popularization and enlightenment of the “Tourism Area Producer” system, through presenting the achievement of “Model Business” in the “Symposium of Tourism Area Formation” etc.

5) Promotion of Tourism Nation Education

In order to cultivate the mindset of “go travel” in children’s hearts and foster the pillars of future area formation, MLIT is promoting popularization of volunteer guides among children/students and also working on the promotion of “Tourism Nation Education”.

### 3. Promotion of international tourism

(1) Advertising Japan’s attractiveness as a travel destination to overseas countries

In order to achieve the target of reaching 10 million foreign visitors to Japan by 2010, MLIT promotes a Japan travel promotion project for advertising Japan's attractiveness to overseas countries, focused on the top 12 countries/regions (Korea, Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore, Australia, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, France) in terms of the number of tourists who visited Japan. Specifically, the promotion is roughly classified into 2 aspects. One is a project for raising the awareness of the public by advertising Japan's attractiveness for calling attention to Japan as a travel destination, while the other is a project of attracting tourists by connecting advertising information practically to visiting Japan. The former project includes work on information posting via the Internet, advertisements in overseas mass media and participation in the Japan booth of overseas tourism exhibitions. The latter project includes inviting overseas travel companies/agencies to Japan, holding business discussion meetings, making common advertisements of products of Japan visits, etc.

In 2009, the “Hong Kong - Japan Tourism Exchange Year” was launched between Hong Kong and Japan. Hong Kong and Japan created and used a common logo and poster, and planned the expansion of exchanges through organizing the International Travel Expo Hong Kong together and utilizing sports and cultural events. In addition, because of a decrease in population flow due to the prevalence of a new subtype of influenza, the Exchange Year was extended by three months until 31 $ ^{st} $ March 2010 and continuous promotion was carried out.

In October 2009, the $ 4^{th} $ China-Japan-Korea Ministerial Conference on tourism was held in the Chubu District (Nagoya, Takayama). Regarding common measures for overcoming problems such as the global financial crisis and a new subtype of Influenza, as well as efforts on the expansion of population flow by utilizing the 2010 Shanghai Expo in China, Visit Japan Year and Visit Korea Year, the cooperation of the three countries was reinforced.

## (2) Promotion of conducting and attracting international conventions

The efforts on conducting and attracting international conventions has been taken so far, and a wider range of international conventions (MICE $ ^{1} $ ) such as the meeting of enterprises, incentive/training travel of enterprises, events, exhibitions and fairs, are bringing deeper meaning to the aspects of increasing foreign tourists who visit Japan, economic effects, regional internationalization and invigoration, etc.

Therefore, to promote not only international conferences, but also the all-round MICE, MLIT started to promote the conduction and attraction of MICE actively through the “MICE Promotion Action Plan” and the steady implementation of the plan in July 2009.

From now on, MLIT will focus on exhibiting Japan as a suitable place for spreading MICE to foreign countries. At the same time, education of citizens on the meaning of MICE will be carried out widely while this has not yet penetrated Japan, taking special efforts concentrating on MICE promotion for 2010 – the "Japan MICE Year".

(3) Ensuring the system of receiving foreign tourists

As measures for public transportation corporations, mainly in the subways of urban areas, the improvement of convenience for foreign tourists is being implemented, for instance, the introduction of a numbering system for lines and station names by using both letters and numbers. In order to further promote such measures, the “Act on Promotion of Inbound Tourism through Enhancing Travel Convenience for Foreign Tourists” imposes a best effort obligation on public transportation corporations for endeavoring to enhance the provision of information $ ^{2} $ . The Commissioner of the Japan Tourism Agency places a special emphasis on the necessity of enhancement for those sections that expect high use rate by foreign tourists. The corresponding public transportation corporations (248 corporations) are obliged to draw out and implement the Implementation Plan on