Environment

Japan’s shipments of plastic waste overseas in 2018 decreased 30 percent, figures from a research institute showed Thursday, due to restrictions China imposed on receiving such waste in late 2017.

With an eye on the Tokyo Games, Japanese researchers are developing a new system to accurately forecast torrential downpours — known in Japan as “guerrilla rainstorms” — 30 minutes before they strike.

A breeze rustles through leaves of oyamabokuchi plants on a farm in Katsurao, a village in Fukushima Prefecture.

Two rare deep-sea oarfish caught in fixed nets off Toya port on the southwest side of Okinawa stunned the local fishing community last month for simply being alive.

As spring approaches, the country’s weather forecasters face one of their biggest missions of the year: predicting exactly when the famed cherry blossoms will bloom.

Many people may be unaware of blue carbon, or carbon dioxide absorbed by oceans containing marine plants such as sea grass and seaweed. More than half of the CO2 captured by plant life on Earth is actually stored by saltwater plants, and moves are spreading to find ways to use blue carbon to help put the brakes on global warming.

The operator of the disaster-hit Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant said Wednesday it has completed its first attempt to use a remote-controlled probe to manipulate melted fuel accumulating at the bottom of one of the crippled reactors.

When we were negotiating for the purchase of a piece of land, the realtor told us that the lot we were interested in had no access to public waterworks, which meant we would have to dig a well. At first, this aspect seemed like a demerit, since hiring a company to dig the well would cost more than ¥400,000 plus administrative fees.

Radioactive cesium exceeding the state limit has been detected in fish caught off Fukushima Prefecture for the first time in about four years, the prefecture’s fisheries cooperatives association has said.

A mysterious fish that lives deep below the ocean’s surface has been popping up in the waters of Toyama Bay, causing marine experts to scratch their heads.