Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, together with Minister of Construction Chikage Ogi, attended the opening ceremony of this year's Urban Greening Campaign in Sukiyabashi Park, Chuo-ku, Tokyo. October has been designated Urban Greening Month, and this year's campaign, aimed at raising public awareness of the importance of urban greenery, was carried out nationwide on October 6 and 7 under the unified theme "Urban Greenery and Urban Parks." The campaign was sponsored by the Association for Promotion of the Urban Greening Campaign and supported by the Ministry of Construction, Tokyo Metropolitan Government, the National Governors' Association, the Japan Association of City Mayors, the National Association of Towns and Villages, and the Urban Development Corporation. Activities included the distribution of free pot plants and bulbs and free consultation on greening.

At about 1:30 P.M. a strong earthquake shook western Tottori Prefecture. The earthquake registered 6+ on the Japanese seismic scale in the city of Sakaiminato and the town of Hinomachi and 6- in the towns of Saihakucho and Mizoguchicho. Tremors between 1 and 5- were also observed in the Chugoku, Kinki, and Shikoku regions. At 1:35 Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori set up a countermeasures office in the Prime Minister's Official Residence to enable the entire government to respond swiftly. At 1:55 the Prime Minister attended a meeting of the emergency team along with Chief Cabinet Secretary Hidenao Nakagawa and National Land Agency Director General Chikage Ogi. At 2:29 the governor of Tottori Prefecture requested that Self-Defense Forces personnel be sent to help with disaster relief. At 2:40 the Prime Minister spoke with the governor by phone, confirming the situation and reassuring him that the central government would render all necessary assistance.

Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori talked with 13 Chinese students studying business management at Waseda University, whom he had invited to the Prime Minister's Official Residence. He told the young people, "You have the important role of acting as a bridge between Japan and China in the twenty-first century. I hope that exchange among the young people who will spearhead the next generation will continue to promote and will lead to Sino-Japanese relations based on deep mutual understanding."
The Prime Minister's first cabinet post was minister of education, to which he was appointed in December 1983. Convinced that building individual goodwill was the key to all relationships of trust, he decided to double the number of government-scholarship Chinese students in Japan to 500. He was the first minister of education to visit China (in 1984), at which time both sides agreed to step up student exchange. Today, 16 years later, almost 26,000 Chinese, including 1,700 government-scholarship recipients, are studying in Japan, while close to 15,000 Japanese are studying in China. Incidentally, the press corps covering the meeting included Jiang Zheng (Mayumi Fukuzawa), a reporter for a Japanese commercial network who had first come to Japan as a Chinese student.

Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori spoke with Koichi Wakata of the National Space Development Agency of Japan, a member of the crew of the space shuttle "Discovery," and Brian Duffy, the captain, for about 20 minutes beginning at 6:47 A.M. (4:47 P.M. October 12 U.S. central daylight saving time). The Prime Minister expressed his appreciation of the efforts of Wakata and the other astronauts. With the Prime Minister was Hidenori Tsumura , captain of the baseball team of Tokyo Metropolitan Miyake High School, who had been evacuated with his schoolmates to Akiruno City, on the outskirts of Tokyo, because of volcanic activity on the island of Miyakejima. Wakata, who had been on his high school's baseball team, told Tsumura, "I hope you'll value the understanding of the importance of teamwork, concentration, and discernment you've cultivated through baseball and apply them as you work toward your own goals."

Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori met with Zhu Rongji, Premier of the State Council of the People's Republic of China. Premier Zhu was on an official visit to Japan (October 12-17). Following a welcoming ceremony at Akasaka Palace in the morning, the two leaders held talks at the Prime Minister's Official Residence.
The summit lasted more than two hours, well over the scheduled hour and a half. The two leaders confirmed the importance of increased mutual understanding and of confidence building in order to firmly ground the friendly and cooperative partnership enunciated in the Japan-China Joint Declaration of 1998, issued on the occasion of Chinese President Jiang Zemin's visit to Japan, and agreed to continue to build cooperative relations. They also agreed to accelerate establishment of framework for mutual prior notification of the activities of marine research vessels in each other's territorial waters. Premier Zhu praised Japan's official development assistance to China, said that China would step up public relations efforts to inform the public of Japan's ODA, and expressed thanks for the provision of special yen loans. There was also agreement on expanding security dialogue and defense exchange, especially mutual visits by naval vessels.

Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori visited two information technology-related businesses, a company in Chiyoda-ku specializing in IT-related projects and a personal-computer store in Toshima-ku. At the former he listened to an explanation of plans for a high-capacity Internet service to be provided via fiber-optic cable to subscribing homes and offices. The group working on the project aims to launch the service next spring. The new service will offer Internet access at 10Mbps, some 180 times faster than the 56Kbps now available through analogue lines. His visit to the personal computer store gave the Prime Minister a firsthand look at the operations of a private-sector computer retailer. He tried out state-of-the-art applications and received an explanation of the way IT is expected to change home life.
His tour confirmed the Prime Minister in his determination to press ahead swiftly with the IT revolution in Japan. He remarked, "The private sector is ahead of the public sector. There's a keenness to keep developing better products. The private sector has both the will and the ability. The government had better hurry up."

Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori visited an exhibition of technology for "electronic government" mounted by an electronics manufacturer at Minato-ku, Tokyo. He observed with great interest technology enabling people to lodge electronic applications, use one-stop administrative services, access information on the Internet, and obtain approvals electronically, as well as security technology.

Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori attended the annual Self-Defense Forces Day fleet review in Sagami Bay off Kanagawa Prefecture. Taking part were 63 Maritime Self-Defense Force ships and some 10,000 MSDF personnel. The Prime Minister, going aboard the escort ship Shirane as inspector, addressed the gathering, saying, "You are expected to play a major role in contributing to creating a more stable security environment and thus making Japan a nation trusted by the world."

In a ceremony at the Prime Minister's Official Residence Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori presented Naoko Takahashi with the People's Honor Award for her achievement at the Olympic Games in Sydney last month, when she won the gold medal in the women's marathon--the first Olympic gold medal won by a Japanese woman in field athletics. Takahashi was the fifteenth person to receive the award since its institution in 1977. In presenting the award the Prime Minister extolled her feat, saying, "Your unflagging effort and earnest application, and your smiling face as you crossed the finish line in a marathon attracting the world's elite, moved and encouraged all Japanese, and young people in particular."

Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori visited the Twentieth Japan International Machine Tool Fair, held at Tokyo Big Sight (Tokyo International Exhibition Center) October 28-November 4. JIMTOF, sponsored by the Japan Machine Tool Builders' Association and the Tokyo International Trade Fair Commission, is one of the three biggest international machine tool fairs; the other two are held in Europe and the United States. Exhibiting this year were 509 companies from 14 countries and regions.
Machine tools, which cut and shape the metal parts essential to all machines, are known as "machines that make machines." Japan's machine tool industry has achieved great growth in numerically controlled machine tools, but in future it is expected to develop further through the incorporation of information technology.