Childcare research in geography has investigated the relationship between guardians picking up children and daily activities, as well as the management of nursery schools. There have, however, been few studies dealing with unusual, unexpected daily life events and childcare. In Japan, concerns about tsunamis have increased, and it is thought that evacuations in cold, snowy areas would pose special difficulties. The purpose of this study was to understand the situation around and problems related to tsunamis and group evacuations from licensed nursery schools in a cold, snowy area. The area selected for the study formerly belonged to Kushiro municipality in Hokkaido and is a cold, snowy, tsunami inundation-prone area with a large population.

There are 25 licensed nursery schools in this area, and of these 18 are now located in areas of potential inundation by tsunamis according to the guidelines for the probability of inundation. Among these nursery schools, this study focused on nine that are expected to be subject to more than 6.0 m of inundation if tsunamis occur.

First, comparing the places planned to serve as refuges before and after the Great East Japan Earthquake, the number of stories of buildings suitable as shelters has increased, resulting in the availability of fewer public facilities. Next, childcare activities that may be expected to affect the evacuation are walking to and from the nurseries and activities while attending them. The problem with group evacuations on foot is in their organization, and that with the return home from the nursery school is a shortage of potential helpers.

In conclusion, two problems related to winter evacuations in a cold, snowy area were identified. First, there are few high-rise buildings around nursery schools, and when long-distance evacuation is necessary, it should be assumed that achieving it rapidly is impossible because walking speed decreases with snow coverage or road surface freezing. Second, when there is no heating in a shelter where infants may have to remain in cold conditions, it is likely that they will become ill. Nursery schools are therefore requesting that the local government provide extensions of the planned shelters and installation of heating equipment in them.

From the above, this study points to more difficulties in tsunami evacuations of nursery schools in cold, snowy areas in winter than in summer. To resolve these difficulties, rescue and assistance by the local government to optimize the self-help available to nursery schools with mutual aid provided by local residents are needed.

An increasing body of literature has focused on neighborhood environments as one of the factors that determine health. Nevertheless, the research that has been conducted in Japan in this regard and that at a national scale have been very limited. In this study, statistical analysis was conducted to determine whether health-related quality of life (HRQOL) correlates with particular characteristics of the neighborhoods that people live in. Multilevel analysis was applied to data from the Japanese General Social Surveys of 2010 (n=2,326) to examine the associations of the three composite scales of HRQOL (SF-12) with both perceived and objective measurements of neighborhood environments. The results indicate that respondents who expressed positive perceptions of their neighborhood were more likely to have better levels of HRQOL. However, the objective measures of neighborhood environments were not independently associated with HRQOL, which indicates that the connections between health and place of residence are fairly complex.

This study investigated the dynamics of introduction of the Internet by accommodations through a three-phase analysis constituting promoting tourism, taking reservations, and building or maintaining customer relationships in a case study of the Kusatsu Onsen spa resort, Gunma prefecture, from the viewpoint of corporate strategy.

The trend in the rate of utilization of the Internet by accommodations in Kusatsu Onsen shows that those with larger buildings or with frequent participation in local organizations is high. Most accommodations still maintain traditional reservation methods such as booking over the telephone or through travel agencies, although the introduction of Internet reservation facilities has spread throughout almost the entire area. In contrast, Internet use in the other two phases is limited, although there are many exceptions. Even accommodations in large buildings or with frequent participation in local organizations are reluctant to rely on the Internet during phases of tourism promotion and building or maintaining customer relationships. On the other hand, some accommodations in small buildings or with less frequent participation in local organizations have utilized the Internet aggressively in those two phases.

As the background to the heterogeneity of Internet utilization, the transformation of the tourism market and the changing corporate strategies of each type of accommodation were identified. Accommodations managed under conventional corporate strategies, regardless of the decrease in the number of large tourist groups, which have few employees and little promotional funding, have not made Internet utilization a high priority. In contrast, accommodations under management that perceives a need for new strategies to attract individual tourists have utilized the Internet both to promote tourism and then build or maintain relationships with customers; the management of these accommodations has regarded the Internet as a means to achieve a switch in corporate strategy after the end of the period of high economic growth or as a means to differentiate their facilities in the tourism market.

Therefore, accommodations have utilized the Internet selectively depending on their funds or corporate strategies along with the diffusion of ICT in society and transformation of the tourism market. Active utilization of the Internet is not always the best solution for accommodations in Kusatu Onsen spa resort. Furthermore, accommodations in Kusatsu Onsen take a diversified approach to this process and can be divided into those that attempt to maintain the previous corporate strategy and those that attempt to establish modern strategies to attract individual tourists through online marketing.