Interpreting at VISIT JAPAN Travel Mart 2011

[Date and Time] Tuesday, November 22, at 9:00~17:00
[Spots] Pacifico Yokohama
[Participants] 2 KSGG members
[Language] English

The number of buyers was about 280 and that of sellers was about 380 in this VISIT JAPAN Travel Mart 2011. Business negotiation was held 12 times. I could serve as an interpreter twice in the morning and twice in the afternoon. In the morning, I visited the travel agencies from China and Norway with the officials of Kanagawa Prefectural Government and Miura City Government. What I explained and advertised for the governments were as follows: Except for world-famous Hakone, in Kanagawa Prefecture, we have a lot of sightseeing spots such as Yokohama, a modern city, and Kamakura, the origin of samurai warrior culture, which will appeal to foreign tourists; Miura City is easily accessible from the Haneda Airport, in about one hour by car and has a great deal of aquatic resources including tuna; they can also fully enjoy the beautiful landscape in the background of Mt. Fuji. In the afternoon, I visited the travel agencies from Finland and Korea with the officials of Kanagawa Prefectural Government and a hotel manager from Hakone. I advertised charming points of Kanagawa Prefecture and made a sale of an amusement park by Lake Ashinoko, Hakone-en. We heard that many Korean travel agencies were having a tough time because the sales of group tour to Japan decreased sharply due to the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plants accidents exaggerated by the media. KSGG members didn’t need to interpret so often when we went to the booths for Chinese and Korean travel agencies, because they had their own interpreters. Yet I had a nice day participating in this exciting event.