Busy farming

Back to Akita in retrospective. The Yokoso Japan campaign to promote international tourism in Japan is a dead civil servant cow. What was clear during those three days spent in the huge farming lands of Akita and the further Northern prefecture of Aomori was that lots of people were indeed busy farming. We did not witness the fishers in action but with all the boats around, it was clear also that fishers were as busy fishing as farmers farming. Regional Japan is catering to the megalopolis centers of Tokyo and Osaka. They feed the rest of Japan where Japanese concentrate. Tourism is a foreign attraction because the locals have certainly no time to spend on that. No time that would clearly transform into additional revenues. With all the rice lands and mountains around, ecotourism comes as a trivia, but who would pay to have a guided visit among rice paddies and learn something about the daily staple grain? Probably nobody. On top of that, the locals would not see the point. Yokoso Japan is a dead cow.

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