Middle school: starter course for inquiry

Grasp the "big picture" and "ways of seeing" in 3–10 minutes. Easy to spin off inquiry questions.

The standard map service that lets you cut across maps, routes, Street View, and reviews worldwide. With Gemini AI–powered "Ask Maps" you can do natural conversational searches, and the 3D immersive navigation lets you confirm a route with on-site feel. A starting point for places, facilities, and traffic — usable at any age.

Layer topographic maps, aerial photos, elevation, and disaster information to read the "why of place".

Quickly strengthen the foundations of geography inquiry: bearings, scales, map symbols.

An entry that makes statistics "not scary". A first step in reading numbers.

Learn ways to see natural history and science from real examples of exhibits and research.

Programs and content for young children and elementary students, organized by theme.

JAXA's fun entry point: space exploration news, games, and activities for young learners.

Elementary-to-high-school content from Japan's ocean research and development agency.

Activities of the National Institute of Polar Research, Science Museum exhibits, and aurora footage.

Video content, research data, and educational materials from Japan's national astronomy research center.

The Ministry of Education's learning support portal for children, organized by subject.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs' kids' site: learn, research, and play with countries of the world.

Video content and explanations of Japan's Self-Defense Forces, made accessible for children.

Kids and family portal of the US Library of Congress.

Encyclopaedia Britannica's kid-friendly portal — reliable reference for school research.

BBC's curriculum-aligned learning platform with video explanations and quizzes for UK school subjects.

Children's rights, SDGs, videos, quizzes, and research content in multiple languages.

400+ geography quizzes covering countries, capitals, flags, oceans, and lakes.

World changes since 1800 and Dollar Street: what life looks like sorted by income level.

Real-time global flight tracking — see aircraft positions, routes, and flight data live.

Real-time global vessel tracking using AIS data — ships, ferries, and cargo.

Traditional Japanese performing arts — kabuki, noh, bunraku — explained for children with video.

MIT Media Lab's free visual programming platform for ages 8–16.

Community-built Scratch projects simulating earthquakes and disaster scenarios for learning.

Curated Scratch studio with student-made disaster-preparedness simulations.

Scratch studio with community-created disaster information and earthquake educational materials.

Kids' coding with Minecraft, Frozen, and more — game-based introduction to programming.

Minecraft's Hour of Code activities for introducing programming concepts to beginners.

A faster, mod-friendly Scratch compiler — run and share Scratch projects at higher speed.

Scratch educator community operated by the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Japan's national library for children's literature — rare and historical children's books from Japan and abroad.

A "kid-oriented" entry that walks through the work and structure of the national government in one go.

Read the news in plain Japanese → easy to turn social issues into inquiry topics.

A grain close to textbooks, useful for catching the "big picture". Handy as an inquiry intro.

Strengthens the "definitions" that often weaken inquiry reports.

A friendly entry to primary sources. Move from exhibitions straight into the originals.

"Exhibition-style overviews" you can read by theme. The way to look at sources naturally develops.

A "kids-oriented" entry to start learning about disasters. A perfect match for local inquiry.

An entry to grasp overall trends intuitively with "graphs and maps" rather than statistical tables.

An entry into "how society of the time was seen" through film and video sources. Easy to use as inquiry material.

Read damage, reconstruction, and urban change with the documentary footage of the Great Kanto Earthquake as material.

Catch the inside stories of historical decisions in Japan and the world in 15–30 minute videos.

Grasp the dense stories of Sengoku warlords through dramatic visuals faithful to historical fact.

Understand Japanese and world history with people at the center.

The Smithsonian — one of the world's largest museum complexes — publishes its images, 3D models, and audio under CC0 Open Access. Young readers and researchers alike can reach world-class primary materials through the same door.

A free, collaboratively built encyclopedia of living things, compiled by public institutions, museums, and researchers worldwide. Photos, taxonomy, and distribution maps make it easy to trace "what is this creature?" from a name. English text, but readable even at elementary level through images and maps.

Official database collection from a Japanese national museum holding ethnographic records, audio, video, and photographs from around the world. A strong entry for comparative-culture inquiry across clothing, food, housing, and festivals.

The Met's official Open Access collection, releasing out-of-copyright works under CC0. High-resolution images can be used without permission, making it a shared entry point for children through researchers to handle real art objects.

A cross-cultural hub that brings together collections from museums and cultural sites worldwide, including Street View tours inside institutions. Accessible for children, but since it is privately operated, always trace each work back to its source institution.

A global community celebrating clouds — photographs, classifications, and the beauty of the sky.

