Nagano

At 24 years old, Nozomi Momoi seemed poised to start a new chapter in life, but that was all about to go disturbingly wrong.

On October 12, 2002, while visiting friends in Nagano Prefecture, Nozomi's life met a tragic end.

Shortly before 9 p.m. that night, a passerby in the city of Shiojiri spotted a car on fire by a remote riverbank along the Narai River and called emergency services.

Firefighters arrived and doused the flames, only to uncover a horrifying scene.

With no suspects identified, Hiroki's parents also pursued a civil route to seek some form of justice.

They sued Hiroki's life insurance company, which had refused to pay out benefits because of the authority's original ruling on the case.

This lawsuit led to a dramatic turn, and in early 2007, the Nagano District Court issued a landmark ruling.

It found that based on the evidence, Nozomi and Hiroki's deaths were likely caused by a third party and ordered the insurer to pay the benefits.

I think it's our fourth time at this event.

And some good news this time is that you only have to put up with me for about 10 minutes, and then I'm going to pass over to Ben, who's the manager of our Nagano office.

And last time, Ben had the breakout room, and I could see everybody was... really into his topic, you know, with the Nagano ski investment.

So I thought I'd give him the main room this time.

But before then, I'm just going to share a few things like market trends, things like that.

Inside the operating arm, we currently manage 54 properties, 54 homes, and the bulk of these are STRs, and the bulk of those are in Kyoto.

We also have a monthly portfolio, and I'll touch on that a little bit later, but that's growing nicely.

Also some homes in Osaka and Nagano, where Ben is in charge.

The typhoons, it stops less earthquake-prone perhaps, no risk of tsunami that far inland.

But as the temperatures have risen, the vineyards have moved up the side of the slopes to higher altitude and also to higher altitudes in Nagano, which is just next door, northwest-ish a little bit.

Yamanashi is roughly about 450 to 650 metres above altitude.

It goes from 250 to, I think... nearly a kilometre in certain bits, but I'd say Nagano is probably about 300 higher than that across the board, 750 average.

You can go to over 1,000.

Above sea

And now it's one of the best areas in Japan to grow certain grapes.

So they're the three hotspots.

Kichizo Ita was a 42-year-old businessman when he met Sada in 1936, and he himself had worked up from an apprenticeship to owning his own restaurant.

He opened Yoshidaya in Kiyo's Nagano neighborhood in 1920, which specialized in eel dishes.

Ishida had a reputation of being a ladies' man, even though the restaurant was primarily managed by his wife.

Obviously, Ishida being married wouldn't stop Sada.

So I think they are the first Asians to be able to really travel and vacation in Europe and try to understand our lifestyle in Europe.

And, you know, Japanese are also a little bit like us in France or Europeans or Italians, you know, we are very serious about the food we do, the craftsmanship, you know, very detailed, you know, ask Italians about cars, ask French about food, you know, and they understand this mindset of... idea of craftsman shifts for us in the wine terroir so I think it starts from there and today yes Japan is still one of the best biggest Asian markets for wines for wines so that's it came also from there and then after that I guess for Japan Some Japanese people travel, walk in some vineyards in France and then came back and said, look, the Yamanashi, Nagano, Niseko, some regions, the weather is quite similar with France.

So maybe we can try to plant a few grape varieties and we'd see how it works.

And yeah, some of them, some companies invest in that.

It projects it will close between 28 to 38 of its current 88 prefectural high schools by the 2040 school year.

It is followed by Niigata Prefecture, which plans to close 22 of its 86 schools, and Nagano Prefecture that plans to close 17 of its 81 schools.

Along with notable figures for regional prefectures, Tokyo and its neighboring prefectures are also planning to reduce the number of schools to some extent.

Saitama Prefecture plans to shutter between 15 to 19 of its 131 high schools.

Mm.

Um, if I may, uh, mention the case of a bear called Mao, a bear which Professor Shigeyuki Izumiyama in, uh, Nagano released after he tranquilized it.

Um, he said that it was harmless.

Uh, he placed a collar to track it for a few years, and his monitoring confirmed that Mao was moving between the deep forest and human habitat looking for cherries.

And it, so it obviously varies with the, the nut forecast from province or from prefecture to prefecture.

Um, I, I'm also curious, h-how do experts decide which bears should be safe and which, you know, cannot be saved and need to be put down?

Yes, that's also a question I posed to Professor Shigeyuki Izumiyama, uh, who is a wildlife expert with Shinshu University in Nagano.

He actually returned 3,400 bears to the wilderness, the forest, during the past 30 years.

I found I needed five cats to cover one octave.

We are sitting in an oblong dining room table in the sun-drenched cedar den of a ski chalet in central Nagano Prefecture, along with six cats spanning a spectrum of liveliness that runs from contemptuously drowsy to asleep.

Manaho, Hideo's wife and business partner, holds one in her lap, face out and totally blasé as it regards us.

Hideo is trained as a musician and sound engineer and looks the part with variable tint eyeglass lenses, the panels now shaded graphite from the ambient snow glare.