mitsuko nishikawa, nhk world. >>> yes, it's time for world weather. several tropical systems are brewing in the western pacific. sayaka mori is here with the details. >> yes. the western pacific has been very active so far this year. we have four tropical systems to talk about. one is located near the philippines and the other a severe tropical storm is now heading towards guam. and then a tropical depression near the marshall islands. this one may become a tropical storm by tonight. it will be the 11th named this year. and then raquel is now a tropical low and is expecting heavy rain over the islands over the weekend. now, let's talk about linfa. it is now a severe tropical storm and expected to become a typhoon and then move over the north of luzon as we go into the weekend. also early next week. it is a very slow-moving system so stormy conditions will continue and it could enhance the west coast of the philippines also seeing torrential rain and strong winds for the next several days. and about 2,000 kilometers east of linfa there's chan-hon. it i

mitsuko nishikawa, nhk world. ♪ >>> people across the globe have commemorated 70 years since the battlef okinawa, but memories of the fighting remain. more than 200,000 died, both members of the military and civilians. the son of a former officer who survived retraced the footsteps of had his now deceased father. nhk world reports on the journey. >> reporter: he started on the path by sorting through his dad's belongings. he found a notebook that his father had written with descriptions of the battle. >> translator: don't die, do your best survive and go home. >> reporter: yasuo was only 23 when he commanded a platoon in the japanese army. he filled almost 150 pages of the notebook with accounts of what the soldiers went through. many of the entries involve anguish over their death. he had 140 men at the beginning of the battle. at the end, he was one of only ten who survived. >> translator: i pictured the battle sites, but i'm not sure how i'll react when i actually visit them. >> reporter: using the notebook as a guide, he went to the sites where his father had held. one person in the

mitsuko nishikawa, nhk world. >>> a japanese astronomer is helping to shed light on a dwarf planet that's getting a lot of attention this week. he's studying the latest close-up images of pluto. he says they suggest the surface was geologically active more recently than scientists had believed. the images came from nasa's new horizons probe. one shows part of pluto's southern hemisphere from a distance of 77,000 kilometers. it revealed ice mountains and plains. professor watanabe of japan's astronomical observatory thinks he knows why. >> translator: they must have been created relatively recently because no craters are visible. they can't have been created at the same time as the planet. >> watanabe says scientists had thought pluto's surface stopped being geologically active 4.6 billion years ago. he says they'll try to identify the source of energy that lies below. >>> the july grand sumo tournament is now under way in nagoya central japan. today our sumo reporter hiro morita joins us with a recap of the first five days. >> there's no question who the main man of the competition is thi