Ayer’s Rock Cafe is located in a distant corner of Machida, an outer suburb of Tokyo. Why the cafe located in such a distant tract of Tokyo derives its name from the now non-PC moniker of Uluru is something of a mystery, but it has been operating since 2000 and comes highly recommended by members of a nearby horse-riding club and large private school, so it must be getting something right. For Aussies, there’s nothing on the menu that really makes it worthwhile making the trek out to the cafe for a need to combat homesickness. The cafe does serve…
Australia beef is the most visibly successful Australian export to Japan, leaving considerable distance to its closest rivals, which these days are probably Tim Tams, Miranda Kerr and hordes of drunken ocker snow bunnies in country towns like Niseko and Hakuba. To be honest, Oz doesn’t really enter the consciousness of most Japanese, except for Aussie Beef, which is probably the first thing that comes to mind for many Nihonjin when asked about Oz. And this year, Meat & Livestock Australia Ltd (MLA) is going all-out to try and convert Japanese consumers to worshiping the barbie in much the same…
In this day and age, it would be unthinkable to use taxpayers’ hard-earned money to promote a campaign promising a 1 million yen order-made trip to Australia for a young bloke sending in photos of a sexy member of the opposite sex. But, when the shoe’s on the other foot, it seems to be all right. At least, it was until just a few years ago. For a while in the late Noughties to early 2010s, Tourism Australia worked desperately hard to arrest a drastic and dramatic decline in Japanese tourist numbers. Part of those efforts involved a campaign that…