded areas and cleaned ditches buried with mud on an alley.
"We'll return to the community center where we were accepted this morning and take a lunch there, and then work again until 2:30 in the afternoon," a leader student said.
"This is our first day of activity here, because we just entered the summer vacation," he said. Part of the students are expected to be back again before their vacation is over.
Japan has come to realize that it should make itself even more resilient to natural disasters, not just by reinforcing hardware infrastructures for disaster prevention but also by enhancing software-related systems, such as those for early weather warning, quick evacuation to shelters and smooth volunteer acceptance.
The experience the student volunteers have obtained this time is expected to contribute to further refining Japan's disaster relief system from now on.

Japan's oldest irrigation canal lives with nature-loving people over centuries

June 30, 2017

Japan's oldest irrigation canal lives with nature-loving people over centuries

Japan's "tsuyu" rainy season from June to early July represents the start of rice planting in various parts of the country, the practice which reminds Japanese that they have lived on eating rice.
Japan's oldest irrigation canal, called Sakuta-no-Unade, has continued to water over 150 hectares of rice fields in Nakagawa town, Fukuoka Prefecture, southwestern Japan.
The canal, which starts at a water gate built on the middle reaches of Nakagawa River,  has a total length of 5.5 kilometers.
The watercourse project is depicted in one of the oldest Japanese historical books, Nihon Shoki, compiled in the early 8th century. Precisely when the canal was dug remains unseen, but researchers surmise the oldest part of the canal system dates back to the second to third centuries, because a big ancient tomb excavated near the canal is believed to have been built for who ruled the area around the period.
The Sakuta canal is famous because of an episode linked to Empress Jingu, the legendary figure who appears in the book.
When people had difficulty cutting out through a big rock standing on the canal route, she prayed to the god that the rock would be removed, then a thunderbolt fell onto the rock and tore it apart.
The canal represents an important tourist asset for Nakagawa town, located south of Fukuoka City, the prefectural capital.
The town has the dual jobs of preserving the environment and landscape around the canal but at the same time, keeping the irrigation system in an active, workable condition.
If the canal bank is protected with modern stone walls only for the purpose of increasing convenience, will the landscape be well preserved?, a researcher doubts.
Water parks built along the canal enable people to get
them feel close to the aquatic environment. Nature-loving people are hoping to see an innovative design which will make it possible to preserve the historic and cultural value of the watercourse while maintaining and enhancing its irrigation functions.

Citizens pushing for rebirth project for Inokashira Ponds as Tokyo's oasis

May 30, 2017

Citizens pushing for rebirth project for Inokashira Ponds as Tokyo's oasis



The scenic Inokashira Ponds park has been loved by Tokyo citizens as a refreshing oasis in the big metropolis. The park, owned by the Tokyo metropolitan government, extends on an area of 380,000 square meters in Musashino and Mitaka in the western suburbs of Tokyo. In the center of the area are three ponds with a total area of 43,000 square meters, and in one of the bonds, people can enjoy riding small pleasure boats.
The Inokashira park turns 100 this year, overcoming hard years linked to environmental pollution.
Until around the 1960s, an estimated 10,000 tons of pure spring water had been gushing out a day in the area. But the springs then almost dried up, because a lot of wells were dug around the park to draw underground water.
Park operators had to use underground water to keep water for the ponds. But this failed to maintain the ecology in the ponds in a proper condition and as a result, various introduced species began to dispel indigenous species.
Toward the 100th anniversary, the park operators and a group of citizens got together to launch a rebirth campaign for the park. The operation features the "kaibori" dredging work from winter to early spring.
The first kaibori work was carried out in 2013, followed by the second one in 2015.
The third kaibori operation is scheduled to be held later this year. aimed at improving the quality of water in the ponds and getting rid of introduced aquatic species.
The operation has so far contributed to removing many harmful foreign species in the ponds, helping to get the ecology back to the original condition.
The dredging has also helped to restore the original life cycle from small aquatic creatures and waterweeds to indigenous fish and birds, such as a crucian carp and a dab-chick.
The kaibori volunteer team includes 40 citizens registered as regular members.
The operation starts with catching aquatic creatures in the dredged ponds and dividing them into indigenous ones and foreign ones. After that, the pond bottom is exposed to the sun for several days to clean up the environment. Then, water is funneled back to the ponds, and only indigenous species are returned to the ponds.
Unstable weather continued in spring this year in Tokyo and neighboring regions. But people are having difficulty adjusting themselves to unusually hot weather in recent days. This makes them feel the importance of the refreshing aquatic environment even more strongly in their daily life.

