As Japan’s population shrinks, bears are moving close to town and creating a big problem

No-one knows for sure exactly how many bears there are in Japan, but they’re on the move — and they’re not afraid of humans. When Araki Osamu first heard reports a bear had been seen in the streets of his home town, a 1-hour bullet train ride north of Tokyo, he dismissed it as “fake news”. It was unbelievable, he thought, that a bear could be running around downtown Utsunomiya, a city of 500,000 and capital of Tochigi prefecture. But by that evening, news spread that the 100-kilogram Asian black bear had been spotted in an arcade at the heart…