Now, some may say I'm a stick in the mud, but I've never considered myself the kind of man who gets excited at the thought of going fruit picking. Call me old fashioned, but that's just the way I was brought up. However, it's always good to try something, at least once in life, perhaps... And so it was that I found myself on a bus with a group of people, heading out of Tokyo on our way to rural Yamanashi Prefecture. After a short stop at a service station, we arrived at Miharashien and found ourselves surrounded by rolling fields with crooked trees growing in orderly lines.

From taking in a sumo match to enjoying winter sports, Japan offers a diverse range of sports experiences, events, and activities that, combined with sightseeing in destinations around Japan, form sports tourism. To gauge foreign tourists' interest in Japan's sports tourism, participants are now being sought for the monitor tours listed below.

We visited Washi no Sato in Gokayama, Toyama Prefecture recently to give traditional paper-making a shot.