Community-Based English Learning and Travel Review Sites

     To attract foreign visitors into every corner in Japan, Japanese local people, in many cases, should post the first reviews on each corner in Japan in English on travel review sites.

     A member of my family was a Bakumatsu freak and lured me into driving to Suo-oshima Island, where the Edo Shogunate armies tried to carry out a landing operation against the Choshu domain armies.  The operation suffered crushing defeat, and the defeat led the shogunate into its later collapse.  We visited a couple of Bakumatsu-related spots, and I wrote some reviews of our visits in English and posted them on TripAdvisor.

     Two travelers got interested in my reviews; one from Hawaii, and the other from California.  They asked me the same question; the bus service on the island.  As I myself was just a visitor, I asked the Suo-oshima Tourism Association to join the travel review site and to answer the questions.  And they did.

     So many people, so many minds.  I hadn’t expected history-fan travelers would get interested in visiting the remote islet.  Keeping a journal in English was just a part of my English learning.