<figure id="attachment_460019" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-460019" style="width: 2407px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="39e4363a"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2026/03/69c419a11e6ec16d17d126e359dca01d.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-460019" class="wp-caption-text">Editor-in-Chief Yura turns adversity into opportunity. Surrounded by &#8220;Globe-Trotter&#8221; series. The skirt has a world map pattern.</figcaption></figure>
<p> Manga &#8220;Jojo&#8217;s Bizarre Adventure,&#8221; the Warring States Period, Suginami Ward, and Showa Retro. &#8230;&#8230;</p>
<p> These are the themes that &#8220;Globe-Trotter,&#8221; an overseas travel guidebook first published in September 1979 and loved for many years, has been covering in its series for the past several years. The &#8220;Globe-Trotter,&#8221; which mainly targets individual travelers overseas, is now offering manga, history, and domestic guidebooks?　Many of you may have wondered that. Behind this was a unique planning ability that did not stop thinking even when the company hit rock bottom. Below is the story of the struggles of &#8220;Globe-Trotter,&#8221; as revealed by editor-in-chief Akoyo Yura, based on her overseas experience since her student days.</p>
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<p><span class="strongInContent"> My brother, who was two years older than me and was very good at drawing, influenced my love of art from childhood. I was especially fascinated by Western paintings. Someday I would like to take the time to appreciate the real thing!　That was the beginning of my interest in foreign countries. After entering university (Waseda University), I chose Italy as my first overseas travel destination. Rome and Florence &#8230;&#8230;. I spent about two weeks touring the cities on the main road and fully enjoyed Western art. I got hooked on the fun of traveling and had valuable experiences visiting various countries.</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> In New York, I went on stage and played an instrument in a live performance of &#8220;Blue Man Group&#8221; with audience participation on Broadway. On my graduation trip to Schönbrunn Palace, a World Heritage site in Vienna, I spoke to a Japanese man of the same age walking in front of me, and he turned out to be a classmate from the same department (Faculty of Letters I) at the same university. I had not seen him on campus for four years, but I never expected to run into him in a distant foreign country. &#8230;&#8230; We became good friends because of that encounter, and we still keep in touch with each other as a family.&#8221;</span></p>
<p> After graduating from Waseda University in March 2000, Mr. Yura joined Diamond Big Publishing, the publisher of &#8220;Globe-Trotter&#8221; at the time, and after two years in sales, he was assigned to the editorial department of his choice in his third year with the company.</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> Although there are local collaborators, most of the interviews begin with the editorial staff leaving Japan. This is because we want to deliver information only from a traveler&#8217;s perspective, such as problems at airports and on airplanes. I cannot provide direction without knowing the travel process, so I also find time to visit various places.</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> I try to incorporate into the magazine any problems I experience during my coverage and introduce countermeasures. For example, if a woman traveling alone is persistently asked by a local man to join him, she should firmly refuse, saying, &#8220;I have other plans,&#8221; or beware of the many hawkers of misangas in Italy. In many cases, this information, which is presented outside of the column, is read before the main text.</span></p>
<h2> Crisis of Survival</h2>
<figure id="attachment_460081" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-460081" style="width: 1012px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="c37514b8"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2026/03/0dd034fa08bc0396befe6915e3c514b0.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-460081" class="wp-caption-text"> Photo taken when Yura was a student at Waseda University and performed in &#8220;Blue Man Group&#8221; in New York (courtesy of Yura).</figcaption></figure>
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<p> In March 2010, Yura launched &#8220;aruco,&#8221; a guidebook for adventurous women in their 20s and 30s that is packed with local and in-depth information. While &#8220;Globe-Trotter&#8221; is mainly aimed at readers in their 40s and 50s, Yura has cultivated a younger demographic.</p>
<p> However, his life as an editor took a sudden turn for the worse.</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> The new type of coronavirus began to spread around 2008,&#8221; he said. It became extremely difficult for stayhomes to travel abroad. Sales dropped 90% at once. The survival of Globe-Trotter was in jeopardy. We were at rock bottom.</span></p>
<p> When &#8220;Globe-Trotter&#8221; was transferred from Diamond Big Inc. to the Gakken Group in December 2008, he was asked to propose a plan to break through the current situation.</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> When &#8220;Globe-Trotter&#8221; was transferred from Diamond Big-sha to the Gakken Group in December 2008, we were asked to come up with a plan to break through the current situation. It&#8217;s the same with traveling abroad. Trouble is bound to occur in a foreign country, but nothing will change if you panic. To make your trip an enjoyable memory, it is important to keep challenging yourself. I call this the &#8216;traveler&#8217;s mindset.</span></p>
