Think of your day off. When you plan to go somewhere, are recreational facilities or amusement parks the first thing you think of?
Mr. Shoji suggests, “It only has to be for one day, but try going for a walk around your neighborhood.” The locals might say that Hamamatsu has nothing, but surprisingly, there are interesting things that are simply overlooked. Hamamatsu is a place where you can do very fun things by using materials around you.
Mr. Shoji focuses on nearby places, and continuously creates new ways of discovering places or entertainment even locals didn’t know of. If you change your perspective of tourism and tours like how Mr. Shoji did, you will be able to feel thill from a more free and exciting entertainment from his talk.
Born in Fujinomiya city, he started working for Okuhamanako Tourist Association 3 and a half years ago. Once in Okuhamanako, a place with beautiful wildlife, he overturned the concept of tourism and became a “Mastermind of entertainment” and an “Expert in having fun in the moment”.
As he walks far and wide across local areas with a camera in one hand, he helps Mikkabi mandarin farmers or wipes floors and cuts grass at temples, spending every day re-discovering Hamamatsu’s attractions. He is acknowledged by locals because he now knows more about local areas in Hamamatsu then the people who were born and raised there.
His great talent is to find fun in normal every day life in local areas, and changes them into tourist attractions. He focuses on delivering local tourism information through pamphlets, homepages, and SNS sites. Furthermore bus tours based on this information are very popular and have received many repeaters.
This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx