Japanese people are living in a very dangerous place, with their archipelago sitting on the top of at least three active tectonic plates. So you can understand why they want to study the earth's ...

Remember Chikyu? Japan’s monster ship also called “Godzilla-maru” because of its 210 m length and a drill derrick that rises 100 m off the deck. The rig dwarfs the Statue of Liberty, nearly matches ...

BBC News carries a nice story on the JAMSTEC monster ship Chikyu, also called “Godzilla-maru” for obvious reasons. The ship itself is 210 m, but the drill derrick rises 100 m off the deck. The rig ...

Scientific deep sea drilling vessel Chikyu sets a world new record by drilling down and obtains rock samples from deeper than 2,111 meters below the seafloor off Shimokita Peninsula of Japan in the ...

A pioneering project off the coast of Japan aims to go further into an earthquake zone than ever before. BBC environment correspondent Richard Black is the first journalist to visit the research ship ...

The completed bare-deck hull of a world-beating exploration vessel will begin the crucial phase of adding its all-important drilling systems next month. The $500 million drillship Chikyu incorporates ...

The Deep-Sea Scientific Drilling Vessel Chikyu, operated by the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), will embark on Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP)*1 Expedition 343 ...

In Jules Verne's classic 19th-century novel "Journey to the Center of the Earth," Professor Lidenbrock travels to a mysterious subterranean world. Now a Japanese ship is aiming to replicate his ...

It's easy to believe that whenever humans come into contact with nature, nature suffers. However, this week's installment of NHK's nature show, "Chikyu: Fushigi Daishizen" (The Earth: Wondrous Nature; ...

Hokkaido is Japan’s largest prefecture, and also its least densely populated. Thanks to that combination, Hokkaido is full of breathtaking views of mountain and seaside scenery, and so when our ...

For a while during its design, Asahiko Taira told me, the ship became known as "Godzilla-maru", so unusual and top-heavy were its projected lines. "We started planning the Chikyu about 15 years ago, ...

Off Hachinohe, Japan—Scientific deep sea drilling vessel Chikyu sets a world new record by drilling down and obtains rock samples from deeper than 2,111 meters below the seafloor off Shimokita ...