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This summer, Kyra Richardson ’21 joined 23 students from around the world at Osakikamijima island in Japan for a two-week program. The Human Ecology Lab and Island Odyssey (HELIO) focuses on the intersection of human ecology and Japanese higher education. Over 10 days, students participated in workshops, trainings, and hands-on meetings with local communities in Japan.

During my junior year of high school, I was offered the rare opportunity to study Japanese for a year with a local Boys & Girls Club and travel to Japan for two weeks. After admiring Japan’s historical and religious sites, embracing the kindness of its people, and falling in love with the vibes of the country, I decided to pursue the language in college. Four semesters of Japanese later, as a Hamilton student I was accepted to the Middlebury Language Program at International Christian University to study in Tokyo for my junior fall.

The National Geographic Daily News site published an article focused on research conducted by Geosciences Technician Dave Tewksbury on May 28. “Japan's Secret WWII Weapon: Balloon Bombs” described the Japanese plan to use balloon bombs propelled across the Pacific by jet stream currents to the United States. The story was an outgrowth of a poster Tewksbury presented at the annual Geological Society of America meeting in 2008.

Associate Professor of Japanese Kyoko Omori presented a paper titled “Analysis of Silent Cinema and Benshi Narration in Digital Humanities" at a meeting in Kyoto, Japan, on Nov. 18.  The conference was organized by the INKE group (Implementing New Knowledge Environments) in Canada, a major collaborative research initiatives program led by scholars at the forefront of computing in the humanities, text analysis, information studies, usability and interface design. It was hosted by Ritsumeikan University, Japan.

The series “Disaster in Japan: Earthquake, Tsunami, and Nuclear Power Plant Crisis” commenced on April 4 with a roundtable discussion on the current crisis in Japan that explained the state of Japan in the wake of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.