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Leisure boat industry seeking to attract young people

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Is this renting the boat or going on a boat trip? When I read jetski I think rental of the boat which would require a boat license, which is super hard to get in Japan.

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You need a licence and of course it's unnecessarily complicated and expensive for a whole raft of leisure activities, boating yes you need some knowledge for Safty. But if it's anything like the horse riding licence, passing it requires sucking any notion of fun out of it.

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Anything to do with boating in Japan is ridiculously and prohibitively expensive. The rental on a birth is absurd. Trailer boats are not popular due to the expense of parking and storing them. Getting a leisure boat licence is also absurdly expensive and ridiculously complicated.

I bought a fishing kayak a couple of years ago, but I can only use it in secluded waterways due to those idiots on jet skis and the like who hoon along waterways at ridiculous speeds.

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I have a Japanese 'boat's operator licence', as it's called. It's actually not that hard or expensive to get. In Tokyo you can write the paper test in English and the examiners speak English. That said, you have to know your stuff to pass. It's not like some English speaking countries where you just pay a fee or take an online safety quiz about wearing a lifejacket and get a licence in the mail. If you're just renting a boat with Sea style, the class 2 is all you're going to need.

As far as costs go, yes it's pretty expensive, but where has boating ever been cheap?

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Just make a TV drama about a boating; featuring an 'old salty captain', a beautiful young female navigator, a couple of 'genki' boat boys; and a nasty rival business man. Throw in some drama and romance; like rescuing the crew of a sinking US Navy ship, freeing a dolphin, and saving a rich old couple on a runaway boat, and you have it made. For added value, a cute furry boat mascot, preview in Roppongi Hills, and some boat shaped cookies!

You'll get all the staff you need after that!

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I also have a Japanese boat license ... kogata sempaku 1kyu, which gives me the right to own and pilot anything up to 20 tons in Japan.

Like M3M3M3 implied, it is easier than getting a car driving license, and though the driving and paper tests are, as typical of testing in Japan — by the manual — you do have to know your stuff, and that can only really be learned by spending some time on the sea, a bit of a Catch-22 when getting your first license.

I got mine about 30 years ago, and the only other gaijin in the class were Wolfgang, a freelance translator from Germany, and Simon ... dad of former (and occasionally current) TV idol, Becky.

I have bought and gone through 7 of those 'holes in the water through which you pour money' thingies — boats. My latest being a Yanmar EX-30 Gyosen style boat (Japanese fishing style with a minimal cabin and a spanker sail on the back to keep it facing the wind with the engine idling over a fishing spot) which I keep at Arasaki Marina — about halfway between Kamakura and Misaki on Sagami Bay.

Like Dillislusioned, said, the price of pleasure boating in Japan is prohibitively expensive. Even commercial fishermen in Tohoku have been known to deliberately sink their boats in order to collect enough insurance money to send their kid to college. Compared to other similarly sized countries such as Sweden or New Zealand, you will find a significantly disproportionally smaller percentage of boat owners here. You don't see many Japanese houses with a boat on a trailer in their garage. The annual boat shows have dropped to about at most a fifth of their size during the glory days of the bubble era.

What the article doesn't say is that one reason the rentals are being pushed is because there are so few buyers, and so few places to keep them. The few marinas here are so expensive because antiquated maritime law give disproportionate land and sea rights to local fishermen's co-ops (gyokyo).

IF those those co-ops were self-sustainable stewards of natural resources, I could see the logic. However, they are not. Local fisheries resources are not sustainable enough to avoid heavy subsidizing from our tax yen — or the rapid depletion of locally caught fish.

Over the past 20 years, there there has become a HUGE difference in the number and size of billfish (marlin) caught (or in the case of commercial fishermen, harpooned) around the Izu Islands and Boso and Izu peninsulas because 'catch and release' is a relatively new idea here.

Like Disilusioned, I have also bought a fishing kayak, an inflatable 'Sea Eagle', which I find is far cheaper and more convenient to run than my 30 footer ... and to tell the truth, a hell of a lot more fun. For those in the Tokyo area, a high-end inflatable (SUP air pressure) or hard shell kayak can be launched and fished from a number of areas around the Boso, Miura, and Izu peninsulas ... not to mention the Fuji 5 Lakes area.

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism also launched its C to Sea Project in 2017 to back industry efforts to familiarize children and young people with marine activities. By disseminating online information, the ministry aims to invigorate the boating market.

Ha. Appears to be a typical top-down, haphazard bureaucratic bandaid for a problem far more complex and engrained at a deeper cultural and legal level. I have little doubt the 'C to Sea Project' is the maritime, monetized version of a snipe hunt. And just as bad, the brains behind that scheme are funded by our tax-yen in action.

I wonder if eating fresh caught sashimi on the boat will be subject to an 8% tax increase, or 10?

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ps ... You will not see private boat owners such as myself invited to participate in the 'C to Sea Project' because this is a tax-funded scheme on the behalf of corporate interests.

Hmmm ... now that's a new one ... not.

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