![\"Mark](\"https:\/\/www.japantimes.co.jp\/japantimes\/uploads\/images\/2026\/05\/04\/537598.jpg\" "\\"Mark")
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\n Mark Brazil first began traveling Japan in the 1980s. For his 70th birthday, he set out on another major journey.
\n | COURTESY OF MARK BRAZIL\n <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n \n The countryside of Japan looks different than it did in the 1980s, marked with abandoned homes. As a younger traveler, I accepted creature comforts when they were available and managed without them when they were not, reaching far-flung parts of the country on a modest budget. I backpacked and hitchhiked for free rides. Now, like many in the silver set, I prefer comfortable nights, good meals and a hot bath after a long day. I travel by plane, train, bus or car, and where the rural and mountain roads I once traveled were rough gravel, they are now paved \u2014 though in recent years, as populations and municipal budgets have declined, those surfaces have begun to deteriorate.<\/p>\n When I guided nature-focused guests in the 1980s, they were typically much older than I was. Now, they are my peers or younger, often in their 50s to 80s. While Japan\u2019s adventure tourism<\/a> still targets younger visitors, its arts, culture and nature attract an older demographic, even as the country welcomed a record 42.7 million international visitors<\/a> in 2025. Younger travelers seek late nights and social energy; older naturalists tend to dine early and rest well. Among Japanese travelers themselves, older adults are especially active: A recent JTB survey<\/a> found that 79.2% of women in their 70s take domestic trips. For potential visitors, the infrastructure to support later-life travel is already in place.<\/p>\n It reflects a simple reality: Retirees often have the time, means and inclination to travel.<\/p>\n The digital age of birding<\/p>\n Birding, both as an occupation and a hobby, birding has changed dramatically, as has the technology that supports it. Binoculars, once fragile and prone to fogging, were built with Porro prisms and required careful handling. Today\u2019s roof prism models are sturdier, sleeker and waterproof.<\/p>\n Information, too, was once hard-won. Paper maps, letters and conversations with fellow naturalists were essential. Identification depended on field guides carried into the field \u2014 a niche that grew alongside the rise of traveling naturalists. I wrote<\/a> two myself<\/a>. A typical kit was simple: binoculars, a notebook for handwritten sightings, a field guide and, if you were lucky, a telescope.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n \n Mark Brazil (right) joins Kyushu birder Kunihiko Hatano in Saga Prefecture, with Swarovski binoculars and a telescope in hand. In those days, even locating a single species could take days of inquiries and travel based on secondhand reports. I remember chasing my first Bonaparte\u2019s gull to Oarai, Ibaraki Prefecture, searching there without success only to learn it had moved on and would not reappear for several days at the Tama River, where I eventually caught up with it. Now, a notification on a smartphone can send a birder to an exact location within hours.<\/p>\n Travel throughout Japan, once difficult, has become far easier, aided by multilingual signage, expanded transport networks and the rise of online booking platforms. Even a year is too short to fully explore the archipelago \u2014 one could spend it on temples, mountains or museums alone. Yet it is now possible to move through that abundance with a speed and ease that would once have been unimaginable.<\/p>\n Today\u2019s naturalists carry a range of equipment \u2014 telescope, tripod, camera and smartphone among them. In 2025, I added image-stabilized binoculars, a notable advance, and even a thermal monocular that offers night vision capabilities once confined to science fiction.<\/p>\n At the same time, the physical toolkit has begun to shrink. Field guides have moved to digital formats; notebooks to smartphones. I now record sightings in my iPhone\u2019s Notes app or dictate entries directly, and use the eBird app<\/a> to create location-specific lists and track recent activity. The same platform provides near-instant updates on sightings, replacing the slower exchange of information that once defined the practice.\u00a0<\/p>\n With that immediacy comes a fundamental shift. What once required patience, local knowledge and chance encounters, can now be planned in real time. The experience of birding \u2014 and of travel itself \u2014 has become faster, more connected and more precise.