A few feet away, the Asahi brewery hands out free samples of its wares, which are readily snapped up by thirsty Westerners who will later feast on thinly sliced, melt-in-the-mouth Wagyu beef.

The elaborate hospitality was on display at the World Travel and Tourism Council conference in Tokyo last week, which attracted big-name speakers including Willie Walsh, boss of International Airlines Group (IAG) and Chris Nassetta, chief executive of Hilton Worldwide.

This is part of the country’s push to rebuild its economy through sectors outside of its traditional strengths following the great tsunami and earthquake that struck the east coast last year.

Even by the most generous measure, travel and tourism today provides no more than seven percent of the country’s GDP. Ken Okuda, Japan’s vice-minister for land, infrastructure, transport and tourism, says that the government wants to double the number of visitors to the country to 18 million within four years.

“Japan continues to be a safe and secure destination, just like it was before the earthquake,” he says. “But there is greater room for growth. This [tourism] represents a star of hope.”

Japan is looking to diversify an economy that is best known as an industrial powerhouse, but for decades has been badly drained by an ageing population and declining birth rate. Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive of the advertising group WWP, is typically blunt: “Japan is the third largest economy in the world, but that economic engine hasn’t really functioned for 20-odd years.”

The industrial strength was the result of reconstruction in the aftermath of the Second World War; now the earthquake will be used to rebuild the country as a tourism hub.

Prime minister Yoshihiko Noda, right, told the conference that “tourism is the frontier for Japan … vitalising the economy”, but the difficulties of achieving such growth can be found in less salubrious parts of Tokyo.

In the working-class Asakusa district, there are still signs of the damage caused by the earthquake. In the apartment block where Chris, a Bromley-raised English language adviser to some of the biggest banks, lives, the roof of one neighbouring building rests against the wall of another. Before March last year, there was a two-to-three-foot gap between them.

On the east bank of the Sumida river, that runs through the district, lie the buildings of the Asahi headquarters, renowned for a Philippe Starck-designed “flame of gold” that is more accurately described as the “golden turd” by locals. So low-lying is this area that it would most likely be wiped out by floods should a powerful earthquake hit the city – and academics at Tokyo University believe there is a 70 percent chance of that happening within four years.

“From what I heard, immediately after the tsunami real-estate prices close to the ocean started falling,” says Chris. “Everyone in Tokyo felt that earthquake, and everyone here knows that we could be hit. But the Japanese people have selective memory loss; they try to forget the bad things that happen. House prices recovered and they might have been worried in the wake of the tsunami, but not now.”

Jeff, a Canadian who is editor-in-chief of a popular ex-pat magazine, nurses a £6.85 (about R80) bottle of beer in Roppongi, an area that is at once seedy and corporate, with adult entertainment themed bars, and towers that house huge corporations such as Google and Barclays Capital.

Jeff points out that the disaster has fundamentally altered the plans of even relatively simple businesses. His magazine used to run weekly, but ink shortages, after factories were hit by the disasters, forced it to print fortnightly. Now it focuses increasingly on its online presence.

Despite the prospect of more earthquakes and certain supply problems, there are signs that the global tourism industry is looking to expand into Japan. IAG’s Walsh, for example, says he is “deeply impressed” by the country’s post-tsunami recovery and confirms his company will take a small stake – probably less than 10 percent – in flag carrier Japan Airlines when it lists on the Tokyo stock exchange later this year.

Jesper Koll, the director of equity research at JP Morgan in Japan, adds: “There is no easy growth. But there are powerful resources that are in place. The events of 3/11 ripped corporate Japan out of its complacency – corporates being bought and sold are up six-fold since last year.”

On Sunday, Japan Airlines launched nonstop service from Boston Logan International Airport to Tokyo’s Narita Airport using the new Boeing 787.

Officials held a ceremony at Logan on Sunday to mark the arrival of the first flight.

Japanese fish traders consider that Norway should take the opportunity and process some of the mackerel and export it to Japan.

Japanese imports of processed mackerel reached a peak of around 10,000 tonnes in 2006. After a downward trend, in 2010 it increased again to over 10,000 tonnes. Last year imports reached 11,000 tonnes, of which 7,300 tonnes were imported from China, 2,990 tonnes came from Thailand and 820 tonnes were from Vietnam, representing an increase of 32 per cent for China, 53 per cent for Thailand and 25 per cent for Vietnam.

Norway exported 59,946 tonnes of mackerel to China, 2,409 tonnes to Thailand and 1,950 tonnes to Vietnam. The weight of Japan’s imports of processed mackerel from Thailand shows that they consist of much more than just Norwegian mackerel.

