Category: environmental
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Nuclear Power….and Earth!
For thousands of years, humanity has been using different resources for food, energy, and all that it needs from Earth. The brain of humans has been developing over long periods of time, trying to find better resources for their increasing, unstoppable needs as their populations kept increasing. In the last two centuries, the consumption of…
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Sustainable Home
On January 9th, we visited Mr. Takayuki Mori at his house in Kyoto. Mr Mori is a extraordinary ecologist. He had a vision for sustainable living in the modern society, and he demonstrated this vision through his self-designed home. At the first glance, his house appeared to be simple, but every parts of the house…
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Of Personal Bubbles and Pruned Bushes
A few days before I left, my brother warned me to leave behind my personal bubble, because I wouldn’t need it in Japan. Little did I know how right he was. Japan is cramped. Between people being compacted into trains during rush hour to the capsule hotels to the narrow streets, it is very tight,…
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Aightowa-An Inspiration in Living Sustainably
Our first full day in Kyoto we took a trip to visit Professor Armstrong’s host parents from her time as a student in the city. The visit to Aightowa (the name of their property) turned out to be my favorite event of our tour of Japan. Morisan Sensei has…
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“Americans” in Japan
On Thursday we visited Lake Biwa in the Shiga Prefecture – an ancient lake that is estimated 1 million years old that is also the largest lake in all of Japan. We were fortunate enough to have Dr. Katsuki Nakal, a research biologist and curator as a guide thru the tour. …
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Sustainability
Does ability to fluently speak a language mean that you will not have any troubles and misunderstandings communicating with people from a culture where this language is native? Neither of us can really speak Japanese yet, but even without knowing Japanese perfectly, we clearly understand now that the answer is no. Cultural Sustainability I have…
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More Nuclear Energy Problems – January 11, 2013
In the shinkansen, a news banner at the front of the train car said that a crack was found in the nuclear reactor of one the 54 nuclear energy facilities in Japan. Fortunately, this reactor had already been shut down as of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, but was one of the facilities that…
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I Like Turtles – January 7, 2013
Today at the temple, there were peaceful pools of water filled with koi and carp-like fish. It was serene and beautiful. But then, I saw a turtle. Back at school, I do research on turtle locomotion and turtle shell mechanical properties, so I naturally I am a freak for anything related to turtles. I noticed…