October 16, 2024
On Sunday, August 18, 2024, students from Department of Tourism Management Faculty of Economics Teikyo University, held a summer vacation parent-child experience at the Tama Ori Crafts Museum (Hachioji City, Tokyo) as a proposal for tourism town development in Hachioji City.
This project was a summer vacation parent-child experience called "Let's play with textiles and sugoroku from Hachioji, the city of mulberry!", planned as part of a special lecture on tourism management taught by Associate Professor Konno Hisako of the same department, and was carried out with the cooperation of the Hachioji Textile Industry Association and the support of the Hachioji City Japanese Heritage "Mulberry City Story" Promotion Council and the Hachioji City Board of Education.
On the day, 36 people, including 18 parent-child pairs, participated, learning authentic hand weaving from a traditional craftsman of Tamaori, a nationally designated traditional craft, and created placemats. The "Mulberry City Hachioji Quiz Sugoroku" game, invented by students of our university, was designed to teach participants about the relationship between weaving and the city and culture of Hachioji in a fun way, and both parents and children who participated had a great time. In addition, as an attempt at walking around the city, we moved from the Tamaori Craft Museum to another venue, where we provided participants with mulberry puddings and mulberry bookmarks handmade by students.
Hachioji City is promoting the town development of "Mulberry City Hachioji" as the only Japan Heritage Site in Tokyo, and as this initiative is part of Hachioji City's tourism measures, officials from Hachioji City, including the Director of the Industry Department, came to inspect the parent-child experience. Posters about this project were exhibited at Tourism EXPO Japan 2024, held at Tokyo Big Sight (Koto Ward, Tokyo) from Thursday, September 26th to Sunday, September 29th, 2024, raising awareness among many people.
The Mulberry City Hachioji Quiz Sugoroku will be improved based on the feedback from parent-child participants and is scheduled to be commercialized. Faculty of Economics will continue to promote practical learning about tourism town development through collaboration between industry, government, and academia.
A proposal for tourism town development in Hachioji City by a student from Department of Tourism Management was selected for the University Consortium Hachioji Student Planning Project Subsidy.
For more information about Associate Professor Hisako Konno, please click here.
For more information about Department of Tourism Management Faculty of Economics, click here