People have been traveling to Amanohashidate for centuries, and this week apparently bears are too.

Amanohashidate, located on the northern coast of Kyoto Prefecture, is considered one of the three most beautiful places in Japan (the other being Miyajima and Matsushima). Amanohashidate translates to “bridge to the heavens,” and it got that name because the strip of land that stretches across the bay here is said to look like a pathway rising into the sky.

Celebrated in poems and painting for centuries, Amanohashidate’s beauty continues to draw travelers today, with people coming from across Japan and around the world to take in the view. This week’s visitors, however, have included two bears.

In another instance in the growing trend of bears showing up in unexpected places in Japan, shortly after 4:30 in the afternoon on June 10 a call was placed to the 110 emergency services phone number reporting a bear that was spotted at the north end of Amanohashidate. The strip of land was evacuated and sealed off, and police and animal control personnel were dispatched to the scene. Firecrackers were used to scare the bear off of the bridge, after which it fled into the ocean and swam back towards the bay’s northern shore to the west of Amanohashidate. After coming back onto dry land, the bear climbed a tree and was then shot with a tranquilizer dart, falling asleep around 10:40 p.m. No injuries to humans were reported.

▼ And yes, some of the response team was equipped with handheld shields, like they were knights heading out to face off with a dragon or ogre.

Now, a visit to one of Japan’s top sightseeing spots, a quick swim, and getting to bed at a relatively early hour would be a pretty good day for most people, but the city of Miyazu, where Amanohashidate is located, doesn’t ordinarily get bears in this district, and so its appearance is cause for concern…and that concern has grown deeper with the spotting of a second bear, which was seen at Amanohashidate on the morning of June 12 at roughly 7:30. This bear was spotted by a foreign tourist, and after the report came in Amanohashidate was once again evacuated and closed off. As of this writing, the bear remains at large.

Source: TBS News Dig (1, 2), Nitele News
Top image: Wikipedia/Sylvestre
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Artists Christian Rebecchi and Pablo Togni, who work as NEVERCREW, have a knack for bringing the immensity of nature to developed urban spaces. Their colorful, large-scale murals take a playful tack when it comes to portraying animals, often merging them with other objects such as instant photos or, most recently, a plastic punch-out toy. “Souvenir,” completed this year in Vienna, combines motifs of a large bear with other Arctic components, such as icebergs, a seabird, and a steamship.

“The natural environment appears transformed, filtered, made artificial: it is no longer a space experienced through relationship, but a distant construction,” the artists say in a statement. The work is “almost a simulation reflecting a perception of nature progressively emptied of empathy…Nature becomes something to observe, arrange, organize, as if it were a separate object rather than a system of which we are an integral part.”

Over the past few years, NEVERCREW has completed numerous architectonic paintings that depict the fragile balance between humanity and nature—specifically wildlife. Whales, bears, and elephants are depicted inside of terrariums or bundled into fabrics.

The animals’ very presence on the side of buildings, where they are contained within the bounds of the architecture, is a reminder of the tensions between—one might even say the incongruousness of—daily human activities and city infrastructure. For Rebbechi and Togni, bringing nature into these spaces highlights the importance of sustaining the relationship between humankind and nature.

See more on the artists’ Instagram.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article NEVERCREW Explores Our Tenuous Relationship with Nature in Huge Murals appeared first on Colossal.

Japan’s bear problem continues, and the country is running out of the robot wolves that help keep them at bay. First released in 2016 by the manufacturer Ohta, Monster Wolf was originally designed to ward off the agricultural foes like boars, deer, and the island nation’s Asian black bear (Ursus thibetanus) and brown bear (Ursus arctos) populations. The creative solution quickly went viral for its red LED eyes and menacing fangs—as well as its admittedly odd, furry pipe frame.

Starting at around $4,000, each bespoke Monster Wolf is now equipped with battery power, solar panels, and detection sensors. Its speakers are programmed with over 50 audio clips including human voices and sirens audible over half a mile away. These aren’t assembly line products, however. Each Monster Wolf is custom made, and Ohta simply can’t keep up with the current demand.

“We make them by hand. We cannot make them fast enough now. We are asking our customers to wait two to three months,” company president Yuji Ohta recently told the AFP.

