Latest news with #Okinawa
Japan Times
8 hours ago
- Politics
- Japan Times
Japan aims to complete Yonaguni evacuation shelter in 2028
The central government has said that the construction of an evacuation shelter on the country's westernmost island of Yonaguni, in Okinawa Prefecture, will start next fiscal year, with the completion expected around spring 2028. The schedule was included in a progress report released Friday that details the construction of such shelters in five municipalities covering Okinawa's Sakishima Islands, including Yonaguni. Japan started the project bearing in mind a possible emergency over Taiwan in the Nansei southwestern island region, which includes the Sakishima chain and stretches from Kagoshima Prefecture to Okinawa. Underground shelters will be built in the five municipalities to accommodate local residents for about two weeks in the event of an invasion or a missile attack. The town of Yonaguni will build a shelter on the underground level of a new town office complex that will be capable of holding about 200 people. The city of Miyakojima plans to start the construction of its shelter this winter, while the city of Ishigaki aims to begin such work as early as fiscal 2026. Each facility will have a capacity of about 500 people. The town of Taketomi and the village of Tarama hope to draw up detailed designs for their shelters as early as next fiscal year.
NHK
a day ago
- NHK
Untold story of the Battle of Okinawa
Eighty years after the end of the Battle of Okinawa, some people there are passing on the memory of civilians who were killed by their supposed defenders.
Fox News
2 days ago
- General
- Fox News
Beach visitor accidentally picks up shell of venomous snail that can kill a human in moments
A woman visiting a local beach was walking along the tide admiring shells when she picked up one that could have had deadly repercussions. Sharing her story on TikTok, the woman shows herself finding a spotted, cone-shaped shell and picking it up. She was in Okinawa, Japan, when this happened. "She doesn't know it yet, but she's about to pick up the world's deadliest shell that leads to full paralysis in minutes," the text on the video says. The woman picked up a cone snail shell with coils spotted in brown and white. Cone snails are one of the most venomous animals on Earth, with approximately 600-700 species of slugs in existence, according to the Ocean Conservancy (OC). Most venom in the snails will "cause tingling or numbness at the injection site, then spread to the impacted limb and eventually the entire body," according to OC. In a follow-up video that garnered millions of likes, the woman shared that she did research on the shell and its usual inhabitant, finding out even "worse" information about it. "My brain kept convincing me that I had been stung and just didn't realize it. By the fourth day of panic, my husband was sick of reassuring me I was indeed going to live," she said. Cone snails are marine predators. They use venom to immobilize their prey by using their "harpoon-like teeth" to inject victims, according to the National Library of Medicine (NLM). The video garnered nearly one million likes, with TikTokers weighing in on the incident. "This is why life should have an instruction manual," said one woman. A user commented, "Don't touch anything pretty." "I wonder if my mother-in-law would like a cone shell collection," joked one TikToker. Another user said, "I grew up in Hawaii and they taught me this in fourth grade." The person added, "But I don't think it's common knowledge."
Japan Times
2 days ago
- Science
- Japan Times
Rowing from Taiwan to Japan was possible 30,000 years ago, says team
A Japanese team has concluded that it was possible to travel from Taiwan to Japan's westernmost island of Yonaguni in a dugout canoe 30,000 years ago. The voyage in a log boat, with no sails, was possible if all the rowers were highly skilled and adjusted their course with the fast Kuroshio current in mind, the team said. The team's findings resulted from a project by Japan's National Museum of Nature and Science to recreate how Japanese ancestors traveled from mainland China to present-day Taiwan, which was connected by land at the time, and then sailed to Yonaguni, east of Taiwan. The findings were included in two papers published in U.S. journal Science Advances on Wednesday. "You can see Yonaguni from some of the high peaks in Taiwan, but you don't arrive by chance (at Yonaguni) just by drifting," said Yosuke Kaifu, the team's leader and professor at the University of Tokyo. "We surmise that our ancestors picked a date to start the voyage based on the seasonal, weather and sea conditions, and rowed out to sea in a group of men and women with the intention of settling down (in the new location)," he said. The voyage was re-enacted in 2019, involving four men and one woman rowing a 7.5-meter-long dugout canoe. The group left the eastern shore of Taiwan on the afternoon of July 7, 2019, and arrived at Yonaguni in Okinawa Prefecture 45 hours later despite being swept away by the ocean current at times. The oldest archeological sites in Okinawa and the neighboring Amami island region of Kagoshima Prefecture date back 27,500-35,000 years. As boats used back then have not survived to this day, the research team initially created a boat made from reeds and a bamboo raft. It found, however, that such boats were too slow. Although a dugout canoe would have been difficult to build using stone axes, the team concluded that this was the only option, as no other boat possible back then could reach a speed allowing the crossing of the Kuroshio current. An ocean current simulation by researchers from the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, or JAMSTEC, and Ehime University has shown that sea levels at the time were lower than now. While faster back then, the Kuroshio current flowed closer to Yonaguni. The team selected a southern point in eastern Taiwan to set off on its voyage, but it found that a point some 100 kilometers north of the point of departure was a better option.
South China Morning Post
2 days ago
- South China Morning Post
Quake swarm and volcano eruption in Japan reignite fears linked to viral manga prediction
A swarm of earthquakes around Japan 's remote Tokara Islands and the eruption of a long-dormant volcano in Kyushu have renewed public anxiety – stoked in part by a manga artist whose work is widely believed to have foretold a 2011 disaster and who has now predicted another major calamity striking Japan in early July. Seismologists, however, have dismissed any suggestion of a link between the recent activity and the prediction, stressing that there is no scientific basis for forecasting the timing, location or magnitude of earthquakes. More than 330 tremors have rattled the Tokara chain in the past five days, according to local reports, including a magnitude-5 quake shortly after 4am on Tuesday. The remote islands lie between the southern tip of Kyushu and the Okinawa islands, in a seismically active stretch of southwestern Japan. The seismic unrest has coincided with a string of smaller quakes felt in southern Kyushu and the Japan Meteorological Agency's decision to raise the alert level on Mount Shinmoe – a volcano in central Kyushu – to level three on its five-tier scale. Shinmoe erupted on Sunday after seven years of dormancy, sending a 500-metre plume of ash into the air. Ashfall has been reported in surrounding areas, while officials have warned that pyroclastic flows and flying rocks could reach up to 2km from the crater. While seismologists have not linked the events, the timing has unsettled some members of the public, given that the uptick in activity has coincided with a widely circulated prediction by manga author Ryo Tatsuki.
