Jay Yoo

The Japan Tourism Agency is offering round trip tickets to “10,000 foreigners with high potential to communicate Japan’s attractions.”  I think they mean bloggers and the like.  

I guess all you have to do is become a fan on Facebook and you have to be a foreigner with no intentions of becoming an illegal alien.  

UPDATE: Well, after a little more research it looks like it has been cancelled.  It is very sad to hear about people’s continued hardship after last year’s Tsunami, but I do think “Fly to Japan” was a good idea stimulate tourism.  Perhaps they could have done a pilot project with 1,000 of the most prominent bloggers from fashion, food, technology and design…  

We realise that this announcement is going to disappoint thousands of people around the world, but we hope people will understand how insensitive it would appear for the Japanese Government to give people free flights to Japan when the cities, towns and villages devastated by the tsunami are still in desperate need of funding for reconstruction. We also would not want people thinking that the generous donations given from around the world to aide those affected by the disaster was being spent on giving people free flights.