Oxford-based public data visualization covering poverty, climate, education, and more.

The official list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites — search by country, region, and category.

Learn ways to see field sites and how to grasp value, with ruins and cultural properties as material.

Official commentary by the national museum. A useful entry to works, eras, and techniques.

An official channel that teaches the perspective of excavation and cultural property research.

Observe cultural properties in 3D. Good practice for forming hypotheses about form, use, and making.

Search by place name and the "layers of regional culture" become visible.

48 Japanese Geoparks, 10 of which are UNESCO Global Geoparks.

3D view and VR tours of the National Museum of Nature and Science exhibits.

Virtual tours and exhibition content from the National Institute of Polar Research science museum.

Japan's 8.2-m optical-infrared telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii — research results and public content.

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array — joint international radio telescope in Chile.

Video archive and reference database for traditional performing arts — noh, kabuki, bunraku, and more.

Official streaming platform for traditional Japanese performing arts from the National Theatre.

NHK's geography exploration program where terrain shapes history and culture are revealed.

Observation data of temperature, precipitation, etc. For analyzing climate change and torrential rains.

When you can see clouds moving, weather and torrential-rain inquiry becomes concrete.

Input temperature and precipitation → draw a climograph or hyetograph, classify Köppen climate type, publish KML.

Climate charts and monthly temperature/precipitation data for thousands of locations worldwide.

Climate data for 100+ countries and 12,000+ locations.

The international standard for cloud classification by WMO. Definitions and identification flowcharts.

Interactive quizzes and simulators to learn about weather, typhoons, and earthquakes in a fun way.

Nationwide current conditions, forecasts, and rain-cloud radar from the Japan Weather Association.

Visible imagery from Himawari-8/9, updated every 2.5 minutes over Japan, with 11 zoom levels.

Wind and ocean current flows animated on a globe. Japanese interface available.

Multi-layer visualization: radar, satellite, wind, rain, temperature, clouds, waves, and air quality.

Wind depicted as streamlines. Models: GFS, HRRR, GEM, ICON. Ad-free.

Global daily satellite imagery, updated within 3 hours of observation.

Real-time Earth imagery from NOAA satellites.

NASA 3D visual tool to explore Earth, the solar system, and space.

A geographic browser to fly around the entire planet in 3D. Visually grasp "the world now and then" through satellite imagery, terrain, 3D buildings, and Timelapse (year-by-year change of satellite photos). The "Voyager" feature also hosts 3D tours of World Heritage sites and stories on endangered species and the SDGs. An entry to geography, history, disaster prevention, and international comparison — usable at any age.

Confirm nationwide disaster risks (flood, landslide, storm surge, tsunami, etc.) from MLIT via the "Layered Hazard Map" and "My Town Hazard Map". An entry for local disaster prevention and geography inquiry.

Treats transaction prices, land prices, hazards, and city planning on the same map.

A pathway for how to use satellite data.

A historical map DB that lets you cross-search early-modern to modern maps. Read the change of place names, territories, transport routes, etc. as primary sources.

Overlay Edo, Meiji, and prewar old maps semi-transparently on modern maps. Visually read changes in place names, waterways, and roads. An entry to historical geography, usable from elementary to professional.

A site (independently run) that, with operations similar to the GSI Map, lets you overlay red-relief maps, contour lines, individually tiled old topographic maps, and detailed terrain maps. Supports two-pane display, measurement, drawing, and printing — works from middle-school regional / disaster-prevention / high school geography to university research and field surveys.

Japan's official source for seafloor topography, tides, ocean currents, territorial seas, and 3D marine maps. A primary information source for reading the links between landform, safety, fisheries, and the marine environment.

A volcano-visualization system from Japan's National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Resilience (NIED). Seismic, tilt, temperature, and satellite observations are unified on a map so you can read "what is happening at this volcano now".

An international portal that cross-searches historical maps held by libraries and archives worldwide, from a geographic location. Complements David Rumsey for reading the same place across multiple period maps.

A public digital archive at Stanford University Libraries holding over 150,000 historical maps of the world, 15th century to present, at high resolution. Even young learners can enjoy "how people used to picture the world" as images.

MLIT's 3D city models. Buildings and features derived from aerial survey data, freely available.

Side-by-side switching of topographic maps from the Meiji era onward for 59 regions across Japan.

Old maps from Japan's Geospatial Information Authority — from Edo-period surveying to early modern topographic maps.

Web-based version of Ino Tadataka's famous surveyed map of Japan, overlaid on a modern map.

