It may surprise you. The biggest event of my pro-whale tour occurred in the city of Muroran, on the northern island of Hokkaido. Traditional Industries dependent on logs and minerals and are now depleted. Economic hope exists in the form of a new tunnel that connects Hokkaido to Honshu. Tourism is being touted as the focus of development.
Civic leaders envision their city as the whalewatching center of Northern Japan.
I was invited there by the mayor to play music with the local dolphins, and thus generate a media event to promote whalewatching in Hokkaido. The details of our three days in Muroran can only be described as a media blitz. I was asked to play music to whatever cetaceans we found on the sea to the accompaniment of two entire ships filled to the brim with newspaper and TV journalists. The skipper informed us we might encounter Brydes whales, pilot whales, possibly sperm whales and orcas, and definitely Pacific white-sided dolphins. We were out on the water by five AM, motored two and half hours on a windy, cold, rough sea to the place the skipper assured us we would find whales.