[Global to Local] Alex Litz: Fostering Sustainable Tourism in Tohoku

Located in the northeast of Japan's largest island of Honshu, the Tohoku region is brimming with spectacular scenery and unique cultural traditions. All six prefectures can be reached in just a few hours by bullet train from Tokyo, yet Tohoku remains "off the beaten track" to the majority of international visitors. Alexander (Alex) Litz wants to change this.

Litz lives in the city of Yamagata, where he is currently the Director of Inbound Promotion at Yamashin Travel, Tohoku’s oldest travel company. (Expedition Japan is their customer-facing platform.) He has developed a deep love and appreciation for Tohoku, and is eager to share his passion with the world. An American with Swedish roots, Litz is fluent in English, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Swedish.  

Tell us about your first encounter with Japan.

My parents had the foresight to see the value of an international education, and so at the age of 15, I was shipped off to Tsuruoka in Yamagata Prefecture by myself. I attended regular Japanese high school while living with a friend of the family.

Language Immersion in Rural Yamagata

What was that like for you?

When you throw a 15-year-old into a rural Japanese school with nothing but a paper English-Japanese dictionary (cellphones were banned on school grounds), they have to figure out how to speak Japanese pretty fast! Every day during class, I would copy down everything the teacher was writing on the blackboard verbatim in my notebook, and then go home and translate everything word-by-word until I had understood what we had learned that day.

Where did these skills take you?

By the time I had moved to Korea for my last year of high school, I had worked out not just how to speak Japanese but the skill of how to teach myself a language from scratch. So learning Korean was much easier. I went through the same process for Mandarin. However, since I did technically study Mandarin at university before moving to Taiwan, I had a bit more structure.

How did these experiences influence your worldview?

After living in and traveling to so many places across the globe, I've realized that everyone is coming from somewhere and that our own story is what influences personal narrative. Nothing is weird or strange – only different.

What appealed about tourism as a career?

I remember my Japanese classmates talking about where they wanted to go to university and live after graduation: "Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Sapporo!" While they loved Yamagata, most of them couldn't see a sustainable future here in the long run and so they were seeking opportunities somewhere else. Revenue generated by tourism supports a wide array of industries and offers avenues for innovation and entrepreneurship. This gives young people a chance to stay where they love and continue protecting the traditions, culture, and land.

Shining a Light on Tohoku

What makes Tohoku (and Yamagata in particular) so special to you?

What means the world to me is the people. I always say that in Tokyo, if you ask, people will always help you. But in Tohoku, people will always ask if they can help you.

As a region, Tohoku is still frequently overlooked by international visitors. What are the main factors and what needs to change?

A big issue is a lack of information. When money is poured into PR projects to help get the word out about Tohoku, the problem is exactly that. It's a project. A one-and-done, website, pamphlet, or PR video that gets completed, uploaded, and never touched again. The places that these projects depict are fluid and alive. As such, the information and PR regarding them need to be kept alive with them! I'd like to see more long-term PR projects such as active social media presences kept in English, frequent updates/blog posts on designated travel online platforms, and regular video content that encourages interaction with both overseas and domestic audiences.

Making Tourism Sustainable

What does "sustainable tourism" mean to you?

For me, there are two parts to sustainable tourism. The first is that travel to natural and cultural areas is done in a way that preserves and protects them. However, when we hear the terms "sustainable tourism" and "ecotourism," many of us only think about sustainability in the context of nature and the environment and not the second part, the people. For tourism to be truly sustainable, first and foremost, the local community has to be the one who directly benefits. The benefits of tourism cannot be at the expense of the community's way of life and cannot infringe upon the local people's right to exist in their own true and authentic manner. Tourism, when sustainable, is not the legs holding up the entire community, but a tool that enriches the area and promises a better future for us all.

What stands out as a great example of sustainable tourism for you in Japan?

Not to toot my own horn, but I actually developed a zori-making experience here in Sagae, Yamagata, that I think really encapsulates the spirit of sustainability!

Sounds intriguing. Please tell us more!

Sagae was historically known for rice production. However, during the harsh Yamagata winter, there was no money to be made from agriculture. Rather than just sit at home and wait for the snow to thaw, the people used rice straw leftover from the harvest to weave zori sandals. Today it is much cheaper and easier to make zori out of vinyl by a machine. The shop where we run the zori-making experience is one of the last places in Japan to make their zori entirely out of natural materials by hand. The money from the workshop goes directly back into sustaining this practice, preserving and handing it down to the next generation.

New Styles of Tourism

As a member of Gen Z, what do visitors around your age want to experience in Japan?

Ten or twenty years ago, travel used to be so expensive and difficult that for many people, it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. So you wanted to make sure to get your money's worth by packing your trip with activities from dawn to dusk. But these days, everyone can travel. I'm seeing a lot of clients around my age preferring to take the time to explore areas in detail, stopping by local shops, and really wanting to connect with local people. It's not so much about getting 1,000 things into one day, but rather relishing a few hidden gems or key experiences that you can't find anywhere else.

What trends do you see ahead for inbound tourism?

I think a big trend coming up will be using mid-sized cities like Yamagata City or Morioka in Iwate Prefecture as bases, and staying for a longer period. Staying in one centralized location and doing day trips to the surrounding towns and attractions is a great way to see some less visited areas. But it also builds a relationship with the area where you are staying. Rather than every night being a blur, you get a better sense of the locale and can even make friends in the area.

Future Opportunities

What’s on the bucket list for places where you haven’t yet been?

I am just two prefectures short of visiting all 47 in Japan, so Shimane and Toyama are on my list for the near future. The big one for me, however, is Kiribati, a small island nation in the Pacific. What stands out to me about Kiribati is that there is so little information about it readily available, and so much about its culture and history is clouded by colonial/Western narratives. I'd like to learn more about the culture and the country from the perspective of the people and really get a better understanding past the surface level. 

Where do you see yourself in 10 years’ time?

I think that I'll always end up back in Japan in the long term as it has always been my home, and I really do love living here, especially up in Yamagata. I would like to continue finding ways, either through writing, tourism, or just opening avenues for communication, to help connect rural areas of Japan with the rest of the world. I see travel as a branch of education, and so investing my time and resources in showing that Japan is so much more than Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka is something I'm really committed to, and what makes me feel like I'm contributing to the world.

Check out other installments of Global to Local by Louise George Kittaka.

Louise George Kittaka is a bilingual writer and content creator from New Zealand. She writes for numerous media platforms and also lectures at Shirayuri Women’s University in Tokyo.