About this Website

Five St. Olaf students created this website as a part of our summer research project, “Eco-tourism in Japan.” It is not an official tourism website for Kitakata City. Our goal was to aid Kitakata City tourism officials and community leaders by providing both new, engaging content that lets English-language readers learn about this exciting part of Japan.

Any and all content produced on this website is the property of the students and professors who created it. With our permission, Kitakata officials and residents may use information and media from this website in their own official webpages or social media accounts.

If you wish to learn more about why we created this content, please read our market report, which brings evidence to bear in support of this sort of web-based marketing effort.

Authors & Acknowledgements

St. Olaf students Robby Hanson, Anders Cologne, Caitlin Connell, Iris Burbank, and Chenchen Xu and Professors Kathy Tegtmeyer Pak (Asian Studies)  and Sian Muir (Management Studies) produced this project. A special thanks to St. Olaf College’s CURI program and the “Asia and the Environment” project, funded by the Luce Initiative on Asian Studies and the Environment, for supporting our summer research on this complex and fascinating topic.

Top: Tsunenori Yamaguchi (guide), Chenchen Xu, Anders Cologne, Robby Hanson, Iris Burbank, Sian Muir
Bottom: Kathy Tegtmeyer Pak, Caitlin Connell