Earlier this week I traveled to Kochi city to participate in a seminar designed to help Kochi Prefectural tourism-related officials understand what might bring more foreign travelers there.

In this age of the Internet, there is still nothing more powerful in our grab bag of popular culture and entertainment media than movies with inspired plots that can actually move the hearts of audiences.

Having been there, I can safely say that as of September 2015, there is NO access allowed by the Great Firewall to Google services like search, Gmail, maps, etc.

Towns and cities all over Japan, funded either directly by the Japanese government or indirectly through private investment programs are now wondering how to attract their share of visitors.