Toyohiro Akiyama pressed his face against the glass of the small, round window on his space module and gazed down at Earth from 350 kilometers above. He recognized the shape of Japan below him, a familiar sight transformed. From this height, the land appeared covered in a blanket of green, like moss, with Hokkaido standing out like a “delicious” mass of kelp.
Akiyama was soaring through the thin upper atmosphere aboard the Russian space station Mir. He was the first Japanese citizen in space. But Akiyama wasn’t an astronaut; he was a journalist for the Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS). Indeed, he was the first civilian ever to fly aboard a commercial space mission and the first journalist to report from outer space.
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