Kushiro Airport in Hokkaido is the first in Japan to fully deploy WOLF-GUARD, a self-driving version of the famous Monster Wolf robot. In trials, the Monster Wolf cut small-animal intrusions by about 60 percent. Here's how the red-eyed, howling patroller works, and how it compares with the falcons, border collies and radar used at airports abroad.
The IOC's Future Host Commission says it wants the Winter Games back in Japan, and bid movements are stirring in Sapporo and Nagano. But at home the mood is cold. A look at the cost, the corruption memories, and the climate math that keeps pointing to Sapporo.
Hokkaido culls a record 158,000 deer a year, yet 730,000 remain. Inside the wolf extinction, forest and alpine damage, 5,460 car crashes, and the venison-vs-wolf debate over Japan's missing apex predator.
A ball bearing with a 0.6mm bore, smaller than a sesame seed. One firm in a former coal town in Hokkaido reportedly makes around 70% of the world's sub-millimeter bearings. Here's how.
A Chiba startup has rebuilt yokan into an energy bar now test-selling in Japan and Australia. Here is why this centuries-old confection is one of the smartest survival foods ever made.
Corn and mayonnaise on pizza, bread and salad is everyday food in Japan but baffles the world. A look at Hokkaido's corn history and what makes Japanese mayo so different.
Niseko, Japan's premier ski resort, is moving beyond its winter-only image. We break down 'Niseko by Nature'—the new brand from the Niseko Promotion Board (NPB)—what a tourism DMO actually does, and how to enjoy Niseko's green season.
A team from Hokkaido University, Tokai University and Sapporo Maruyama Zoo has bred the slender shrew in captivity for the first time anywhere. Here is how they pulled it off with a mammal that cannot skip a meal, and why it matters for one of the smallest endangered mammals on Earth.
When typhoons soak Mount Fuji, its summit rises a few centimeters and its base sinks. Hokkaido University researchers found this in satellite-positioning data, and it changes how Japan reads the volcano's eruption warning signs.
A black clay layer in a remote Hokkaido stream — more than 10,000 km from the Yucatan impact crater — holds chemical fingerprints of the asteroid that ended the age of dinosaurs. Tohoku University researchers are re-analyzing East Asia's only known K-Pg boundary outcrop.
A Hokkaido natto maker in Ebetsu, Hamanasu Foods, has grown its exports 60-fold in 8 years — almost entirely to China, where Beijing supermarkets stock Japanese-labeled 4-pack sets dominating 80% of shelf space. Meanwhile back home, Mizkan paused four natto products in May 2026 due to Middle East tensions disrupting packaging supplies. Plus: the science of Bacillus subtilis, where to buy natto abroad.
Air Canada launches the first-ever direct flight between North America and Hokkaido in December 2026, connecting Vancouver and Sapporo's New Chitose Airport with three weekly Boeing 787 services. We unpack who it targets, why now, and what makes Hokkaido a winter prize.