Today, 80% of the world's excavators are built from Japanese designs. There's hardly a country in the world where Japanese excavators haven't made a contribution. And Japanese engineers continue to design innovative excavators - ones that can do much more than just shovel dirt. One state-of-the-art model has a versatile pair of arms; it's essentially a robot! And some models have such precise control that they can hold brushes and write Japanese calligraphy! One watershed moment in Japan came when a new kind of excavator greatly accelerated infrastructure development in the run-up to the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. In Cambodia, where land mines left over from past conflict often injure and kill people, one Japanese man modified an excavator so that it could save lives. On this edition of BEGIN Japanology, our theme is excavators. Through an examination of these machines, we'll dig deep into Japanese craft expertise.

This month, we present a special talk-show series called Japanophiles, featuring lively interviews with foreigners living in Japan. Dhugal Lindsay is an Australian haiku poet. Lindsay's haiku, written in Japanese, have been acclaimed even by other Japanese haiku poets. But there is a very different side to Lindsay. He is also a marine biologist. Lindsay specializes in research on organisms that live thousands of meters under the sea. Jellyfish are one example. Lindsay first visited Japan in 1991 as an exchange student. By sheer coincidence, the mother of his homestay family was a famous haiku poet. Lindsay composed haiku as he studied the Japanese language. His first haiku collection was published in 2001 and won him a prestigious poetry prize. The worlds of marine biology and haiku might seem unrelated. But to Lindsay, both are essential parts of his identity.