Avi has written at great length about the plight of birds who enter the nets that “protect” the lotus farmers’ fields along the shores of Kasumigaura. To read more about this issue, see the following articles.
Bird Sanctuary or Mortuary (May 2007)
Bird Rescue Underway: Six Saved Thousands to go (December 2007)
Save the Birds (December 2007)
Kasumigaura [...]
Though it is now the height of their breeding season, it is not until July that they really stand out. It is then that they can be seen darting about, like little fighter planes, over the ripening paddy fields, gracefully grabbing up mosquitoes and other harmful bugs. They are working at a frenzied pace, as their young [...]
In Japan, people often pay more than 100,000 yen (roughly $1000) for pet cats and dogs. That is a completely NORMAL price to pay at a pet store here. Sometimes the breeds are a bit special, but often people are shelling out that kind of money for “American Shorthair” cats which can be [...]
The tremendous advances made in the medical sciences over the past few centuries have been simply astounding. Much of this progress can be attributed to the efforts of diligent, talented, and sometimes just-plain-lucky researchers who set about looking for solutions to medical questions by applying the scientific method — which depends heavily on observing the results of controlled experiments to prove hypotheses.
Animals, [...]
Continue reading about Annual Memorial Service (Ireisai) For Animals Sacrificed At Medical School
Those of us involved in trying to have Tsuchiura’s lotus root farmers take down their deadly bird-ensnaring nets have been making efforts to rescue as many birds as possible from slow starvation, until that end is achieved.
We have become, however, metaphorically and quite literally, stuck in the mud. First, there are the technical problems [...]
tsukubans speak