Tokyo

By D. Parvaz in Asia on March 17th, 2011
A monolith of a reminder, the earthquake museum has the time, date and magnitude of the Hanshin quake stamped on it [D. Parvaz]

OSAKA - As an epic battle between man and his nuclear creation rages in Fukushima, in Osaka, where a light dust of snow speckled the sky on Thursday, the only trace of the sickening uncertainty experienced by communities in the north is the realisation that the city is filled with temporary refugees.

They've come here, not in droves, but in significant numbers, filling hotels and trains.

By Al Jazeera Staff in Asia on March 16th, 2011
A cyclist passes a mound of rubble - topped by a boat - in Kesennuma [Photo: GALLO/GETTY]

Follow the latest events around the Pacific Rim after an 9.0-magnitude earthquake off Japan's coast triggered a devastating tsunami.

Blog: Mar11-12 - Mar13 - Mar14 - Mar15 - Mar16

(All times are local in Japan GMT+9)

By D. Parvaz in Asia on March 16th, 2011
Photo by AFP

Tokyo is about as close to being a ghost town as it’s been since the subway sarin attack in 1995.

Traffic through the city is sparse, store shelves are light on the basics and expats are leaving in droves, with several countries - such as Germany and France - advising their nationals to leave.

The Japanese aren't leaving the country. They are, however, hedging their bets and moving as far as they can from the potential path of radioactive winds that might blow down from the exploding and burning nuclear plants in Fukushima.

The trains leaving Tokyo to Osaka and Kyoto are packed, mostly with families with small children and elderly members.

A train crew member on the way to Kyoto told me that trains heading to Tokyo are unusually empty, and the ones heading out are packed.

By Al Jazeera Staff in Asia on March 15th, 2011

Follow the latest events around the Pacific Rim after an 9.0-magnitude earthquake off Japan's coast triggered a devastating tsunami.

Blog: Mar11-12 - Mar13 - Mar14 - Mar15

(All times are local in Japan GMT+9)

By Al Jazeera Staff in Asia on March 14th, 2011

Follow the latest events around the Pacific Rim after an 8.9-magnitude earthquake off Japan's coast triggered a devastating tsunami.

Blog: Mar11-12 - Mar13 - Mar14

(All times are local in Japan GMT+9)

By Al Jazeera Staff in Asia on March 13th, 2011

Follow the latest events around the Pacific Rim after an 8.9-magnitude earthquake off Japan's coast triggered a devastating tsunami. Stay up to date with an all new liveblog for March 15. There, we'll keep you right up to date with the latest developments as they happen. Click here to read it.

Blog: Mar11-12 - Mar13

(All times are local in Japan GMT+9)

By Al Jazeera Staff in Asia on March 11th, 2011
A ship is washed aground in Kamaishi City, Iwate, by the tsunami which followed the Japanese earthquake [Picture: Reuters]

(All times are local in Japan GMT+9)

By Al Jazeera Staff in Middle East on February 4th, 2011
Photo by AFP

From our headquarters in Doha, we keep you updated on all things Egypt, with reporting from Al Jazeera staff in Cairo and Alexandria.  Live Blog: Jan28 - Jan29 - Jan30 - Jan31 - 

By Steve Chao in Asia on October 26th, 2010
  • I have begun an experiment of sorts. Having devoted the past month to learning about the loss of the world's biodiversity (and frankly chilled by the prospects), I set out to gauge public opinion on the matter.

The lab work was carried out in various restaurants, with family and friends, the test subjects. Talking about the issue, as I quickly learned, almost always requires a quick briefer. 

Despite the fact the UN has designated 2010 as the international year of biodiversity, most people only have a rough inkling as to what exactly it means. 

And so, over appetizers, I begin with the typical yarn about the huge variety of animals and plants, how we are all co-dependent in this "web of life", and how that web is unravelling.

What alarms virtually every person is when I start rattling off the figures:
That there are now some 17,291 life forms threatened with extinction - more than one-third of the total 47,677 recognised.

By Melissa Chan in Asia on September 25th, 2010
Photo from EPA

There were several moments when Japan had an opportunity to exit the dispute without looking like the losers. The first, on the day the incident happened, September 7th, when they picked up the Chinese crew after the confrontation in the East China Sea. They could have doled out a few words of admonishment, sent a curt message to Beijing, and then let the Chinese fishing boat go.

In the following days, as the Japanese ambassador was angrily summoned to the Chinese foreign ministry at all hours of the day, Japan had another face-saving chance to free the captain. On humanitarian grounds, perhaps using the common diplomatic excuse of the detainee in bad health. But Tokyo didn't.

When Japan finally blinked in the stand-off with China, it was badly-timed - and looked plain ugly.

Badly timed, because it came after a 48-hour flurry of developments that included the rumour China was holding off exports of rare earth minerals to Japan (

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