View from the Pulpit

Tourism - Life Intimates Comedy ??

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 09:46:15 +0900

Having noticed a growing influx of tourists here to Hokkaido of late from both China and Taiwan - and given the inflated state of the Yen at present - I really wondered WHY ????

Well... I read the attached article - (c) Kyodo News Agency 2009 - and was amazed to see how contemporary Television influences trends in Tourism...

Interesting indeed...

Romantic Comedy turns Hokkaido
into new attraction for Chinese Visitors

BEIJING

A Chinese romantic comedy movie that hit domestic screens during the New Year holidays is turning the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido into a new tourism spot for Chinese travelers.

Chinese tour operators are already taking advantage of the latest Feng Xiaogang work, ‘‘If you are the one,’’ offering weekly tours to location sites featured in the movie, which immediately became a box office hit.

‘‘We would like to use this opportunity to get more Chinese visitors to Hokkaido,’’ says an official in charge of tourism promotion at the Hokkaido prefectural government.

The movie, the latest in Feng’s ‘‘New Year’s Celebration Films,’’ is a love story involving two young Chinese and their romance that was spawned while they were sightseeing in Hokkaido.

Unlike Tokyo, Osaka and other tourist spots in Japan’s main island of Honshu, Hokkaido is known for its natural beauty and the pristine scenery of the eastern part of the island, such as the coastline of the Okhotsk Sea, the World Natural Heritage Site of Shiretoko and the wetlands of Kushiro.

In ‘‘If you are the one,’’ Feng takes his audience to Abashiri, a scenic fishing town on northern Hokkaido, and from the vantage point of Japan Railway Kitahama Station the Okhotsk Sea spreads out in magnificent blue.

Also featured in the movie is the little Catholic church on the plains of Shari on the northern shores of Hokkaido and the entry point to the Shiretoko heritage site.

In Kushiro, the main eastern Hokkaido city known for its wetlands, the movie features the small Japanese bars where many visitors, both foreign and local, spend their evenings after soaking themselves in the hot springs of the Akan spa town.

The movie was first screened in China just before Christmas and it topped 300 million yuan (4.1 billion yen) in revenues in its first 19 days.

An estimated 6 million people saw the movie, and multiple pirated DVDs are now said to be circulating in China.

According to officials at the Beijing office of the Japan National Tourism Organization, the office has been flooded with inquiries about the tourist spots featured in the movie.

Some young Chinese said they want to have their weddings at the Shari church, while others have inquired whether the Akan bars in the movie are real or just sets.

‘‘Hokkaido was presented in the movie as it naturally is. This is probably what has made Hokkaido popular,’’ a JNTO official said.

There are no official figures yet but it is believed that more Chinese visitors spent their Lunar Year holidays in Hokkaido this year than last year.

A Beijing-based tour operator has started weekly sightseeing tours to Hokkaido to visit the locations featured in the film.

Hokkaido tourism officials say they hope the movie will draw more Chinese visitors to the island and that this will make up for the loss of overseas visitors from South Korea and elsewhere as a result of the global economic crisis.

Web Site Update...

Sun, 1 Feb 2009 20:54:45 +0900

Well we finally got around to updating our site today which now reflects our current colors and logos a little better than in the past...

We still have a few pages to fill and some links to complete but I thought I should just “get it up there” ASAP.

Most of this site has now been built by myself using the iWeb application that comes standard with an Apple MacBook Pro.

We switched this past summer from Windows to MAC platforms and I have to tell you I am STILL kicking myself for not even looking into it before now - all I can say is that “I” find the Mac platform quite intuitive and easy to understand...

Keep posted for further updates as we upload them......

Cheers,

FRED

PS: I p-p-p-p-p-p-p-promise to be better about posting news and updates here in the future... Really.... No, REALLY..........

World Refugee Day Gallery UN House Gallery Tokyo

Tue, 20 Jun 2006 12:52:55 +0900

KTM japan is proud to announce that some of its works from assignments in Nepal ( 2003 ) and Armenia ( 2004 ) have helped to form Fuji Optical Company 's Vision Aid Mission Photo Display at the UN House Gallery located at the United Nations University Campus in Shibuya Ward, Tokyo, Japan.

The displays will be exhibited from World Refugee Day June 20, 2006 until mid-July 2006.

Click on the Photo to the right above to take a quick photo tour of the display area. Also, be sure to visit our Event Photo Gallery Pages in the Photography section of this website for more photos taken while on Mission with Fuji Optical Co Ltd

Yosokoi Festival in Sapporo

Thu, 15 Jun 2006 15:30:58 +0900

The 15th annual Yosakoi Soran Festival in Sapporo was held from June 7th - June 11th 2006. KTM was there in order to capture some of the action of this unique Hokkaido Festival which was originally run by Students from Hokkaido University.

For more information regarding Yosakoi Soran please visit the official site here in ENGLISH and here in JAPANESE .

In addition please feel free to take a visual tour of the Festival by browsing through the Yosakoi Soran Photo Gallery on our Photograph Events page or by clicking on the Photo above.