A remote city in Japan celebrates frequent flyers who just stop by to collect rewards. Visit to a dramatic scene of demographic change.
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Thomas Hahn, Mombetsu
Ryuichi Nakanowatari has come to fly straight home. That’s probably why he’s so short. Between flight NH 375 from Tokyo-Haneda to Mombetsu and flight NH 376 from Mombetsu to Tokyo-Haneda, he doesn’t have much more than 20 minutes at the small airport in the north of the Japanese north island of Hokkaido. And Nakanowatari, 55, head of the Towada Kanko plumbing shop in Tokyo, also wanted to take a photo in front of the wall of the busiest Mombetsu short-term visitors. “I’ve also stayed in Mombetsu before,” says Nakanowatari, but in fact he’s flying back immediately today because he wants to collect miles for the awards program of Japan’s largest airline, All Nippon Airways (ANA). And not for the first time, because the route is productive for a mile collector who cannot go abroad because of the pandemic. Also, it helps Mombetsu.