In China, labour costs in fish processing plants increased by 20 per cent or 30 per cent over the past three years. In Thailand, labour costs increased by 5 per cent last year. However, from 1 April this year the Government set the new minimum wage, which increased labour costs by approximately 40 per cent. To reduce costs, companies must streamline, reduce staff or take other measures.

Seafood consumption in Japan has been declining steadily for many years. A sharp rise in prices will reduce seafood consumption further.

The four-day Global Summit, organised by the World Travel & Tourism Council, hosted delegates in the city of Sendai, an area that was devastated by last year’s quake-tsunami disaster, which hammered Japan’s tourism industry.

Choosing Sendai was “fitting… to show solidarity on behalf of the entire travel and tourism industry with both the country and the region affected,” the Council said in a statement.

The second half of the summit, which ends Thursday, will be held in Tokyo. This is the event’s 12th edition after Las Vegas hosted it last year.

“The last 12 months have been exceptionally turbulent,” the Council said, citing the European debt crisis, global political and economic instability and “wildly fluctuating” currency and commodity prices.

The summit, with nearly 1,000 delegates, was aiming to “tackle some of the most pressing issues facing travel and tourism and to set the agenda for the future health of the industry,” it said.

The travel and tourism industry was worth about $6.3 trillion last year, accounting for 255 million jobs globally, the Council said.

Viet Nam has significant advantages to attract Japanese tourists including stable political security, 15 days visa to be exempt from Japanese guests travelling to Viet Nam, near distance between Viet Nam and Japan (only 5 hour direct flight), many cultural similarities between two countries, good diplomatic relationship and various tourism resources of Viet Nam which meet the Japanese people’s tastes.

However, deputy director of the Viet Travel Channel Company Ho Kim Dung said that it was not easy to be access to Japanese tourist market as Japanese arrivals are high demanding while Viet Nam’s tourism service quality has remained restricted.

The Viet Nam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT) also admitted that there remained difficulties to attract Japanese tourists including limited expense for promoting tourism, no tourism promotion office in Japan, lack of marketing strategies for this market and restricted tourism products quality.

Therefore, the goal of attracting 1 million Japanese tourists by 2015 is deemed as ambitious but given available air links, efforts of travel firms in both countries and the appeal of Viet Nam as a favourite destination of Japanese tourists, industry insiders expected that the target would be achievable.

Nguyen Minh Man, director of the Communications Division of Vietravel, which receives roughly 1,000-1,500 Japanese arrivals monthly on average, said that the target would be met if all domestic tourist companies considered the attraction of Japanese visitors a key task from now to 2015 and focused on it to create a comprehensive promotion campaign to attract the visitors.

VNAT has so far drawn up a scheme with various specific activities intended to attract more Japanese visitors, including the inauguration of a representative office in Japan late this year. When the office is in place, marketing and advertising projects on television and in newspapers and direct interactions with customers will be conducted in a more regular basis.

Besides creating website in Japanese language to promote Viet Nam tourism on the base of studying taste characteristics of Japanese market, VNAT will also establish the group of Viet Nam-Japan tourism development and step up training the Japanese tour guides as well as the human resources to improve customer service quality.

An expansion of direct flights between the two countries is also considered a measure to attract more Japanese tourists to Viet Nam.

The chef, Robert Rubba, who worked at Chizakaya in Chicago and Todd English’s CrossBar in New York, will offer dinner only, with two- and three-course seasonal menus ($75 and $95, with dessert), and a nine-course tasting menu ($150). He plans to serve fluke tartare with umeboshi plums and cilantro; morels and maitake mushrooms with yuba and stinging-nettle pistou; cod with wakame potato and spring onions; and scallops with fava beans, radishes, yuzu and hijiki. There will also be a sushi bar. Every evening Mihoko will host a group at a kind of chef’s table. “This is an act of love,” she said of the restaurant, declining to reveal its cost. (“She hasn’t run out of money yet,” her publicist said.) The name refers to the purported weight of a human soul as determined in a dubious experiment about a century ago by a doctor in Massachusetts.

First, JTB Tokyo installed the wind power generator, then the travel company put in the EV charging facilities and made them operational.

Then from November 2011 to the end of March, the company conducted verification tests of electric vehicles powered by wind.

JTB Tokyo used rental EVs running exclusively on the wind-generated power to carry out EV test driving and monitoring tours intended for a questionnaire survey.

Based on the survey results, JTB has verified that its community planning on Hachijyo Island, in which wide EV use is combined with local tourism, is right on track.

Now, the company is scheduled to plan and develop new environment-oriented sightseeing tours for Hachijyo Island.

