Cold comfort: Japan’s Hokkaido battles cockroach surge amid global warming

In all his five decades of living in Hokkaido, Makoto Watanabe cannot recall ever being confronted by a cockroach.
But he admits being alarmed by reports that the despised insects are taking advantage of global warming to gain a foothold in a part of Japan where winters were previously considered too hostile for large colonies to emerge.
“When I was a university student in Tokyo 30 years ago, I used to see them in my accommodation and I absolutely hated them,” Watanabe told This Week in...