Overlay open data on GSI maps, aerial photos, geological maps, and 3D terrain visualizations.

GSI's tool to estimate flood depths for buildings and land areas.

Detailed active-fault maps for major Japanese urban areas from GSI.

Long-term evaluations of active faults and subduction-zone earthquakes, and strong-motion predictions.

Japan's official real-time river flood and rainfall information from the Ministry of Land.

Real-time water level monitoring for rivers nationwide — video-linked observation points.

Switch between aerial photos from the 1970s to the present — some areas from 1936 — in a two-panel linked view.

Official YouTube channel of the Geospatial Information Authority — tutorials, time-lapse maps, and geographic features.

Type any city name and this visualiser draws every road it finds in OpenStreetMap as a single line-art plate. Lets you read the shape of a city at a glance — grid, radial, or organic where rivers and coastlines have reshaped it — and line up two cities side by side for comparison.

Cross-search government statistics. The first stop for "numerical evidence" in your inquiry report.

An entry to the background and disclosures of base statistics such as the National Census.

Visualizes population, industry, tourism, and more by prefecture / municipality with maps and graphs. Strong for forming "why?" questions about regional differences.

A catalog to find ministerial open data at the "dataset level".

A primary information source from Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, covering the official statistics on food, agriculture, and fisheries. Crop-by-crop output, shipments, and self-sufficiency are available as maps, tables, and CSV — directly supporting local-industry inquiry.

Official Forestry Agency statistics covering national / private forest area, forest resources, and mountain-village areas. Combined with MAFF statistics, gives a full picture of forests, timber, and mountain-village economy.

Japan's window for GBIF, the international framework for sharing biodiversity information. Publishes distribution and specimen data from Japanese museums and research institutions globally. Connects local nature observation to the same-species data worldwide.

Japan's node of the global open geographic database — editable maps built by community contributors.

Free media repository — images, audio, video, and documents with verified licenses for reuse.

An official dashboard jointly built by the Cabinet Office, the Digital Agency, and the Cabinet Secretariat that exposes about 1,000 indicators at the prefecture and municipality level. Indicators span population, economy, social security, education, living, social infrastructure, and local public finance — and can be viewed on a map, compared across regions, plotted as two-indicator relationships, or trended against four indicators side by side. Functions as a single entry point to Japan's regional differences that pairs well with e-Stat and RESAS.

Old maps, classics, books, magazines. Direct access to primary sources.

A national integrated platform, with the National Diet Library at its core, that cross-searches digital materials of museums, libraries, archives, and universities. Themed "Galleries" are also rich.

For materials not in the Digital Collections, search "holdings" and head to a library.

A "how to research" guide by theme from the NDL. Bibliographies, field-specific guides, and reference lists are abundant — usable as a starting point for teachers researching materials for inquiry lessons.

Browse Japan's public records as primary sources. A basis for institutional and political history.

Full-text search of newspaper articles from Meiji to early Showa. Trace public opinion, events, and social conditions in modern history.

An official archive that traces the history of broadcasting. From programs, chronologies, and themes, build an entry to background understanding and primary sources (footage).

Footage that recorded society of the time as a primary source. Read it including the perspective of reporting (what is shown, what is not).

Ideal for practicing reading images as primary sources.

Catch the "flow of history" by themed exhibitions, then descend into primary sources.

Form questions from visual materials such as photographs and ukiyo-e.

An entry that broadens from individuals to social structure and the era's background.

View historical materials as "objects to think with".

Ideal as a first contact point with history.

A public archive holding records of Okinawa from the Ryūkyū Kingdom through the US administration and post-reversion periods. Easy to pair with US NARA holdings on Japan, making it a strong primary-source entry point for modern Okinawan history.

A prefectural archive that comprehensively handles Kyoto's old documents, historical maps, administrative records, and publications. A "place-rooted primary-source" starting point for regional history and cultural-heritage research.

The U.S. national archives. Publishes over 200 million digitised pages, including not only U.S. primary records but also documents on Occupation-era Japan and the U.S. military — vital for Japanese history research. Use the dedicated catalogue to search.

The national library of the UK. Holds a world-class collection including manuscripts, maps, and codices, and publishes many digitised materials. Strong as a primary-source entry point for world history, cartographic history, and bibliography.

A public cross-search portal centred on the National Library of Australia, covering AU / NZ records, newspapers, images, and maps. Rich in colonial, Pacific-War, and Indigenous-related primary sources.

