The Ameyoko food market in Tokyo's Ueno district may be just another yearend shopping stop for most people.

But Wesley Hughes considers it a role model for establishing an organized shopping district in his home country of Jamaica.

"In Jamaica, shopping areas are not well-organized and the transport system is not well-integrated" into such zones, said the 50-year-old Hughes, who is director general of Jamaica's Planning Institute. "Buyers don't have the incentive to go to that (kind of) shopping area."

The key is to instill in vendors a sense of "order and discipline," Hughes said, adding that markets should be located with easy access to transportation networks to attract shoppers.

Hughes is currently visiting Japan as part of a Foreign Ministry program launched in 1971 that brings in prospective next-generation leaders of developing countries.

Every year, the ministry invites more than 100 people for up to 11 days from regions that include Latin America, Africa and other parts of Asia in an effort to promote their understanding of Japanese culture, industry and history.

During his 11-day stay, Hughes, who leaves Tokyo on Thursday, visited Niigata Prefecture to inspect its waterway and paddy systems, seeing them as ways to prevent flooding and other natural disasters in Jamaica.

The Caribbean island, with a population of some 2.6 million, periodically experiences devastating flooding from hurricanes between June and August, he said.

"What we are trying to do is to look for a longer-term solution" to this problem, Hughes said.

In addition to such inspection tours, participants in the ministry's program visit Hiroshima.

Hughes said he was especially moved by his visit to the historic city, which was devastated by an atomic bomb near the end of World War II.

"Hiroshima is an important milestone of human development in terms of what happened there and what we should avoid for the future," he reflected.

The Jamaican also has his eyes on the future, and expressed hope that Japan will continue assisting his country despite the greater attention Tokyo recently is paying to the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Japan's loans to Jamaica have declined from $20.52 million in 1996 to $3.19 million in 2000. During this time, the focus of its support has shifted from constructing facilities to providing technical assistance in such fields as health, education and policy planning.

Japan's assistance "has been very important in helping development in specific areas of (Jamaica's) economy and society," he said.