2010-8-4
Companies that say they hardly consider investing anywhere outside Tokyo have come to make up the majority.
I say this especially to those who work in the real estate industry.
Kansai is not the small economic region you think it is.
Far from being dead, Kansai is extraordinary. On the cultural side, you can understand that the instant you set foot in Kyoto:
“This is the world’s greatest wonderland.”
Only Rome and Paris can compare with Kyoto, and I think Rome alone truly matches it…
Of course, Kamakura cannot be compared with Kyoto.

Now, the other day I visited, on an errand, the office building that Hankyu has been constructing while keeping Hankyu Department Store open. It was largely complete, and a large-scale viewing was under way. I was astonished…
“This is the finest building yet,” I thought.

I have visited the Shin-Marunouchi Building, Mori Building, Izumi Tower, and Midtown on business, but I thought this Hankyu building was better than any of them.
I was struck by Hankyu’s underlying strength and its capacity as a company.
“This is a truly distinguished company,” I thought.
The first surprise is that, the moment you step inside, the bustle in front of the department store gives way to silence.
The size and spaciousness of the elevators are unprecedented…
Each is almost as large as a room in a modest business hotel.
The corridor on the floor where I got off for my errand was exceptionally wide (and, of course, the ceiling was high). As I have already written, a company like Orix, the very company responsible for creating the present North Yard uproar, would consider that space a waste and build another room in the corridor. That is how wide it was.

Let me offer my readers a brief taste of travel in Osaka through the following passage…
I wrote this some time ago for a website frequented by career women who love to travel (including many whose number of overseas trips is hard to believe)… Afterward, this room could no longer be booked through Ikyu.com… Hotel Hankyu International probably still does not know why it suddenly became so popular.

I had long wanted to stay in a particular room at Hotel Hankyu International.
The other appealing hotel in the Kyoto–Osaka–Kobe area where I have never stayed is the Kyoto Hotel Okura.
I have stayed at all the other hotels through one connection or another, or for some particular purpose.
Hankyu was bound to be the best (or so I guessed).

The view from the bathroom, where I seemed to float above the nightscape, and from the 67-square-meter room
was something I could fairly call the best in the world.
There was the essence of Osaka, which around 1927 was also the world’s greatest metropolis.

The view of the Chao Phraya River from The Oriental and Shangri-La hotels in Bangkok creates a similar feeling of a city built around water, but the richness and beauty are different.
Thailand is still poor.

What of the beauty of Rome, Florence, and Paris?
Their beauty is splendid and harmonious, but
there is a beauty in Osaka born of the accumulated activity of its people, spread out before your eyes from Nara to Minoh, Kobe, and the Yodo River…
With a population of 8.7 million, equal to the whole of Sweden in GDP and population, and consistently among the world’s top twenty in GDP, Osaka Prefecture could be seen in its entirety. Its morning view, daytime panorama, and nightscape were the best in the world.