<\/p>\n A year in motion<\/p>\n As 2025 began, my yearlong birding journey unfolded across Japan, from its westernmost edge<\/a> \u2014 Cape Irizaki on remote Yonaguni Island in Okinawa \u2014 to its eastern limits \u2014 Cape Nosappu<\/a> in Hokkaido \u2014 visiting 24 prefectures over 256 days. What I had imagined as a long birding holiday quickly became something more demanding \u2014 a sustained cycle of travel planning and long days spent searching for wildlife.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n \n From Yonaguni Island to Hokkaido, Japan spans a rich birding corridor with more than 600 recorded species. The map shows a rough route; Mark Brazil\u2019s journey took in dozens more locations. In the 1980s, I traveled more innocently, enjoying what I saw without knowing what I had missed. In 2025, birding remained immensely pleasurable, but the numbers game made it competitive. In 1983, I encountered 300 species over a year; in January 2025 alone, aided by experience and technology, I had already found 200.<\/p>\n By nature I am slow-paced and habitat-focused, and a digital immigrant at that. In February, I traveled with a younger European birder roughly the age I had been on my first visits to Japan \u2014 a true digital native. We crossed Kyushu at speed, chasing sightings as they were reported. The pace was exhilarating and unsettling, and during those days I recorded my 250th species \u2014 a lesser white-fronted goose in Saga Prefecture.<\/p>\n The greatest change I noticed was in rural Kyushu, where population decline was unmistakable \u2014 abandoned homes, shuttered schools and deserted hotels. The scale of it was difficult to ignore.<\/p>\n In March, I fulfilled a 40-year ambition to visit Yonaguni. Birding there at a slower pace was an antidote to the hurried way I had been moving through Kyushu. The views from Cape Irizaki were striking and the birdlife rewarding, but the island\u2019s population decline \u2014 especially in its farming communities \u2014 was equally evident. Rice fields that had once supported migratory birds lay abandoned and overgrown. Even basic services had thinned, making travel more difficult than expected. I added a dozen species to my list, including a striking Oriental plover, but the experience was shaped as much by signs of decline as by its birdlife, fields falling silent where birds once gathered.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n \n Birds spotted by Mark Brazil on his journey across Japan included the rare Oriental plover on Yonaguni Island. By the end of March, I had reached my first milestone: 300 species, equaling my previous record. The pace, however, was beginning to take its toll. Long days of travel and planning were demanding, and each goal gave way to another, more difficult one. A target of 350 species began to feel uncertain. I was becoming aware of limits I had not known in my 20s \u2014 then I had energy in abundance; now I had time and resources but far less of it<\/p>\n The aging and declining rural population I had observed became the backdrop to all my subsequent travels. Nowhere was this more visible than on Tobi Island, a small patch of land off Yamagata Prefecture known among birders and anglers, and for its slower pace of tourism. Its population has fallen from a peak of 1,788 to just 133 (with only a single child) by September 2025. The school has closed, and most houses stand abandoned. It remains a rewarding place to visit and excellent for birding but also a stark example of the future facing many parts of Japan.<\/p>\n What 70 feels like in the field<\/p>\n My travels took me from Hokkaido to the subtropical southern islands, from alpine peaks to city parks and open sea. I climbed into the Japanese Alps to nearly 3,000 meters, walked parks in Tokyo, searched for seabirds from ferries and weathered sudden storms \u2014 all in pursuit of my yearlong goal.<\/p>\n I marked my 70th birthday in June while guiding a group of mostly similarly aged inbound birders for Victor Emanuel Nature Tours, reaching my secondary target of 350 species along the way. I could see my waning energy reflected in their eyes.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n \n An endangered crested ibis is spotted on Sado Island. As the remaining days grew fewer, adding new species became increasingly difficult. The pressure to reach a higher goal \u2014 perhaps 365, one for each day \u2014 began to mount, along with concerns about stamina and motivation. In August, I took on my most physically demanding challenge: a hike into the Japanese Alps in search of three montane species. Keeping pace with my longtime companion Chris Cook proved difficult. The huts were comfortable and the birds obliging, but my stamina was not. The ascent was a slog, and I finished far behind, newly aware of my limits.<\/p>\n The views of Mount Yari and the surrounding peaks were as striking as I remembered from the 1980s. Then, I had carried a tent, sleeping bag and provisions; at 70, even an overnight pack for hut stays felt heavy. The huts themselves have been modernized and are relatively comfortable, the food substantial and the birds obliging \u2014 but my stamina was not. The descent was a slog, and I trailed far behind in Chris\u2019s wake, finishing with growing awareness not only of changes in Japan\u2019s landscape and population but of the inevitability of my own aging.<\/p>\n With the Alps behind me and the Ogasawara Islands ahead, I added 12 more species with the help of image-stabilized binoculars, bringing my total to more than one bird per day by the end of August. A new goal \u2014 400 species \u2014 came into view. Few lifelong Japan-based birders have reached that number, and the possibility of doing so within a single year was compelling.<\/p>\n More than the count<\/p>\n In 2025, I witnessed the effects of rural depopulation where life had once been vibrant in the 1980s. Then, as Japan\u2019s population grew, conservation challenges were widespread \u2014 from air and water pollution to habitat loss and species decline. By 2025, some of those pressures had eased. Air quality had improved, rewilding was underway in parts of the countryside, and several species \u2014 including the red-crowned crane, short-tailed albatross, crested ibis and brown bear \u2014 were recovering. I encountered encouraging numbers of each.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n \n A meadow bunting is spotted in Hokkaido. Yet not all trends were positive. Coastal reclamation has continued, and when I compared my paper maps from the 1980s and \u201990s with current digital versions, much of the coastline was unrecognizable. Wetlands, in particular, had continued to disappear. So, in September, I made a pilgrimage to the Higashiyoka tidal flats in Saga Prefecture. During the highest tides of the full moon, migratory shorebirds gathered in dense, shifting flocks, pushed close by the rising water. Among them were two rarities \u2014 an Asian dowitcher and a Nordmann\u2019s greenshank \u2014 both dependent on these shrinking habitats as they move between northeast and southeast Asia. Watching them, I was struck by the scale and endurance of their journeys. Compared with theirs, my own travels felt almost incidental.<\/p>\n Despite setting increasingly ambitious targets, I exceeded each of them. My 400th species, a citrine wagtail, appeared on Tobi Island \u2014 a moment that marked both an achievement and a turning point. After that, the numbers began to matter less.<\/p>\n The final months unfolded more slowly. Motivation waned, and new species became harder to find. Days ticked past, and progress felt elusive. I became a storm chaser, seeking rare birds carried across the Sea of Okhotsk. After one such storm, I recorded my 410th species \u2014 a vagrant American robin on the Shiretoko Peninsula<\/a>.<\/p>\n By the end of December, my total had reached 415 species, the final addition a Bohemian waxwing. Yet the number seemed less important than the experience behind it. I had seen more of Japan than ever before, revisiting familiar landscapes and discovering new ones, often with friends. What remained was not the count but the places, the encounters, and the pull to keep traveling \u2014 much as when I first set out in the 1980s.<\/p>\n Mark Brazil is a birder, expedition leader and author of various books including “Japan: The Natural History of an Asian Archipelago” published by Princeton University Press and “Field Guide to the Birds of Japan” published by Bloomsbury Publishing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The desire to travel does not wane with age, but the body\u2019s ability to recover from it does.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16598,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[6001,12221,6000,8,13275,2277,481,11547],"class_list":["post-16597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-japan","tag-aging","tag-birds","tag-elderly","tag-japan","tag-migration","tag-nature","tag-tourism","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n
\n | MARK BRAZIL\n <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\n | MARIJKE JANSEN\n <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\n | JAPAN TIMES GRAPHIC\n <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\n | MARK BRAZIL\n <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\n | MARK BRAZIL\n <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\n | MARK BRAZIL\n <\/p>\n