On Oct 25, 2010 I (Laneha) flew out of Denver with Kelli Hepler headed for Japan and an opportunity to help conduct some research for Hokkaido on tourism and foreign travelers. We landed in Sapporo, Hokkaido on Oct 26 a little before 8:00p.m. The next few days were spent attending meetings and exploring the city of 2million people through the eyes of a foreign tourist. It was an exciting and enlightening experience. We filled out over 50 pages of survey, gave short interviews about what we thought was the best and worst of what we experienced, and held a press conference with over 40 Japanese press and state officials.
After the first segment of the trip was complete, we headed out on the scenic byways to look at what Japan was doing in regards to connecting roads, stories and culture to tourism efforts in Hokkaido. The trip took us to Lake Toya and Lake Shikotsu as well as many places in between and two onsens where we experienced Japanese style hot spring bathing. At the conclusion of this trip we met again with the state agency for economic and tourism development and discussed things that the US was doing in regards to scenic byways and specifically the ones we worked with and some of the great things we saw along the byways in Hokkaido.
Kelli and I flew out of Sapporo on Nov 2 at approx 1:00p.m. and ended up back home a little before 6p.m. the same day in Denver. The trip offered many experiences and cultural exchanges that the region can tap into in long term tourism relations and research with international tourists.