Hachijyo Town and the Hachijo Island Industry Promotion Association, a local nonprofit organization, are advancing the idea of using EVs in their “Scheme for Renewable Energy-Based Clean Hachijyo Island.”

The new wind turbine, which generates power for the electric cars, is all part of the system that is certain to work as Hachijo registers strong wind on more than 150 days per year.

For the scheme, Hachijo is introducing renewable energy to the island, including geothermal and wind power generation, to supply about one-third of the island’s electricity demand.

The political will to expand this infrastructure as well as the electric vehicle fleet was confirmed by the mayor of Hachijo town during celebrations in November.

Starting with the Hachijyo project, JTB is planning to promote the use of renewable energy combined with tourism business to support the building of environmentally friendly and tourism-centered towns.

The delivery to JAL brings the total number of Dreamliners delivered to seven. The airplanes also are the first 787s to be powered by General Electric engines rather than Rolls Royce.

The airline, which has 45 Dreamliners on order, postponed Dreamliner service on several routes while it waited out another delay this year resulting from a manufacturing glitch.

“We were sorry there was a slight delay, but relieved the aircraft is finally ready,” said JAL President Yoshiharu Ueki at a ceremony marking the occasion. “And the delay’s impact was that the carrier’s service from Japan to Moscow, to Delhi, to Beijing was delayed one month.”

JAL had expected to receive its first Dreamliner by the end of February.

The Dreamliner is the world’s first commercial airplane with an airframe made largely of carbon composites, making it lighter than a traditional aluminium airframe. The 787 boasts unprecedented fuel-efficiency and has won more than 870 orders.

The 787 is about three years behind its original schedule because of problems with Boeing’s complex global supply chain.

“We know we were a little late, and we apologize for that,” Jim Albaugh, chief executive of Boeing’s commercial airplanes division, said at the ceremony. “We hope you’ll forgive us.”

Boeing, the world’s second-largest commercial plane-maker after EADS unit Airbus, made first delivery of a Dreamliner last year to All Nippon Airways and is ramping up the production rate to 10 per month, a target many experts believe to be unattainable.

In early February, Boeing reported signs of “delamination” on the rear fuselage of some 787s. Delamination occurs when stress causes layered composite materials to separate.

Boeing has said it will take 10 to 14 days per plane to repair the glitch. The problem has caused some experts again to question the production rate target. Boeing has stood by its goal, saying the new issue may affect deliveries in the first part of 2012, but not in the longer term.

The company recently increased the 787 production rate to 3.5 per month from 2.5. Boeing is boosting production rates on all of its commercial airplane programs to meet increased demand.

The number of visitors to New Zealand from Japan has plummeted in recent times, down from 165,000 in the market’s heyday to just 66,000 last year.

However, Tourism New Zealand and the national carrier say the picture for the rest of 2012 is looking rosier.

It’s hoped the new codeshare arrangement between Air New Zealand and ANA, officially launched last week, will help. It will open up access to domestic destinations and beyond for tourists from both countries, making bookings and transfers easier. Air New Zealand has also moved into the same terminal as ANA at Tokyo’s Narita Airport, the last of the Star Alliance loyalty programme members to do so.

Air New Zealand deputy CEO Norm Thompson said it would take some work to kickstart the market, but it was showing a lot of promise, particularly from a new demographic of younger travellers.

“What’s been really good for us has been [ANA's] enthusiasm – they’re giving us opportunities to do joint marketing,” he said.

“We’ve proven to ourselves that the market does move when you put some deals out there.”

Air New Zealand was launching other initiatives to attract the Japanese visitor this year, such as flights to Mt Cook – a top destination for Japanese people – and flights from Rotorua to Queenstown.

Tourism New Zealand’s regional manager for Japan, Nick Mudge, said the market had been recovering prior to February 2011. In January of that year visitor numbers had been up 11 per cent, its first growth in nearly a decade.

Then the Christchurch and east Japan earthquakes happened, causing a rush of cancellations and a subsequent reduction in airline seat capacity.

But the airlines had put on 66 per cent more capacity for this coming season. Tourism New Zealand was getting interest from other airlines including Korean Air and Jetstar, and ran its first joint marketing campaign with Jetstar in February, he said.

In addition, the quality of Japanese visitors to New Zealand was still high, Mudge said. “They like to shop, they like to do things.”

The tourism agency was continuing to target the traditional older tour group Japanese tourist, but a new market of 20 to 35-year-olds had opened up.

This was typefied by the “Yama Girl” craze – groups of young women who dress up in colourful outdoor wear to go hiking. “The best way to describe it is a mixture of fashion, hiking and friendship. The Japanese are a lot more into the aesthetic of the whole experience,” Mudge said.