An honorary Nepalese Consulate will open today in Fukuoka to issue tourist visas and provide information to prospective visitors to the country, consulate officials said Wednesday.

Nepal, which has an embassy in Tokyo and an honorary consulate general in Osaka, aims to increase the number of Japanese tourists to the country by setting up the visa-issuing office in Fukuoka, as Himalayan tours are popular among Japanese.

Mitsuhiko Shinokuma, 59, head of the Fukuoka Nepal Children's Education Promotion Committee, a local nongovernmental group, will become the honorary consul and work on a voluntary basis.

Shinokuma's group began exchanges with the Nepalese Embassy during the establishment of an elementary school in a mountain village in Nepal in 1999.

The honorary consulate is located on the sixth floor of Akasaka S Building in Chuo Ward in Fukuoka.