Run by the National Library of New Zealand, this portal cross-searches cultural materials from NZ museums, archives, and libraries. Also handles Māori culture, settler history, and war-related materials.

A pioneering project that digitises and freely publishes out-of-copyright books worldwide. Over 70,000 classics and landmark works available in full text. Useful for confirming originals when using scholarly translations.

Cross-search of four national museums, two research institutes, and Sannomaru Shozokan.

Official database of nationally designated cultural properties — historical sites, buildings, crafts, and performing arts.

Local history digital platform covering 188 institutions, 1.11 million catalog records, and 300,000 content items.

Cross-search digital archives of cultural institutions across the EU.

Browse printed works, manuscripts, scores, and maps from the French National Library — includes a kids' corner.

The largest online library of Hispanic literature and culture in Spanish-speaking history.

Classical works including The Tale of Genji, Essays in Idleness, and Tales of Ise, released for elementary–high school education.

National treasure — the oldest surviving illustrated handscroll in Japan. Suzumushi, Yugiri, Minori chapters.

National treasure — part of the Owari Tokugawa family collection, remounted as 15 handscrolls in 2020.

High-resolution images of the Tale of Genji Illustrated Scroll from the NDL digital archive.

Japanese folktales from across the country, in audio narration and text.

Okinawan folktales recorded from 1973 by the Okinawa Prefectural Museum, in the Shima-kutuba dialect.

25 audio recordings in Saru Ainu dialect by speaker Ueda Toshi, with PDFs, MP3s, and picture books.

Japan's national Ainu museum and symbolic space for indigenous Ainu culture and coexistence.

Database of the classic anime series 'Manga Nihon Mukashibanashi' — Japanese folktales in animation.

Confirm laws and ordinances as primary information. Effective dates and revision history are crucial.

Trace "who said what, on what basis".

From solicitation of opinions → results → laws and notifications. Trace the flow of policy formation.

Over 230 million biodiversity observation records worldwide. Citizen science platform linked to GBIF.

Official statistics run by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), covering global agricultural production, food security, land use, and forests. Commodity-by-commodity long-run time series let you compare food and farming across the world.

The annual Human Development Index (HDI) database published by the UN Development Programme (UNDP), with related indicators. Lets you compare "well-being" internationally beyond income alone.

The UN Refugee Agency's central database of official statistics on refugees, IDPs, and stateless persons worldwide. An international baseline for handling refugee issues with numbers rather than emotion.

An international public platform integrating over 2.3 billion species-distribution and specimen records provided by museums and research institutions worldwide. Used alongside the Japan node (JBIF), it lets you verify species distributions on a global scale.

The official Red List of threatened species worldwide, run by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Centralises assessment categories, distributions, and threat factors per species — the international standard for conservation inquiry.

The official NHK for School hub for teachers. Reverse-look up programs, worksheets, lesson plans, and case studies by subject, grade, and unit. The standard go-to for new teachers who need materials that connect directly to tomorrow's lesson.

A friendly Japanese-history encyclopedia readable from elementary up. Clear explanations of figures, eras, and events. A vocabulary foothold new teachers can use right away as the opening reading or prompt material for a lesson.

An education-oriented hub that organizes "how to use the GSI Map in lessons and inquiry". Lesson plans, practical examples, and downloadable materials are gathered together — a direct fit for experienced teachers reworking their instruction in Geography (General) and inquiry learning.

The Ministry of Education's portal gathering classroom practice with 1:1 devices. Ideas are organized by subject and scene so new teachers can picture the first step of ICT use concretely.

A textbook-aligned ICT teaching-materials library jointly operated by Yamakawa Shuppansha (Japanese history / world history) and Ninomiya Shoten (geography). Videos, slides, worksheets, and statistical materials are organised by subject and unit — a go-to teaching hub for social-studies teachers who need to quickly supply "the one extra resource" a daily lesson is missing.

A group of free teacher-facing educational journals from Teikoku-Shoin delivering lesson-research examples, latest scholarship, and practice reports across geography, history, and civics. The family includes the education magazine "Kizahashi", the elementary-school "Children and Maps", the junior-high "Shakaika no Shiori", and the high-school "ChiReKo" — particularly strong support for geography teachers' materials research.

The Library of Congress's teacher-facing page on using primary sources. Publishes primary materials for history, social studies, and literature together with questioning examples and lesson procedures. Useful both as source material for new teachers and as a reference model for experienced teachers designing inquiry-based lessons.

Integrated portal for school broadcast programs, web content, and archives.

NHK's history delivery program: concise 10-min history topics for active inquiry.