Prime Minister Shinzo Abe received a courtesy call from groups of junior reporters from Okinawa and Hakodate at the Prime Minister's Office.

The junior reporters from Okinawa, selected from elementary and junior high schools in Okinawa Prefecture, actively promote youth exchanges to further connect Okinawa and the mainland through news gathering activities in various areas of the mainland. Their news gathering activities in Tokyo are conducted jointly with the junior reporters from Hakodate since 1992, after the Okinawan junior reporters visited Hakodate on their return from the news gathering activities in the Northern Territories and exchanges subsequently began. As in previous years, both groups of junior reporters paid the courtesy call.

The Prime Minister said in his address,

"As your representative junior reporter said in the speech just now, I believe it is very important to seek out the truth by seeing with your own eyes and hearing with your own ears, and thinking about what the truth really is.
In today's world, one can gain so much information through television, the Internet and newspapers, but I believe it is very important to verify the truth with our own eyes, and to think about it with our own minds and feelings.
Today, you have kindly come to visit me at the Prime Minister's Office. Many decisions are made here. I invite you to once again verify what you see and hear with your own eyes and ears at this place, as well as in the Diet building. As you will likely meet many people, please listen to the many stories they share.
As your representative has pointed out, numerous issues are faced not only in Okinawa and Hakodate, but also in many other regions. We are doing our utmost to resolve the respective issues during our generation. So many issues and problems keep arising and I am sure that your generation will have your own set of issues. In order to be ready to face them, I encourage you to study hard and accumulate many experiences.
I am truly happy to have met you here today. I hope today's meeting will serve to help you in some way, and that you will contemplate the significance of your experiences of coming to Tokyo, coming to the Prime Minister's Office, and meeting us here.
Finally, I hope that you will all use such experiences to grow into fine adults and will flourish in your lives."