Seeking to tell the world about Japan's traditional industries through this internship

Q.Why did your company decide to take on interns? What did you aim to achieve?

Located between Kyoto and Kanazawa, Echizen in Fukui Prefecture is a city with a long history. It is also one of the only regions in the world with so many traditional industries operating in one small area. Unfortunately, the population has been in decline for the last 20 to 30 years, and where once a diversity of stores bustled with customers, the streets have now fallen silent. I started this company last year in the hopes of revitalizing this community and telling people from other countries about the greatness of Echizen. With the launching of vacation rental businesses and exporting traditional handicrafts from the region as the company's main businesses, I have thought about many ways to advertise Echizen's charms to people in Japan and abroad. Given the circumstances, and in order to promote inbound tourism businesses, I applied for this program to hear the views of foreigners.

Communicating Echizen's charms to people in Japan and abroad from the unique perspective of foreigners

Q.What kind of internship did you run? What difficulties did you face and how did you resolve them?

There were three main things that I had the intern do. The first was to make a video showing artisans at work and disseminate information in Indonesia, her home country. To do this, I had her visit and speak with people at and take part in workshops where cutlery, washi paper, Echizen lacquer, and other such things representative of traditional Echizen industries were made, and then incorporate what she learned into a video. Her second task was to make an English-language tourist map for Echizen. Using paintings, photographs, and other materials, and drawing on her unique perspective as a foreigner, she put together a wonderfully-crafted map of Echizen that brought its charms into sharp relief. It was truly a high-quality achievement. For her third task, because of her extensive knowledge of halal foods, she made a "Japanese-style halal food recipes" for Muslim travelers to Japan. With the goal of familiarizing Echizen hotel and vacation rental business operators with halal foods, a category of foods with which Japanese are not well acquainted, I had her involved in recipe creation starting at the planning stage. Close to 30 people turned out at the event to announce the recipes, including City Hall staff and local media outlet personnel.

Getting out of a longtime standstill. Our vacation rental business launches next spring!

Q.Comparing before and after the internship, what effects did it have on you, your employees, or your organization?

Previously, it had been difficult to even get an appointment with workshops that are part of traditional industries. But after word got around the community that we had taken on a foreign intern as part of a project organized by METI Government of JAPAN, City Hall and companies involved in community revitalization lent us their support. This made it easy to get appointments with workshops. Furthermore, thanks to City Hall putting the word out about our vacation rental business plan, which is to be the core of our business, we plan to launch the business as early as this spring using traditional Japanese homes. This is truly a major step forward for our company. Our intern has been proactive in interacting with members of the community, putting up no barriers with anyone. This has allowed us to open up with local artisans, with her creating bonds between them and our company. With the support of these artisans, we are looking at offering inbound tours beginning next spring for attracting more foreign tourists. The tours will incorporate a program allowing these tourists to make their own traditional handicrafts. Our intern was only with us for a short 10 weeks, but it was because of her that we were able to increase sales for vacation rentals, traditional arts and crafts, and exports, and she helped us take the first steps to revitalizing the region.