THAT we made it to Osaka on our own—my daughter Angeline and I—is a feat in itself, considering it was our first time to travel to Japan. With at least 11 train lines plying Osaka Kansai’s railway, riding the train is not as simple as anyone may think, especially for newcomers, like us, in Japan.
There, I learned that one is on his or her own. If you think you need help, then you have to deal with the language barrier. But the Osakans were helpful and polite when asked for help. Using their high-tech mobile phones, they would take time to Google the place you are trying to locate and show you exactly the image and address of the hotel, for example.
The tourism information officer at Kansai Airport is highly commendable for giving us the exact location of our hotel. She even wrote it in Japanese characters so that her kababayan can understand and help us better. In so doing, we were able to survive the subway.
In Osaka we had the chance to meet my good and longtime friend Leona Nepomuceno, currently the attaché and director for West Japan of the Philippines’s Department of Tourism (DOT) in Osaka. She invited us for lunch and to visit the DOT-Osaka office on our second day.
All of us had a pleasant meal at the famed Ippudo of Osaka, almost a kilometer away from the DOT office. Over hot kanshu ramen and gyoza, Nepomuceno revealed that the recent mishaps, including the Marawi crisis, have affected Japan’s tourism interest in the Philippines. But now that it’s picking up again, she is busy as ever with various familiarization tours of the country with tourists, media and travel agents from the Land of the Rising Sun.
“We are now discovering new tourists destinations other than the usual famous spots, like Cebu, Palawan and Boracay. We are looking into Albay, Iloilo and Guimaras and Tagbilaran, Bohol.
“As of June this year, Japan has already reached its target of 20 million visitors. And that includes the Filipinos who are among in the top 10 of visitors in Japan. So we are working hard to entice the Japanese to visit our country, as well, especially the countryside. They love the rural life because, as you can see, they are highly urbanized and modernized here in Japan,” she explained.
Nepomuceno believes it’s different when the Japanese experience firsthand how it is to be in the Philippines. The perception about the country totally changes once foreigners step foot in our shores, the DOT-Osaka executive said, as she is also encouraging other countries to be fair with their travel advisories about the Philippines.
Meanwhile, Nepomuceno’s counterpart in Tokyo is Verna Buensuceso, who just arrived in Japan on August 17 for her new post. Good thing her teammate Jerome Diaz at DOT Tokyo had just concluded “I Travel Philippines 2017”, the largest familiarization tour for Japanese tourism stakeholders in Philippines. Held in Quezon City in July, the event promoted the key destinations in the Philippines among Japanese tourists to help meet the agency’s target of 1.37 million visitor arrivals from Japan by year 2022. A 50-strong Japanese contingent made up of tourists, members of the media, travel executives and agents went to the Philippines and experienced the country’s emerging destinations.
As a first-timer expat in Japan and in an overseas post, Buensuceso said she still has to familiarize herself with Tokyo while already working hard on the projects lined up for the year, such as the ministerial roundtable at the Global Tourism Forum of the Tour Expo Japan 2017 held in September. Along with this are the bilateral tourism talks with officials of Japan’s Ministry of Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism headed by Japanese Minister Keiichi Ishii.
With more tourism activities ahead, Buensuceso hopes to revitalize tourist interest in the country and strengthen the Philippine and Japanese networks, what with the availability of more direct flights between our country’s and Japan’s major points, such as Nagoya, Fukuoka, Osaka and Tokyo.
“We want to showcase that the Philippines is a safe, fun and beautiful country that makes the journey worth the trip,” she said.
Most likely, it was also the same positive spirit of reciprocation that Japan exhibited to us Filipino tourists—the first timers that we are notwithstanding.