Bear encounters in Japan have steadily risen, as urban development continues to encroach on their habitats and limit their food sources. The country’s rapidly aging population is also making them particularly susceptible to attacks, especially in more rural regions. Since the beginning of 2025, the government has reported at least 200 injuries and 13 fatalities—over twice the previous mortality record. Official data also recorded over 50,000 bear sightings across the country during the same time period. 

Last year, Japan even deployed its own military to help cull bear numbers. More than 14,600 animals were captured and euthanized in 2025, an all-time high and almost triple the previous year’s tally.

Ohta told the AFP that amid the ongoing crisis, there has been “growing recognition” that Monster Wolf is “effective in dealing with bears.” The main customer base remains farmers, but orders are also coming from golf courses and rural workers. Upgraded versions will soon include wheels to actually chase animals and patrol preset routes. There are also plans to release a handheld version for outdoor enthusiasts and schoolchildren.

Until Ohta catches up with its orders, residents and visitors are encouraged to review the Japanese government’s own bear safety tips.

The post Japan runs out of robot wolves in fight against bears appeared first on Popular Science.

Cunning bear managed to escape stand-off with police and hunters.

As we’ve been seeing in recent years in Japan, not only has the number of bear encounters and attacks been steadily rising, but it appears bears have been coming closer and closer to populated areas as well.

Once an incident that only those deep in the mountains and forests of Japan had to worry about, more and more people have been spotting the large and powerful animals in unlikely places, like train stations, and now on the outskirts of Fukushima City, a regional population center with a population of 275,000 people.

In the evening of 1 June, Fukushima police started to receive scattered reports of what appeared to be a bear wandering around the Sasakino area in the northwest part of the city. The next morning, the vice principal of Noda Elementary School in the same area was driving to work when a bear suddenly started chasing his car. The street is also a route many students take to the school, but luckily, the bear appeared hours before any kids were outside.

▼ The main area where the bear was active.

Things only intensified after that. At about 6:30 a.m., the Asiatic black bear, measuring about one meter in length, attacked an employee in his 20s approaching the entrance of Fukushima Steel Works. It then charged through a glass door at the company’s building and mauled a man in his 60s inside.

From there, the bear ran off to a residential area, where it jumped clear over a one-meter (three-foot) wall to enter a nearby field. There, it found and attacked a woman in her 80s, injuring her face. The animal then headed about 500 meters (1,640 feet) to the northwest and attacked the 66-year-old guard of the OKI Symfotech manufacturing plant before entering the building.

Police arrived at the site and surrounded OKI Symfotech with the bear inside, evacuating a perimeter around the plant. Other local businesses and Noda Elementary, which was only a block away, closed for the day. The events so far had all unraveled so quickly, the municipal government could only catch up by this point and issued an emergency cull order around noon that day, granting the local hunters’ association permission to shoot and kill the bear.

However, by this time, it was too late. The bear had managed to hole itself up in a building full of machinery and chemicals. One misplaced shot or a ricochet could have triggered a fire or explosion. Unable to use live ammunition, the hunters resorted to tranquilizer darts, but the bear was in such an agitated state that its own adrenaline counteracted the sedative when struck by a dart.

For the next 35 hours, the standoff continued with the bear surrounded and hunters unable to kill it. Traps were set up to catch it when it would finally try to leave one of the building’s exit points. However, at approximately 11:00 p.m. on 3 June, the animal managed to unlatch one of OKI Symfotech’s windows, climb out undetected, and flee into the night.

▼ A news report with various times the bear was caught on camera

It wasn’t until the following morning that anyone realized the bear had escaped. The cordon around the manufacturing plant was removed, but citizens remained on high alert. Schools and some businesses remained closed, while some operated on increased security, such as disabling automatic doors.

Despite a few scattered reports, one of which turned out to be a wild boar, there were no significant encounters with bears in the area. On 5 June, OKI Symfotech reopened for business and Noda Elementary resumed in-person classes, but requested all students be dropped off by car. Meanwhile, authorities continued searching for the bear, even employing thermal imaging drones, but the creature’s location has not been found.

It might have just returned to wherever it came from, but it’s hard to rest easy when an animal that managed to overcome several obstacles and even outwit the police remains at large. Hopefully, things will return to a state of normalcy for residents soon, but it certainly seems like these kinds of problems are going to get worse if nothing is done on a larger scale to keep bears away from inhabited areas.

Source: FNN Online Prime, Fukushima TV, Yomiuri Shimbun Online, Asahi Shimbun, My Game News Flash
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