Several weeks ago while walking through Tokyo's Ueno Station a friend and I passed a poster advertising the new Ibaraki airport. After we boarded our train, we started talking about the poster. Neither of us were aware that Ibaraki had an airport and we wondered why the prefecture needed one.
Later, I learned that the airport, which is now the Japan Air Self-Defense Force's Hyakuri Air Base, won't open until March 2010, and that many of our questions had already been asked by media outlets, not to mention average people who live in Ibaraki, which is just northeast of Tokyo. Some of these questions have been anticipated by the bureaucrats in charge of promoting the project and answered on their Web site (www.pref.ibaraki.jp/bukyoku/kuko).
The most obvious question is: Why spend all that money when Haneda airport in Tokyo and Fukushima airport are within a reasonable distance? The answer is that a new airport will contribute to Ibaraki's existing transportation network by providing economic "balance." But isn't it risky to build a new airport at a time when airlines are cutting domestic routes? No problem, says the promotion group, which states — without citing any figures — that it "expects the demand to be great." And as for the issue of funding, Ibaraki airport is small enough to qualify for greater central government assistance, so don't worry about the cost.