Fun Friday 31: Bear attacks in Japan

Welcome to the Fun Friday edition of the Learn Japanese Pod podcast — the show where we sit down with cool people doing cool things in Japan. In this episode, I talk with Wes Lang about the recent rise in bear encounters and attacks across Japan: the latest stats, what’s causing them, and what Japan is doing to prevent future incidents. We also dive into Wes’s long experience as a master hiker. He was the first American to complete the Hyakumeizan , and he shares practical advice on how to prepare for the unlikely event of meeting a bear on the trail — including what to do, what not to do, and some useful bear-related vocabulary in Japanese. I learned a lot from this interview with Wes, and I now feel slightly more prepared to go hiking — and hopefully avoid any battles with bears! Wes is the creator of hikinginjapan.com , an authoritative resource with detailed information on hundreds of hikes and mountains across Japan. If you love hiking, Japanese nature, or just a good story, you won’t want to miss this one.

You can listen to Fun Friday 31: Bear attacks in Japan online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Fun Friday 31: Bear attacks in Japan is an episode from Learn Japanese Pod by Alex Brooke.

This episode is 1:02:41 long.

This episode was published on Nov 27, 2025.

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