By Nick Parry
BBC News website
Ask Neath-born Clive Nicol to name one difference between the Afan Valley and the 60 acres of forest he has nurtured back to life in Japan and he replies "bears".
Not that you could imagine the seventh dan black belt who has spent his life in search of adventure being the slightest bit wary of the local wildlife.
A Japanese citizen since 1995, and a leading light in its green movement long before that, he is back in Wales to promote closer links between the two nations.
About to turn 68 next month, his life story is almost comic book-esque.
Born in Neath, he was educated in England where he said constant bullying at school sparked an interest in martial arts.
At the age of 17 he joined an expedition to the Canadian Arctic and has completed another 19 since.
Now a writer and broadcaster in both Japanese and English - a two year stint as a game keeper in Ethiopia's Semien Mountain National Park also sticks out on his CV.
"Most people in Wales have this vision of this awfully crowded country but actually when you get out of the big cities there is just fabulous nature and people"
"When I was a boy all I wanted to do was to explore," he said.
"I fell in love with Japan when I first went there 45 years ago.
"I went out of Tokyo into the mountains in the winter - we climbed forests and mountains - dug a snow cave and we stayed in a blizzard.
"I was 22 and had been on three arctic expeditions and I thought 'this is every bit as much an adventure'.
"Most people in Wales have this vision of this awfully crowded country but actually when you get out of the big cities there is just fabulous nature and people.
"If you think that Japan is an island nation with a population twice that of Britain and 70% of the country is covered by forest it's a very special place to be, from the sea ice in the north to coral seas in the south."
It was this love for the environment that led him to become involved in the green movement.
"I had not been home for years and years and I saw how green the valley had become and it just inspired me"
And having established his own woodland trust near Nagano, where he lives with his wife and two daughters, he has said up a twinning arrangement with Neath Port Talbot's Afan Valley Forest Park in the place of his birth.
"Twenty some years ago I came back to Wales. I was born in Neath and I just remember this as a very devastated area," he said.
"I had not been home for years and years and I saw how green the valley had become and it just inspired me.
"Travelling all over Japan and also to Africa and other parts of the world, the degradation of forests has always been an issue very close to my heart.
"Japan went through a period in the 1980s when Japanese politics was dominated by cutting down old forests, putting concrete walls on rivers and generally making a mess of things and I was very vocal against that.
"Right in the middle of that I came back and saw all this beauty that had been created here in Afan.
"When I went back to Japan - I had just started buying abused woods and bringing it back to health - I said why don't we twin forests - like we twin cities."
This week he is showing a party of 35 Japanese people around the area so they can see first hand the efforts made to reclaim former industrial scarred land.
"We have a lot to teach too because in our woods over the last 20 years we have brought back 21 endangered species," he adds.
"Nothing but good can come about talking about woods together and what they mean to the environment, culture, and our history."
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