AMPONTAN (Free subscription) | 10/07/2008
THE SCENE FOR YESTERDAY’S POST was Tanabe, Wakayama, and by a happy coincidence, here is another story about the city that appeared today. It’s now the season for harvesting rice in Japan, when the farmers cut the grain, tie it in bundles, stack it on end, and leave it in the field to dry. This farm [...]
Going Underground's Blog (Free subscription) | 10/07/2008
Regular readers might remember hearing about a fab fat cat named Tama which was officially named Station Master at an unmanned station in the Wakayama Electric Railway in Japan. It was really popular and attracted shedloads of tourists to the station. At the time I said it was " generating a nice little earner for the Railway. " That nice little earner is now estimated by experts to be 1.1 billion...
AMPONTAN (Free subscription) | 10/06/2008
A LOOK AT THE PHOTO accompanying this post might lead one to believe that the Yata Fire Festival, held at the end of August in Tanabe, Wakayama, originated many centuries ago. While the women in the picture are wearing costumes from the Heian period (794-1185), the origins of the festival itself are quite recent. In [...]
Times of the Internet (Free subscription) | 10/05/2008
KISHIGAWA, Japan, Oct. 5 (UPI) -- A cat turned station master is credited with attracting thousands of new passengers to a nearly bankrupt rail line near Kishigawa, Japan. The number of passengers rose by 55,000 since Tama the cat began working at the unmanned Kishi station in Wakayama Prefecture in January 2007, Kyodo News reported Sunday. The line, run by Wakayama Electric Railway...
Brentwood International (Free subscription) | 10/07/2008
As the economic might of Japan faces up to the global banking crisis, a single cat has boosted the finances of a small Japanese city by millions of dollars, according to a study.It is rather Tama's irresistible charm which has brought tourists flocking in their thousands to the western city of Kinokawa to see the feline worker patrolling in the uniform of her office - a Wakayama Electric Railway...
Neatorama (Free subscription) | 10/06/2008
... the western city of Kinokawa to see the feline worker patrolling in the uniform of her office - a Wakayama Electric Railway cap. With 55,000 more people having used the Kishigawa Line than would normally be expected, Tama’s contribution to the local economy is calculated to have reached as much as Y1.1 billion ($A13.5 million) [US10.9 - Ed.] in 2007 alone, according to a study announced...
Japan Probe (Free subscription) | 10/05/2008
The Wakayama Electric Railway Co. was in serious financial trouble a couple years ago, but their brilliant decision to make a cat named Tama the official stationmaster of Kishi Station has drawn in thousands of visitors from across Japan. The PR move saved the railway, and one expert even claims that Tama the cat’s [...]
