"Clean and Cool Communication @AKIBA"

The Story !

On January 15th, in Akihabara, JAPANiCAN was holding in collaboration with Chiyoda City, the Akihabara Tourism Promotion Association and the Tourism Industry Association of Japan a major and successful event in Tokyo within the line of the “YOKOSO! JAPAN WEEKS”: the “Clean and Cool Communication@ AKIBA!”

A joint clean-up campaign in Akihabara which gathered during this event, and thanks to a lucky weather, more than 70 persons: local residents, overseas students, visitors and expatriates joined altogether in this cleaning and environmental operation with a symbolic goal to foster intercommunication and show the warming hospitality of Akihabara and Japanese.

Clean up Start !!

On that day among the 70 persons present at the event, 22 participants (13 from overseas: Sweden, Vietnam, China, Korea and USA), more than 50 volunteers from Chiyoda city, staff from the Akihabara Tourism Promotion Association, the Tourism Industry Association of Japan and JAPANiCAN Inc. all combined their effort with each one assistance during this joint action from 10:00 to 11:00 in the morning.

All the participants split in two different groups were picking up small trash (e.g. small papers, cigarettes butts, pet bottles, empty cans) on sidewalks on each side of the Chuo Avenue: at the end of the operation, more than 50 kilos garbage was collected.

After finishing..

One of our interviewed participants, from Sweden, was referring that he knew about this event through the internet. According to him, streets of Akihabara looked even cleaner than the ones in Sweden and by laughing a bit he actually wished more persons could be joining to this kind of campaigns.

After the “sweats” of action, a lunch was supplied for free to all participants whom also had a chance through a small ceremony at the 3D Theater within UDX building to get to know the sponsors of this campaign and to enjoy a lottery during which one of the official participants luckily received a winning prize of a free Sunrise Tours Mt. Fuji/Hakone Free 1 Day By Coach Package Tour pair ticket.

Along and thanks to the Akihabara Tourism Promotion Association, free gifts such as special “YOKOSO! JAPAN WEEKS” pin badges and DVDs introducing Akihabara visiting tours were distributed to every participant in a way to promote tourism in Akihabara, an already very popular spot among overseas visitors and a core destination within the government sponsored Visit Japan Campaign.

Thank you to all of you !!

Associated with JAPANiCAN Inc., this event was made possible thanks to the sponsorship of the Akihabara Tourism Promotion Association (ATPA), the Secretariat of Visit Japan Campaign Headquarters, Chiyoda City, the Akihabara Electrical Town Organization, the Akihabara Shopping District Promotion Cooperative and Tourism Industry Association of Japan (TIJ). We also thank KOTOBUKIYA, SONY and Tokyo Anime Center for their special gifts. We would like to thank as well a lot both the 3D Theater (UDX Building) and the Tokyo Food Theater 5+1 for the privilege use of their facilities for the ceremony and lunch time. With this present, we also wish everyone in the future to join and enjoy AKIHABARA New Discovery tour events. In addition, Chiyoda City, due to the success of this event, is warmly inviting everyone from now on, in order to preserve a clean Akihabara, to refrain from throwing cigarette butts on the streets for “a better life environment ordinance within Chiyoda City.” Due to the success of this action, we are thinking of more events to organize in the future in which we are looking forward to seeing you again with a truly great pleasure!

Thank you once again to all of you for your support and participation that made this event successful!

For more details of "Clean and Cool Communication @AKIBA", please click here.



JAPANiCAN Clean-up Campaign Staff