Greetings from Tokai-mura
 
Hello. My name is Tatsuya Murakami, the Mayor of Tokaimura where J-PARC construction is going on for the 2008 start of the J-PARC operation. All of us are looking forward to meeting scientists from all over the world. So, this is a welcome message
from us, the Tokai-mura residents.

Tokai-mura is the place where the first nuclear power research organization (present JAEA : Japan Atomic Energy Agency) was founded in Japan, so that some of you may know a bit about us.

Tokai-mura is located 110km north (about an hour ride/drive) of Tokyo, or 70km north east (about an hour drive) of Tsukuba. It is the north end of Kanto plain, from which we can see mountains on the north side, Pacific Ocean on the east side where international seaport, Hitachi-Naka is located. Tokia-mura is a small village (37 km2 area) and quite flat (max. 10m from sea level). We have 50 years of history as the town for nuclear power research. We are only 16 km away from Mito, the capital of Ibaraki Prefecture, and are right next to the industrial city, Hitachi, so that
population increase is quite steady. Present population of Tokai-mura is 36,000.

In the past, we had many nuclear-research-related visitors from overseas. However they stayed inside of their research facility and did not have much interaction with us. After we learnt about J-PARC, we decided that we should become an international village keeping positive productive interactions with the researchers from all over the world. We organized a committee to establish a plan to achieve this. The committee consisted of women with experience of living outside of Japan. We asked Dr. Arai and Dr. Ohska of KEK to be the advisers for the committee. We plan to become an international city of science, research and culture, like Tsukuba where non-Japanese researchers and their family members feel easy and relaxed. A volunteer organization, Tokai-mura International Association group has been actively working to support non-Japanese visitors on daily life matters. It has been hosting events to promote establishing good relationships between village residents and non-Japanese visitors. Ibaraki Prefecture Government recognizes Tsukuba and Tokai as the “Special Research District” where special legal considerations are applied for non-Japanese people. Japan being an island country where everything has been done with a single language for thousands of years, Japanese hardly had a chance to learn how to live and work together with people from outside of Japan. However this does not mean we are uninterested in outside of Japan. Tokai-mura is an international research town and we are eager to learn from and associate with people from outside. We welcome your participation to make this village richer in terms of culture. We are looking forward to meeting you here.