Obama City, Fukui Prefecture

Ano Minshuku Association
Project in Obama City
 Provide children with opportunities toexperience both the joy and difficulty offishing and cleaning fish, and enjoy thegreat taste of fresh fish from the Sea ofJapan while valuing all the lives we takefrom living beings.
 Provide students with opportunities forcareer preparation by offering students theexperience of staying in guesthouses andtalking with the owners (landlords andlandladies) who can talk about theattraction and hardship of their work.

Background and Reason for the Project
Ano in Obama City is a small settlement
located in the mid-west part of Wakasa Bay,and is a region rich in fish farming thanks to its
deeply-indented coast line. The bay isespecially known as the northern limit of fishfarming for Wakasa fugu (puffer fish), whichalong with Echizen crab is a highly-acclaimed
winter delicacy in Fukui Prefecture. There area lot of guesthouses run by fishermen, which
provide various types of farm-raised fish atreasonable prices and they’ve had a steadily
increasing number of guests until the 1990s.
However, because of the decreasing numberof beach visitors due to the diversification ofleisure activities, sluggishness in the fisheryindustry and a shortage of successors brought
about by the continued low birth rate, moreand more guesthouses are closing down every
year. The management efficiency ofguesthouses in this region was originally poor
because people mainly visited there for thebeach in summer and puffer fish in winter,
while spring and autumn are off seasons.
Therefore, the city decided to increase thenumber of guests and enhance the businessstability of the guesthouses by setting theireyes on and trying to attract hands-on
educational trips of primary and middle
schools, which are often held during these twoseasons.

Project Outline
To accommodate the school trips, the Ano
Minshuku Association, consisting of 13
guesthouses in Ano, was established in 2006.
Using their own funds, they built Blue Park
Ano, which included a fishing pond, a facility
for cleaning fish and a barbecue area. The
park allows 150 people to 1. catch snappers
at the fishing pond, 2. clean the snappers bythemselves, and 3. eat the fish that they
prepared, all at one place. Allowing for thetime lag between activities, it canaccommodate up to 300 people. Althoughsome facilities provide similar services acrossJapan, not many of them can accommodate
such a large number of people.

Project Aims
 Provide dietary education in the area wherepeople are actively developing the city,which sets the importance of diet as thepillar of the project.
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Although only one school with 170 students
participated in the first fiscal year (2007),
thanks to their business operations and thediverse selection of travel and school trip
destinations every year, the number of schools
has continued to steadily rise, reaching 28
schools with 5,107 participants in 2018. The
project gained a great deal of acceptanceespecially from middle schools in Gifu
Prefecture, where there is no ocean. It is also
remarkable that the project has secured a newincome source for guesthouses in the offseasons, which has helped them to stabilise
and level out their operations throughout theyear.
In addition, younger generations arebecoming involved in this project and staying
in the region, which has revitalised thesettlement.

Blue Park AnoSea kayak
Features and Innovations
The association has earned the trust ofschools by responding to their detailed needs
through trial and error and showing that theentire region was working together. Also, it isworth mentioning that the association has
grown and reached the current scale mostly
through word-of-mouth; for example, school
principals who had experienced Ano chose it
again as the school trip destination at their
newly appointed schools.
In Obama City, which leads the country forbeing involved in city development utilisinglocally produced foods and dietary education,
the project still continues to grow as a uniqueproject that realises the concept of dietaryeducation and tourism.

Cleaning snappers 1

Cleaning snappers 2

Results of the Project2

Issues, Problems and Responses
As one perspective of regional revitalisation,
tourism is often used as the basis for city
development across Japan, and hands-on
educational trips in rural areas are actively
being provided across the country. To further
expand hands-on educational trips in Ano, theregion has to differentiate itself from otherswith similar services and secure its identityrooted in the local community. The region
would like to put substantial effort into getting
ready to develop new programmes and accept
overseas tourists, responding to changes withthe times.

will continue refining these hands-on
educational trips, and aims to have 7,000
participants every year, who will come toappreciate the rich resources of the city,including food as well as nature, history andculture.
Reference URLBlue Park Ano “A Stage in the Ocean” inWakasa Bay
http://bluepark-ano.com/
Contact
Division in charge: Tourism Promotion Group,Commerce, Industry and Tourism Division,Obama City
Phone: +81-70-64-6021
E-mail: kankou@city.obama.fukui.jp

Future Developments (expected effects andproject vision and issues)
ObamaCity,
which
promotescity
development utilising local produced foods,

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