(Promotion of tourism via Tohoku Tourist Expo and other programs)

With a view to revitalizing domestic tourism demand, which has sharply declined nationwide after the Disaster, efforts are being made both by the public and private sectors to stimulate potential travel demand by creating momentum with “Ganbaro, Japan,” a promotional campaign for domestic travel and monitoring tours.

Also, the public and private sectors are working together to stimulate travel demand for the Tohoku region, which saw a particular decline in tourism. Toward that end, a campaign dubbed “Tohoku Tourist Expo,” which deems the entire Tohoku region as an expo venue, has been launched and a new tourist style to accelerate exchanges between local residents and tourists has been developed.

Specifically, various initiatives are put in place; means to send more tourists to the Tohoku region are enhanced, and with 28 major tourist areas serving as cores in the "zones," "local tourist guides" who are familiar with their hometown attractions are

arranged, “travel salons” where such local guides welcome tourists are set up, provision of unique staying programs in different areas is promoted, “Tohoku passports” are created to encourage encounters between local residents and tourists, and a “portal site” is set up to provide integrated tourist information. The basic objective of these programs is to first get the number of tourists visiting the Tohoku region back up to the pre-Disaster level. Then, efforts will be continued to get the number above this level, and to establish schemes to create an affordable and enjoyable traveling environment that offers a high degree of freedom to a wide spectrum of tourists, which may be promoted on a sustainable basis under the leadership of the localities involved.

In addition, campaigns to induce tourists to visit the Tohoku and North Kanto regions and assist the regional reconstruction were fully launched at the end of March 2012 through execution of government-sponsored projects and utilization of events sponsored by the private sector encouraging such visits.

## 6 Smooth promotion of reconstruction projects

## (Ensuring smooth execution of projects)

As recovery and reconstruction projects go into full swing, workers with construction skills have been short in Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima Prefectures since July of 2011. In October of 2011, the shortage became so acute and public bids without winning contractors rose in number due to increased labor costs, which jeopardized smooth execution of projects.

To deal with such circumstances, MLIT organized in December 2011 the “Liaison Council for Smooth Execution of Recovery and Reconstruction Projects” with its members comprising of the state, Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima Prefectures and Sendai City as well as such construction groups as Japan Federation of Construction Contractors (an incorporated association) and National Construction Contractors Association (a general incorporated association). Through this council, information on the current situations and views as to how to respond to them were exchanged, and it was confirmed that the parties would take necessary steps including securing of human resources required for reconstruction and development of proper integration values. In February, 2012, steps including the following were taken; (1) based on surveys of construction industries and results of statistical surveys, labor unit cost for designing of public projects are revised so as to timely reflect current labor cost levels, and (2) lead engineers are allowed to cover multiple projects in the affected areas at the same time as long as they are related and close to each other.