insights from frontier Japan

A woman who moved to the town of Rausu in eastern Hokkaido from the Philippines over 30 years ago has opened a café in the town, called ‘Jappina Café’.

　‘Powder Life’, a free magazine issued by the Niseko Media publishing company in Niseko in central Hokkaido, will this winter be issued in a Japanese-language edition in addition to its conventional English-language edition.

Five residents of Higashikawa, a neighboring town of Asahikawa in northern Hokkaido, held a reception on November 8 at ‘Centpure I’, an exchange facility in the town, to unveil a beer that a local microbrewery has been commissioned to produce.

Born in Seoul, studied overseas at Hokkaido University and currently running a tourism consulting company in Sapporo, Korean businessman Eum Youngjoon endeavors to increase the number of visitors to Hokkaido from his homeland of Korea.

Over 1,000 foreign residents live and work in Niseko Town and Kutchan Town. Niseko Town alone has long term foreign residents from over 30 different countries, which gives it a distinctly multicultural feel that is difficult to find in other parts of Japan. Niseko Town Hall Coordinators for International Relations (CIRs) such as myself have worked with these residents to plan multicultural events in the past, from a Halloween event with the local Hokkaido International School to a Bosnian Coffee Hour hosted by two Niseko Town residents from Bosnia.

The splendor of a seaplane – fitted with boat-shaped floats instead of wheels – taking-off from the surface of Lake Toya can be seen in the town of Toyako in Central Hokkaido.

The Hokkaido Welfare Education Vocational School in Muroran City established an "Advanced Japanese Language Education Course" for foreign students starting in October.

“GCM Squared” (Rankoshi, central Hokkaido), an investment company headed by an American national, remodeled a traditional Japanese style house and opened it as the cafe & bar “CAFE 54” in central Rankoshi on September 18.

The number of Indian nationals working as horse riders who train race horses has doubled over the last one-and-a-half years, and reached more than 400 Indian nationals at light horse breed training farms in central Hokkaido's Hidaka area.

The Hokkaido population based on the Basic Resident Register announced by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications on August 5 showed a population increase in 11 out of the 179 Hokkaido municipalities as of January 1, when the foreign population was included in the count.