This is the second installment of the workshop aimed at refining business storytelling (the first session was held on March 13, 2024. LINK:https://cjpf.jp/live/ri01/). The Cabinet Office’s Cool Japan Public-Private Partnership Platform (CJPF) and Keio SDM (Graduate School of System Design and Management, Keio University), with the cooperation of the Aichi “Fermented Food Culture” Promotion Council, organized a workshop titled “Considering Aichi’s Fermentation Tourism through Regional Collaboration.” Using the Business Story Refinement Framework, participants worked on linking business stories with regional narratives and developed tourism proposals that leverage the region’s unique characteristics and appeal. Through this upgraded and more practical workshop, participants gained valuable insights.
Approaches to Tourism Developmentin Aichi Prefecture
With the cooperation of the Aichi “Fermented Food Culture” Promotion Council, the workshop brought together business operators, government officials, and tourism associations from Aichi and Gifu Prefectures.
Established in May 2024, the Aichi “Fermented Food Culture” Promotion Council aims to promote Aichi’s fermented food culture and share its appeal domestically and internationally to attract visitors from around the world.
As a special guest, Mr. Mikihiro Kato, the representative of Dai-Nagoya Tours, was invited. Mr. Kato specializes in developing experience-based tours, enhancing tour value, and promoting regional tourism in the Nagoya and Tokai areas. He provided key insights on “How to Develop Tourism Experiences That Foreign Visitors Find Fascinating,” incorporating real examples of regional and business collaborations. This served as an important foundation for participants in learning how to develop tourism experiences.
Exploring Aichi’s Fermentation Tourism Through Regional Collaboration
The Business Story Refinement Framework was developed by CJPF based on over 20 Cool Japan case studies collected since 2021. It extracts the core structure of effective storytelling to communicate the appeal of Japanese products and services. The fundamental idea is that a strong story should not only highlight the intrinsic quality of a product or service but also convey the passion, dedication, and connection of the business with the local community.
There are many businesses rooted in the history, climate, and culture of their respective regions, each carrying a unique story. When these individual stories are woven together, a regional story emerges, which in turn leads to the creation of unique and special experiences. This “connection to regional storytelling” was the central theme of the workshop.
The workshop was structured as follows, with participants divided into five groups:
[Individual Work] Thinking about your own business story
[Group Work] Identifying the regional story based on individual business stories
[Group Work] Developing ideas for Fermentation Tourism based on the regional story
[Presentation] Sharing ideas generated through group work
By connecting participants with different backgrounds through a shared regional focus, dynamic discussions unfolded. Many unique tourism concepts were shared, such as:
“A fermentation tour featuring Bensaisen (historic cargo ships), retro architecture, and future automobiles.”
“A festival and fermentation food tour featuring traditional dashi floats.”
Additionally, some of the ideas generated in this workshop have already been incorporated into actual tour programs.
With a growing enthusiasm for spreading fermentation tourism to the world, the second CJPF workshop concluded with great success.
Here is the link to the first workshop↓
https://cjpf.jp/en/live/ri01/
