Kyoto says it paid ¥1 mil to comedians for unmarked promotional tweets

Kitamura also said 1 million yen for the two men to tweet a few lines twice each seems "extremely expensive" and "out of touch with the general public."

Probably because you are jealous that you dont have the same number of followers that they do!

I get the feeling that this woman is out of touch with today's society and is making comments based upon a "showa" era way of thinking!

They earned their fee according to the contract.

Kyoto city paying to have even more tourists visit?

What a paradox!

Payola has always happened and will not go away, especially not now when people want newspapers and other services (Youtube, Facebook, Google, Insta etc) for "free". Every travel article written now should be assumed to be paid for, for example. If it's just commercial and not political, e.g., Yoshimoto taking money to promote Abe's government in routines on TV, I don't have any problem with messages not being marked.

The question or problem I do have is this is taxpayer money and I wonder if it is cost effective for Kyoto. Did they do any cost/benefit analysis? Did they check for a spike in access to their hometown tax web page, for example? Does Kyoto City know how much it costs to buy fake Twitter followers etc.? Wouldn't one million yen pay for some savvy young'un to make loads of great content for Kyoto's social media accounts?

1 million yen for a couple of tweets? They could've used the money for other things. Kyoto DOESN'T need more promotion.

what a waste of money...

1 million yen for a couple of tweets?

They were just talking about this on the radio this morning. Selena Gomez gets half a million dollars for a single product Tweet. 1 million yen is pocket change. Twitter promotions are huge business.

so kyoto only wants the "right kind" of tourists (e.g. young japanese), but god forbid that "bad" tourists (foreign) will soon be punished for just taking photos in certain parts of the city.  omotenashi at its best! :)

Certainly a joke, agency gets 4.1 million, two "comedians" share 1 million yen....

A strange non-story. If you removed all the sponcon from Japanese media there'd be almost nothing left.

My guess is that commercial businesses paying Selena Gomez or the Kardashians know exactly what they can do and what they are worth.

Here, we are talking about some probably unsackable bureaucrats working for a local government arranging to pay a.n.other out of Japan's many comedy duos for a message to a very limited audience. They don't even have to turn up to an event. The audience at manzai events in Japan that are televised always look like they are at least 80% young women, not a demographic who even pay significant amounts of local taxes that could be sent to Kyoto. This story smacks of some dullards at town hall throwing money at the usual suspects on speed dial, Dentsu, Yoshimoto, AKB etc. to (not) do their job for them. If I were a Kyoto taxpayer, I'd be furious.

The reason Kyoto doesn’t appeal to non-foreign young people is because of the arrogance of the dinosaurs in office and running the place.

I swear you posted an article yesterday about Kyoto trying to limit tourists....

The reason Kyoto doesn’t appeal to non-foreign young people is because of the arrogance of the dinosaurs in office and running the place.

It sounds to me like there is a tourism budget to spend. It might come from the national government. Kyoto has congestion, so they want folks to use the subway. They also want the hometown tax, free money from other tax areas. No-one at town hall knows what to do. Some may have been recently transferred to the tourism department from somewhere else. What's standard procedure? Speed dial to Yoshimoto, Dentsu, AKB. Yoshimoto says 4.2 million yen and some blurb promising tweets, some action that can be reported as having been taken. Sounds okay so boss hankos it. Problem solved.

Loads of government campaign posters in Japan use celebs. Some celeb's office will get x million for her dressing up as a policewoman for a "no to drink driving" poster. With half a clue, a very similar poster could be made of 1/100 of the cost with a real policewoman and easily faked studio style photography (search for things like "white seamless" on Youtube). The remaining 99/100 could then be spent on actual enforcement.

Kyoto goes to these extreme measures to promote tourism in the city and then complain there are too many tourists. I’m sure I’m not the only one who sees the contradiction.

Kyoto goes to these extreme measures to promote tourism in the city and then complain there are too many tourists. I’m sure I’m not the only one who sees the contradiction.

The people complaining are not necessarily the same people promoting tourism.

Kyoto has a population of roughly 1.5 million. It is improbable that everyone in Kyoto holds the same view of tourism.