In ancient Japan as to avoiding solar eclipses like the plague, they had the notion of time that it makes no difference if an eclipse occurs in the daytime or at night. Even when an eclipse could not be actually observed because of sunset, they recognized it as a solar eclipse and refrained from duty at The Imperial Court. Many of the solar eclipses in the accounts were not actually observable from Japan. It was not due to calendar officials’miscalculation, but to their understanding of solar eclipses. They also predicted a solar eclipse which was not expected to be observable from the start, calling such a one 'night eclipse'. Analyzing the accounts based on the above, the solar eclipse prediction and the skills of the calendar officials up to the 10th century can be summarized as follows. From the 8th century to the middle of the 9th century, there were almost no miscalculations in the solar eclipse prediction. That means the calendar officials at that time had enough skills to calculate quite accurately. However, after the enactment of the Xuanming calendar, the accuracy rate dropped significantly partly due to the omission in the calendar brought to Japan. The reason why at that time the prediction accuracy remained unimproved for some time would be that the calendar officials adopted a stance to firmly uphold the rules of the calendar from Tang.

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During the Typhoon 19 in 2019, 553 mm of rain was recorded on October 12 at Kamiishido in the Saku District, located in the upper Chikuma River of Nagano Prefecture, as part of record-breaking rainfalls that hit upstream districts. At 21:50 that day, a water level of 6.4 m, greatly exceeding the danger level of 5 m, was observed at the Kuisege Water Level Observatory at Chikuma City located midstream in the Chikuma River. A flood stream into the opening of the Shinden intermittent embankment from the Chikuma River also overflowed, as did another over the levee on the river’s inland bank in the Shinden and Kuisege Districts. Because inundation damages caused by flooding affected 1,677 households in Chikuma City, verifying the closure of the opening of intermittent embankment (Kasumitei) has been pushed forward. Residents in the flooded districts have been encouraged to relocate, while their city functions and measures have been encouraged to reduce the inundation damages are required.

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We developed a scale to assess time management by children and evaluated its reliability and validity. We conducted a survey in 285 children and tested internal consistency and criterion-related validity. Factor analysis indicated that children's time management consisted of two types of time use: 'establisyment of life rythm' and 'setting goals and priorities.' The two types of time management showed a positive correlation with perseverance and negative correlations with apathy, moodiness, and anger. These results indicate that the time management scale for children has a certain level of reliability and validity. In the future, using the time management scale for children, it will be possible to examine how the time management of children affects various situations such as school life.

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Most of the bells in Buddhist temples were cast to be installed in temples (i.e., they are temple bells). However, some were cast for feudal domains to keep the time during the Edo period (i.e., they are timekeeping bells), but were later moved to temples where they came to be used as temple bells. Therefore, the inscriptions (shomei) on the latter often relate to time. However, as most of the shomei are written in classical Chinese, only a few have been fully deciphered. This study examined the full original text of the inscription on a timekeeping bell once located at Kurobane Castle (currently a temple bell at Joenji Temple, Nakagawa-machi, Tochigi Prefecture) and translated it into literary and colloquial Japanese. As a result, it became apparent that the author of the shomei was a figure with ties to Ogyu Sorai (1666-1728), who, in addition to the author, had two other leading disciples from the Kurobane domain. On this basis, I pointed out the influence that the teachings of Ogyu Sorai may have had on the Kurobane domain.

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During Typhoon No.19, the amount of heavy rainfall reached a record-breaking 300 mm in the mountain regions of Nasu, located from Nikko in the Tochigi prefecture to Shirakawa in the Fukushima prefecture, and Abukuma, located from the northern part of the Ibaraki prefecture to the Hamadori region in the Fukushima prefecture and the southern part of the Miyagi prefecture. Rainfall flowed from both mountain areas into the Abukuma River, which caused a flooding disaster that overflowed the retrospective water levels in the middle reaches of Sukagawa, Koriyama, Motomiya, and Fukushima and the lower reaches of Marumori. In Koriyama City, 6 people died and over 11,000 buildings were damaged by the overflowing waters from the Abukuma River and its branches, Yata River's dyke break and the Ose River's overflow etc. As a result, the flood damage was worse than that of the '8.5 Flood Damage' in 1986. In particular, at Suimonmachi, Jukkangawara, and Chuo Kogyo Danchi, which are located in between the Abukuma and Yata Rivers, the inundation rose up to approximately 4 meters among the office and factory areas that are still not restored to this day.

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