Right after finishing a visit to China, Nick Nielsen, Greenland’s education minister, crossed over to Japan. He attended the opening of an exhibition on Greenland at the Minpaku, the National Museum of Ethnology (国立民族学博物館) in Osaka.

Just as he had visited the PRIC, China’s polar research institute, a week earlier, in Tokyo he was at its Japanese counterpart, the NIPR or National Institute of Polar Research (国立極地研究所), where he heard about Japanese research on the Greenlandic ice cap, that has been going on since the 90s.

Nielsen also met with politicians, among them Tadahiko Itō 伊藤忠彦, whose recent visit to Greenland as Vice-Minister for Internal Affairs and Communications (総務大臣政務官), the first from a Japanese official of that rank, had been read by Greenland PM Aleqa Hammond as showing “a decision by the Japanese government to cooperate with Greenland at a wholly new level“.

The topic of mountaineering came up during a dinner with Diet member Tarō Kōno 河野太郎 (Nielsen has climbed both Mt Everest and K2). Gunnbjørn Fjeld, the tallest mountain in Greenland, was apparently claimed to be “one metre taller than Mt Fuji” (the established wisdom seems to be that Mt Fuji is actually some 70m taller).