Apex Property, a Hong Kong-affiliated real estate development company (5-1-4 Toranomon, Minato-ku, Tokyo, Managing Director Sylvia Tang), is planning to develop a luxury chalet area referred to as “Hanacreek” in Kutchan Town. The company will begin to develop 68 lots for residential and other use in 2021 and start construction in 2023. The contractor will be decided in the future.

Niseko Aviation (Yamada 190-6, Kutchan,), a company engaged in aircraft rental, is planning to build an airfield tentatively named Kutchan Sky Station on farmland in Kutchan Town. The plan includes the development of an 800-m runway and a terminal building.

More than two and a half years have passed since the enforcement of the Technical Intern Training Act in November 2017, which sets the training period for foreign technical intern trainees to a maximum of five years, and many trainees who have reached their fifth year are taking a test equivalent to the second grade of the technical skills test before finishing their training. Reinforcing bar construction trainees in Hokkaido have also taken the technical skills test (2nd grade) in various places. By early August, nine trainees had taken the test and five Vietnamese had passed the test. For the trainees, the academic test, which requires Japanese reading comprehension, were a big barrier, but with the support of their host companies, they were able to overcome it successfully.

The Lake Mashu Environmental Conservation Liaison Council, which consists of five towns neighboring Lake Mashu, the Government of Japan, the Hokkaido Government, and research institutes, conducted a monitoring survey of the Lake Mashu’s water on August 25 and 26. This crowdfunded initiative that reaches across administrative boundaries was intended to protect the lake’s high transparency and mysteriousness. I accompanied the survey team. (Reporter: Ikumi Miura, Kushiro Branch Office)

The Sapporo Station Exchange Center, North 5 West 1 and West 2 District Urban Redevelopment Preparatory Association (Chairman: Toru Yoshioka, Vice Mayor of Sapporo) is planning a redevelopment building on a scale of approximately 417,000 m² in the North 5 West 1 and West 2 blocks in front of JR Sapporo Station. There are two plans: plan A, which has a building with a maximum height of approximately 255 m, and plan B, which consists of two buildings of approximately 200 m and 150 m in height. Both of them would be the tallest buildings in Hokkaido, creating a new symbolic space at the gateway to Sapporo.