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Let’s start with some good news, for once. Regular readers will know that I have been especially interested in the pioneering work on a Covid-19 vaccine being done at Oxford University’s Jenner Institute, not out of loyalty to my alma mater but out of a belief that the remarkable speed of their work offers a ray of sunshine in an otherwise gloomy period.

If you are stuck at home, and have a little more time on your hands, perhaps you are thinking of developing or honing new skills. The Japan Society is delighted to be able to offer our first online manga workshop with UK-based manga artist, Fumio Obata, which will focus on the healing aspects of creativity and being mindful of your surroundings.

Watch the video of our latest webinar on Wednesday 8 July 2020 in which Jeremy Hunt and Tomohiko Taniguchi, both well-known to members of the Japan Society, discussed the relationship between our two countries.

If nothing else, this pandemic has over the past few months taught us how vulnerable we all are and given us some inkling of the sort of steps that are necessary to reduce that vulnerability. Our friends in Japan perhaps needed less reminding of that, given the prevalence since time immemorial there of natural disasters.

Watch the video of our latest webinar on Thursday 2 July 2020 about the current situation on the Korean peninsula with Chung Min Lee, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and John Nilsson-Wright, senior lecturer at Cambridge University.

As a boy I was always more interested in subjects like history and geography than in science, but for some reason I have always remembered watching Professor Eric Laithwaite of Imperial College giving a lecture about magnetic levitation, a topic which seemed to the youthful me to be akin watching magic.

We are delighted to announce the winners of the 16th World Children's Haiku Contest 2020. The Japan Society would like to thank everyone for their support of this year’s contest and for their patience in waiting for the results.

In a week when pleasure at the prospect of returning to something closer to normal life has been balanced by concern about crowded beaches and a stubborn British resistance to learning from Japan by wearing masks, I have found myself thinking about comedians, political talk shows and men with moustaches.

We invite everyone to make a tanzaku decoration and share their tanabata wish with us. We have created a gallery to display our tanabata wishes this year and would love to see your wishes too.