Happy New Year!!

  All our members from Hyogo Tourism Association would like to wish you a happy New Year!

  We’ll do our very best to continue providing lots of interesting and useful information about Hyogo to people all over the world! So please keep on supporting our TID Blog, Go! Go! Hyogo!, as well as our website and us!.  

 (Year 2011 New Year’s Card from TID!)

New Year's Celebration in Japan

For this week’s blog, I want to introduce the way people celebrate New Year’s in Japan.

  Let me start off by talking about Hatsumode. Hatsumode, literally translated means a first visit, and is where people visit the shrine for the first time in the new year to pray for good fortune. Some shrines offer amazake, a sweet Japanese sake, and drinking it is said to protect you from the bad luck.

At the temple, priests ring a large bell called joya-no-kane on the night of New Year’s Eve into New Year’s Day. The bell is rung 108 times because it is believed to help release the 108 Bonno, a Buddhist word for negative thoughts or pain that clouds one’s mind.

Although people in Japan don’t wear kimono on a regular basis, this is one of the few events where many people wear them and celebrate the start of a new year. 

　　　　　　　　　　Torii (A traditional Japanese Gate)              Japanese Shrine

Information on  shrines in Hyogo: http://www.hyogo-tourism.jp/english/category/history.html

The movie “Norwegian Wood” and Tonomine Highlands

  Norwegian Wood, a best-selling book written by Haruki Murakami, was made into a movie. The film will be released on December 11 (Saturday) in Japan.  As filming locations for this highly anticipated film, Hyogo prefecture’s Mineyama and Tonomine Highlands in Kamikawa-cho were chosen..

　

Mineyama Highland                    Tonomine Highland

We Created a Video of Kobe, Hyogo

  Recently, the New York Times started a section on their website called “Show Us Your City.” Viewers can grab a camera, make a video of them giving a tour of their hometown, submit it to the New York Times, and they post it up on their website.

  We figured it would be a great way to introduce our prefecture to a wider audience. We also didn’t have a video for Sannomiya, so we said why not, and decided to give it a shot! We had a few locations to choose from, but we decided to go with Sannomiya. It’s the busiest area in Hyogo, and it’s also close to our office, in case we have to retake some footage since we’re total beginners. I think it ended up being a good call.

Kobe Luminarie Lights Up Kobe’s Winter

  This year marks the 16th anniversary of the Kobe Luminarie. The festival is held between December 2nd to December 12th at the Old Foreign Settlement and Higashi-Yuenchi in Chuo-ku, Kobe.
  The festival began in December of 1995 in memory of the lives that were lost during the Great Hanshin Awaji Earthquake, but now, this popular winter festival represents the hopes and bright futures of the people of Kobe.

    

 Illuminating Arches

Restaurants and Hotels Guide Book “Michelin Guide Kyoto Osaka Kobe 2011”

   Have you ever heard of the Michelin Guide? It’s a guide book for exceptional restaurants and hotels, created by the French tire company, Michelin. It was originally created as a guide distributed free of charge to motorists to make their travels easier and more enjoyable. For the first time in history, restaurants in Kobe were published on this world-famous gourmet guide book.

Michelin Guide Kyoto Osaka Kobe 2011

San’in Kaigan Geopark Officially Accepted!

     On Sunday, October 3, 2010, San’in Kaigan Geopark was accepted as an official member of the Global UNESCO Network of Geoparks.

　　There are already three other official geoparks in Japan; Toya Lake-Usu Mountain Geopark, Itoi River Geopark, and Shimabara Peninsula Geopark making San’in Kaigan Geopark the fourth official member in the country.