Gov. Hideo Higashikokubaru Goes To South Korea: Will Tourists Come To Miyazaki?

Miyazaki Prefecture’s governor, Hideo “Sonomanma Higashi” Higashikokubaru, was in South Korea for the last two days on a mission to promote tourism to Miyazakii. While about 200 people were at the airport to greet him when he arrived yesterday, it wouldn’t be too safe to assume that a good portion of them were members of the Japanese press, who seem obsessed wtih covering Gov. Higashikokubaru’s every move. Perhaps to prove this point, one Japanese channel conducted a survey on the streets of Seoul, asking people if they could correctly identify a photo of the former comedian:

Of the 33 people they polled, only 1 could identify him, apparently because she saw him on TV when she was traveling in Japan. While Higashikokubaru might not be popular in Korea, he’s still the governor of a Japanese Prefecture, so he does have a position of authority that would allow him to meet with tourist organizations and promote his locale as a destination for South Koreans who want to travel to Japan.

As the graph above shows, the number of South Korean tourists traveling to Japan has increased dramatically in the last few years, apparently because of the growing strength of the won vs. the yen. South Koreans can come to Japan and have far more spending money than they would have had ten years ago, so many of the tourists are in Japan to enjoy shopping. However, there’s also a downside to the increasing value of the won:

The above video shows a Korean supermarket in the Shin-Okubo area of Tokyo, which has had to raise prices on goods imported from South Korea. One Korean resident of Japan says that she will have to stop buying certain Korean brands of cup ramen because their prices have doubled in the last year. Reporters also go to a “Korean Wave” goods store in Shinjuku, whose operator tells them that the increasing cost of importing goods from South Korea is having a negative effect on her business. While some Japanese businesses are gaining from the won’s value increase and the tourism it causes, businesses like these are going to have to suffer.

In the end though, the increase in tourism from South Koreans is just a side story being mentioned in connection to the big news: Gov. Higashikokubaru is doing something. Even if the focus of this trip to actually get more Koreans to come to Miyazaki, keeping himself and Miyazaki tourism in the news will probably boost domestic tourism to the area. I don’t know a whole lot about his policies as governor, but he sure is helping local tourism.