In a letter to Tinian Mayor Ramon M. Dela Cruz, Mayor Hiromi Yoshioka of Otawara City congratulated the municipality for its festival held over the weekend.
“It would be very nice if hot pepper becomes a bridge to connect the Northern Marinas and Japan,” said Yoshioka. “We are determined to do our best, as Tinian people have been doing, to spread the goodness of hot peppers over the world.”
Yoshioka is also president of Otawara “Hot City” Promotion Council, promoting the hawk-claw shaped “san-taka” —Japanese for “three hawks” — peppers.
Otawara City, located 95 miles north of Tokyo, used to produce up to 5,000 tons of hot pepper a year about 40 years ago, but production has dwindled to 20 tons.
Yoshioka said the city holds its own hot pepper festival each year and is working to regain its share of the market in Japan.
“We are hot; you are hotter,” Yoshioka said in his letter to the Mayor Dela Cruz. “The hotter we become, the more prosperous our places will be.”
The Tinian Hot Pepper Festival is an annual signature event of the Marianas Visitors Authority aimed at attracting visitors and media to the Northern Mariana Islands.
For more information about the festival, contact the MVA Tinian office at 433-9365 or e-mail [email protected].
