A video produced by students at Hirosaki University, “Surui Town, Aomori Prefecture”, won the “Travel Moja Award” on February 5 at the “Tourism Video Award”, which is a video contest that collects tourism PR videos from all over Japan.

This is the 6th year of the "Tourism Video Award", which decides one of the largest international short films in Asia from among the tourism promotion videos across the country.

"AOMORI Media Labo," sponsored by the Aomori Prefectural Office, is a project for local college students to disseminate information about the charm and lifestyle of Aomori Prefecture. Five students took part in the video planning and filming for about three months, and applied for the video completed with the support of the professional director.

The work was released on YouTube on August 10, 2016 and has been played over 50,000 times. Filming was done in the Tsugaru area centered around Hirosaki, and Hirosaki stores such as "Cafe Jiva" (Hirosaki City Dote-cho) and "Hair Makeup K-TWO" (Hirosaki City Ekimae-cho) also cooperated with the shooting. The novel idea of capturing Aomori Prefecture from the extremes of “urbanity” and “countryside” was highly evaluated and won the award.

According to Shota Odagiri who cooperated with the shooting, there were more than 20 video plans including the plans that were not adopted. Yuichiro Fujishiro, who had experience producing commercials for "Google Android" and was the general director, said, "I adjusted the camera position finely, but the pictures I wanted the students to take were clear, so I took them on an equal footing. I was able to do it. Since I was able to make it together with good results, it was a work that everyone could be excited about.”

Yu Ono, a fourth-year student at the Hirosaki University Faculty of Education, said, "I sent a message to the young people who said, "There is nothing in Aomori Prefecture." I feel happy that it has reached people and I am happy."