springs, and in the former case even snow can be seen. The Tohoku region is popular among Taiwanese people because they love snow. The Three Cities' Association can offer fantastic urban sightseeing, and our council deals with history. If we really work together, the result should be four times that of our individual performance. Nevertheless, this is one of the problems that, as yet, remains unresolved.
The Rekishi-kaido Council is an "Association" and we hold that fundamentally this term involves both competition and cooperation. Accordingly, we do not expect tourists to visit all the associated communities one by one.
In fact, the Romantik Straβe in Germany has so far mainly appealed to Japanese tourists, though I have advised its organization that the same kind of promotion would be successful among Korean and Taiwanese people. However, it depends on the character of those people. Since not all people from all nations enjoy moving from one place to another, when a tourist prefers to remain in one place, it is wise to advise them of holidays which do not involve traveling around.
Osaka City can thus employ the strategy of recommending tourists to stay in Osaka from where they can visit both Kyoto and Nara in only 30 minutes, and Kyoto can do likewise. Nara will be able to advertise that they have more genuine treasures than any other place in Japan and Iseshima can boast of its resorts, theme parks and history. The point is that we can associate with each other while we compete with each other. I am very confident of the railway network in the Kansai region, which is second to none, and I hope, using this wonderful infrastructure, we will be able to formulate a constructive relationship encouraging both competition and cooperation.
Let me mention the sales products we need to invent. It is well known that people in Europe and the U.S. take long summer vacations. Here in Japan, on the other hand, this period is the low season for tourism, especially for historic cities such as Kyoto and Nara. There should be some way to draw those people in summer for longer stays.
Another idea is related to school excursions as indicated before. We want to have Korean students visit the Kansai region, and Nara in particular, and are working with Nara Prefecture to arrange a meeting in Korea next year.
Concerning Taiwanese tourists, they travel just as they do in their own country, therefore small cities have many chances to attract them. I think we can compete with other tours using the package tours designed for Japanese tourists, but we need to offer more information to foreigners if these are to be successful. Recently we have seen increasingly fewer articles concerning Japan in "Branka," a tourist journal published in Taiwan, and no articles about the Kansai region, except for those exhausting package tours which start in Toyama and visit all manner of places, the like of which does not appeal to the Japanese. It seems then that if we can invent tours to attract foreigners and provide information, the results will soon be seen.
Prof. Abe : Thank you. Next Ms, Uehara, please.
Ms. Uehara : This time I would like to make a request to you. Working in the local government, we feel it important to ask people, especially those related in the tourism industry, to help us recognize our assets. If you have lived in a community for quite a long time, you do not appreciate things in that community and this is the case for us. Therefore we would like to invite you to advise us on what you believe are wonderful assets and how these places could be improved, or if you think we need extra facilities, and I appreciate it even more when the advice is given from a professional viewpoint.
Many years ago when a department store in Tokyo held an exhibition of products of Shiga Prefecture they carried out extensive research, spending six months walking around various places. They discovered products peculiar to the community and helped us to commercialize these products. The advice they gave us went some-