Azalea featuring flower events enliven people in Kurume, southwestern Japan

April 30, 2017

Azalea featuring flower events enliven people in Kurume, southwestern Japan


Kurume City, southwestern Japan, becomes something like a town-wide flower park dominated by light and red purple azaleas around this time of the year.
Azalea, or tsutsuji in Japanese, is known as the city's flower, and events featuring the flower are held at various places from April to May.
The biggest tsuttsuji-featuring event takes place at a scenic riverside park.
The origin of azeleas in Japan, a wild one, is said to have come from Kagoshima in the southern part of Kyushu, southnwestern Japan. The original Japanese azalea, called Kirishima, spread to many parts of Japan early in the 17th century in the Ero era, when a gardening boom occurred among wealthier people.
Charmed with its beautiful colors, horticulturists tried to grow various seedlings. Decades of endeavors to develop more beautiful species followed, and in the first half of the 19th century, a samurai in the Arima clan in Kurume came up with a unique moss-based nursing method.
This contributed to growing new species with vivid colors and small, thickly blooming flowers.
Species developed with his method became to be called "Kurume Tsutsuji" in the Meiji era. The Kurume Tsutsuji brand then caught on well with flower lovers across Japan.
A main part of the event at the riverside park, opened in 1989 in commemoration of the centennial of the town's inauguration as a city. is an annual flower and plant market, where visitors can find their favorite ones. On every weekend, a gardening clinic is open at a booth at the event site. One day, a middle-age couple were asking a senior gardener at the booth how to grow a certain flower.
Satisfied with the gardener's advice, the wife said, "Thank you, sir. Your information was very much useful. We have to write it down."
The name of Kurume Tsutsuji has come to be widely known among people in the city, an old castle town with a population of about 300,000. But most of them little know that the brand is linked to the nursing method developed by the Kurume samurai, Sakamoto Genzo. A program to introduce Sakamoto's feat was provided in an event at a different site.
Kurume is home to Bridgestone Corp., the world's largest automotive tire manufacturer, which has continued philanthropic activities for local people over years.
Azalea flowers, which can be found here and there in the city, have become an important part of Kurume citizens' daily life.  If the Ero era samurai's work is well remembered among them, azeleas should be even more charming and attractive to them.

Dolphin watching cruise entertains ecotourism fans in Amakusa, southwestern Japan

March 30, 2017

Dolphin watching cruise entertains ecotourism fans in Amakusa, southwestern Japan

Relatively small bottlenose dolphins can be seen almost throughout the year in waters off Futae Port in Amakusa, Kyushu, southwestern Japan, but the spot is bustling with many ecotourism fans in the high season from spring to summer.
Futae faces a waterway lying between the northern coasts of the Amakusa Islands and the Shimabara Peninsula. A habitat of 200 to 300 Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins, the area is known as one of the best four dolphin watching points in Japan.
Eight different operators run dolphin watching boats, usually five times a day, but more frequently in the holiday seasons. Charges for the cruise are 2,500 yen for adults and 1,500 yen for children.
"The encounter rate is as high as 99 percent all the seasons." This is a catch phrase for the Futae dolphin watching cruise. Should passengers meet no dolphins, they can get on for a retry free of charge.

Watching points can be reached in five to 10 minutes after leaving the port.
Passengers who joined the cruise late in March saw herds of 10 or so gray bottlenose dolphins jump up from the sea from time to time while shining triangular dorsal fins. They breached quickly above the sea, at so close a place that water sprays on passengers, and quickly disappeared into the sea.

The waterway off Futae in Itsuwa Town, Kumamoto Prefecture, is a rich fishing ground, but this means it is also a good feeding area for many dolphins. Local fishermen use no fishing nets. This is why no cases occur in which dolphins get caught in fishing nets in the waters.
Wild dolphins and people coexist peacefully in the Amakusa area, a cruise operator says.
After breaching above the sea, dolphins sometimes swam ahead of the boats as if they lead the way.
In Japan, small dolphins had been caught in drive-fishing in various areas until early in the 20th century. Drive-fishing is still used as a traditional method at certain places, but the practice has been internationally criticized as a cruel act.
Toward the end of the one-hour cruise off Futae, most passengers looked satisfied with the exciting experience.
Asked by a passenger on the return to the port, the skipper said, "Today's cruise was so,so. Sometimes, we can see even more dolphins."
"We can also see cute baby dolphins with mothers from around April on," he said. "We hope more people will come and enjoy the heart-warming time with wild dolphins."

Open-air doll display seen to lure more tourists to old castle town in southwestern Japan

February 26, 2017

Open-air doll display seen to lure more tourists to old castle town in southwestern Japan

The small open-air theater for "hina" dolls became a playground for kids on the fine weekend in late February.
The theater was actually a flight of stone steps toward up to Kuromon Gate, the publicly designated cultural asset, to the Akizuki Castle ruins in Asakura City, Fukuoka Prefecture, southwestern Japan.
The event was timed to coincide with the traditional Hima Matsuri festival for the Girls Day of March 3.
The hina doll display in Akizuki started in 2016 as an off-season event to attract more tourists to the old castle town.
Big collections of hina dolls are displayed as attractions at many tourist spots across the country around this time of the year.
This kind of event has become less rarer than before, but open-air exhibitions of hina dolls cannot be seen everywhere.
"We have this year a total of 250 hina dolls, contributed by 60 families in Asakura City, " an organizer said at the display site.

The dolls stand on a red carpet put on the stone steps, and on both sides of the carpet are big paper cranes, to be lit as illuminations at night.
"We place the dolls on the carpet and take them back every day, but we do not bring them out when rainfall is expected."

The hina doll display was organized as a part of the "Hina Meguri" tour in Akizuki, in which tourists can collect stamps at 18 places, mainly restaurants and shops, while strolling around the castle ruins.
When they collect seven stamps on the form, they can have souvenirs by lottery.
Asakura is a largely rural, calm town, but it boasts of being geographically close to major cities, such as Fukuoka, the most populous city in Kyushu, southwestern Japan.
"We have a lot of tourists here in Akizuki in the cherry blossom viewing season around April and in the autumn colored leaves season, but we want to have more tourists to Akizuki in other seasons, too, in order to help boost the town as a whole," the organizer said.