Hello from Hyogo!

Konnichi wa and welcome to Hyogo Friendship Network, a blog for anyone interested in Hyogo Prefecture, Japan! Whether you've visited Hyogo Prefecture, lived or worked here or simply want to know more about what this fascinating prefecture has to offer, this blog is the place for you. 

In this blog, which will be mainly written in English, we’ll strive to reach as many people as we can, but at the same time we’ll have a particular emphasis on our network of Hyogo Goodwill Envoys.  

This blog will be operated by Hyogo Prefecture's six Coordinators for International Relations (CIR) who will take it in turns to bring you info on Hyogo's lively festivals, fascinating destinations and oishii cuisine, as well as tell you a little bit about our work, day-to-day lives in addition various other topics, depending on what we want to share with you (we’re planning to write a few pieces on Kansai-ben!).

To give you a glimpse of what you will find on this blog in the upcoming months, we’ll post a few articles on our trip to the Tohoku region and our French CIR Jérémy, who will have completed the maximum five years as a CIR next month, will give us some thoughts about his time spent in Hyogo, now his adopted hometown (daini no furusato) !

Hyogo Friendship Network is actually an extension of another blog that was started 2 years ago. It’s regularly updated and works pretty well but it’s almost entirely in Japanese and we find it quite inconvenient for content written in English. It really became necessary for us to have a place where we could express ourselves and share information in a more-than-just-Japanese-language environment.

Last but not least, we’ve also created a Facebook group (Hyogo Friendship Network on FB), so keeping in touch and sharing your pictures and anecdotes from your time in Hyogo will be even easier! 

We'd love to hear your comments and suggestions, so please feel free to contact us at [hyogo.friendshipnet at gmail.com] or leave us a comment directly on the blog or on our FB page. 

Yoroshiku onegaishimasu!  

Ben (UK)

Luciana (Brazil)

Liz (US)

Bokyung (Korea)

Lu (China)

Jérémy (France)