## 3 Results
### Economic Aspect of Forestland Grabbing
On the contrary, there was no exact information on how many or percent of foreign tourists visited the foreign-owned properties on Hokkaido Island in each year. A foreign-owned hotel manager stated that at least 10% of foreign tourists visited the foreign-owned properties in the Hokkaido area, and that number was increasing sharply. Therefore, the study assumed that at least 5% of the total foreign tourists visited the foreign-owned tourism activities, and their average money expenditure was 8797 million Japanese Yen in 2017. This sort of amount would add an additional money flow to the local economy and the development of the forestry sector as well. The Japanese private forest owner has faced a shortage of labor, due to an ageing problem of Japanese people, which had a negative effect on the proper management and production of the private forests [15; 17]. The experts also mentioned that the price of local forestland was going down, and all of this inspired private forest owners to sell their land instead of continuing forest production and also paying the government taxes. They also stated that a number of foreign companies bought the low-cost forestland to make golf and ski courses, hotels, condominiumums, resorts, and summer camp activities in order to do commercial activities related to tourism on the Hokkaido Island. However, we also found some Chinese companies who did not know the rules of keeping at least 50% tree cover for making a golf course in their grabbed forestland. One Chinese company planned to clear the tree species below 50% in their working plan and the respective local government authority already asked to revise their working plan immediately. The local authority also made a plan to visit the site and evaluate their revised plan according to the prefectural conservation guidelines. The study also found that a Thai company bought a local Kiroro Sky Resort (43 km west of Sapporo city) from a local Japanese company; the deal was about 1.9 billion Japanese Yen or 25 million USD and the land area was only 48 hectares [16]. Therefore, the foreign investment in the grabbed forestland for business was a remarkable example. If we considered the 185 total foreign companies/persons that invested into the Japanese local economy, it would be a big amount of foreign investment. The foreign companies who opened the ski resorts, golf courses, hotels, and other leisure business have also created employment opportunity for the local Japanese people. The study interviewed two young Japanese staff members working at the foreign-owned hotel in the Niseko area, and found that most of the (except one or two foreign people working at reception) staff working in that hotel were Japanese. One of the young staff stated that he came from Nagano Prefecture (outside of Hokkaido) in order to work at the Niseko area only for the winter time. He worked in the Hong Kong-based hotel in the Niseko area and earned 1800 JPY/hour and he also enjoyed the beautiful winter season of the Hokkaido Island. Therefore, the foreign-owned properties have also created employment opportunities for the Japanese people in the Hokkaido area. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c} \hline \hline
**Visited Year** & **Number of Total Tourist** & \begin{tabular}{c} **Amount of Spend** \\  & \
\begin{tabular}{c} **Money/Tourist (JPY)** \\ \end{tabular} &
\begin{tabular}{c} **Total Amount of Spend** \\
2013 * & 1,153,100 & 122,128 & 140,825.8 \\
2014 & 1,210,755 ** & 125,499 *** & 151,948.2 \\
2015 & 1,271,293 & 125,515 ** & 159,565.9 \\
2016 & 1,334,857 & 125,512 ** & 167,541.2 \\
2017 & 1,401,600 & 125,522 ** & 175,931.5 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}  
* According to the information of the Bureau of Tourism 2014. ** An estimate of 5% increasing rate of tourists after 2013. *** The annual variation of consumer price index (CPI) in percentage, (i.e., 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 CPI = 2.76, 0.79, \(-\)0.11, 0.47, respectively) [47].  
\end{table} 
Table 4: Estimated amount of money spend by the foreign tourists in the Hokkaido Island.