Monday, February 25, 2019

Sho


    My name is Sho Sasaki, and I am a student at Brigham Young University-Hawaii, which is one of the most international universities in the United States with students gathered from over 70 countries. My major is Business Management with Human Resource track. The mission of Brigham Young University-Hawaii is “Enter to learn, go forth to serve”, I study at this wonderful university to prepare myself to become a global leader who can contribute to my home country after I graduate. I have been married to my wife for two years, and she is also a student of this university.

「十和田市」の画像検索結果

    I am from Aomori, Japan which is located at the top of Japan’s mainland. My family lives in a small city called Towada, and the current population of Towada is approximately 60,000. As you can see in the picture above, you can enjoy seeing the beautiful cherry blossoms in our city during spring season.
One of the major issues that my home town has is a decrease in population. There is no college in the city, so young generations who graduate high school have to leave for bigger cities that have colleges to get more educated. As a result, most of those who left for colleges in bigger cities have never come back to Towada because there are not much hiring needs and less possibilities to get jobs with high income in Towada. Therefore, it has been causing depopulation in Towada, and the population of elderly has been increasing gradually in the past few decades.
「十和田市 バラ焼き」の画像検索結果
    The city mayor has been trying to advertise the city and get more tourists recently. A couple of years ago, the Towada city mayor and his subordinates promoted a new special local dish called Barayaki (the picture above). Barayaki is cooked with local specialties as the ingredients which are beef and onions. On top of that, professional chefs in Towada invented special source that goes well with Barayaki. Actually, Towada city has started to sell the special source in other places in Japan, and it was a good method to get more awareness from people in other areas. As a result, Towda has held a Barayaki festival every year since 2008, and we had approximately 400,000 visitors in the last few years. Towada is now planning to advertise Barayaki to the world and get more international tourists.

「田んぼアート」の画像検索結果
    Here is another story of a village closed to my hometown and how they succeeded in activating their community. The village has been worried about declining population and the number of visitors to their village. They didn’t have any famous local specialty except a lot of rice fields. The mayor and his subordinates got an idea that those rice fields can be used as art. They choose a theme every year and plant different types of rice seeds based on the theme (see the picture above). In 2005, they were interviewed by a famous TV program in Japan, and their project was spread to all over Japan. As a result, approximately 340,000 tourists visit this unique rice field every year even though the population of the village is only 8,000.



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