<p> Fortunately, the first domestic edition of the &#8220;Globe-Trotter&#8221; series, &#8220;Tokyo,&#8221; which was released in time for the Tokyo Olympics scheduled to be held in July 2008 (postponed to the following year due to the COVID-19 crisis), sold 100,000 copies. Mu: How to Walk in Another World,&#8221; a collaboration with the mystery magazine Mu, became a hit, selling over 140,000 copies.</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> The success of these two books has changed my way of thinking. If we can&#8217;t go abroad, let&#8217;s guide people in Japan. I decided to collaborate with content that goes well with travel and make it interesting reading even if you don&#8217;t go on a trip. In the former case, we not only cover prefectures popular for sightseeing such as Kyoto and Hokkaido, but also narrowly defined areas such as Suginami Ward and Yamaguchi City. Based on the idea that walking is also a type of travel, the content is designed to be enjoyable even for residents. Thanks to this, about 70% of our readers for our domestic series are locals.&#8221;</span></p>
<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" Yura Experiences the Agony of Collaboration Planning"></div>
<h2>Real and fictitious places are &#8230;&#8230;&#8221;</h2>
<figure id="attachment_460023" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-460023" style="width: 2464px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="3102386e"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2026/03/25a969220af1c9d260e2859b66af7961.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-460023" class="wp-caption-text"> Mr. Yura&#8217;s aspirations on a colored paper</figcaption></figure>
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<p> The collaborative project that Mr. Yura was in charge of was &#8220;Chikyu no Arukikata JOJO: JoJo&#8217;s Bizarre Adventure,&#8221; published in July &#8217;22. It was the first in the series to reach No. 1 in the overall ranking of all books on Amazon. The unusual tag-team with a popular manga drew a lot of attention.</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> I have been reading &#8220;Jojo&#8221; in &#8220;Weekly Shonen Jump&#8221; in real time since its serialization began in 1987. In &#8220;Jojo,&#8221; there are many countries that people who love to travel, such as Egypt and Mexico. I wondered if it would be possible to introduce the history and customs of these countries by interweaving them with the stories in &#8220;JoJo.</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> However, the actual editing process was difficult. Jojo&#8221; contains a mixture of real and fictional places. I introduced the fictional places by clearly stating that they do not exist at this time, and by adding detailed explanations of the stories and paying close attention to the details. The &#8220;Globe-Trotter&#8221; guidebook is largely a practical book, but in the collaboration with &#8220;Jojo,&#8221; we tried to make it an enjoyable read, which may have won the hearts of readers.</span></p>
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<p> After that, &#8220;Chikyu no Arukikata&#8221; continued to produce a succession of projects that made readers want to pick it up, such as &#8220;Sengoku,&#8221; which introduced places associated with warlords and old battlefields, and &#8220;Showa Retro,&#8221; which featured popular Showa gourmet restaurants and places with nostalgic townscapes. Sales recovered to 80% of the pre-Corona level. Yura, who took over as editor-in-chief in October 2011, talks about his ambitions for the future.</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> I want to continue to publish travel books that resonate with the younger generation. Traveling the globe is fun!　I want many people to experience that kind of real-life experience.</span></p>
<p> A new service from &#8220;Globe-Trotter&#8221; will be launched in March. A new service from &#8220;Globe-Trotter&#8221; was launched in March, a membership-based participatory community by travelers for travelers.</p>
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<p> The new service is an online community for travelers to exchange information and connect with other travelers.</p>
<p><a href="#" data-ident_hash="564cfad4"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2026/03/535dc2c7901c6be1726f16b0ab383e0d.png" alt=""></a></p>
<p> URL: https: <a id="m_2468873872777086490OWA2fc46c1d-d853-49f4-b503-5081ed20832a" title="https://community.arukikata.co.jp/" href="https://community.arukikata.co.jp/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://community.arukikata.co.jp/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1772848438923000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1TffsFIdq75wIr5xfl5Ymf">//community. <wbr></wbr></a> arukikata <a id="m_2468873872777086490OWA2fc46c1d-d853-49f4-b503-5081ed20832a" title="https://community.arukikata.co.jp/" href="https://community.arukikata.co.jp/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://community.arukikata.co.jp/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1772848438923000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1TffsFIdq75wIr5xfl5Ymf">.co.jp/</a></p>
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<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" Adventures Abroad! Mr. Yura&#39;s &quot;Student Days in Waseda&quot; Photo"></div>
<figure id="attachment_460083" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-460083" style="width: 511px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="154065ca"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2026/03/c30f2e11a7d68f50deba12c79976b414.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-460083" class="wp-caption-text">With &#8220;Blue Man Group&#8221; when I was a student (Courtesy of Mr. Yura)</figcaption></figure>
<figure id="attachment_460084" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-460084" style="width: 1182px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="3eb710b5"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2026/03/2df118f6421078fcf0e109f6c46be799.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-460084" class="wp-caption-text"> As a thank-you for going on stage, &#8220;Blue Man Group&#8221; gave me a soggy banana. It was a joke in their own way.</figcaption></figure>
<figure id="attachment_460018" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-460018" style="width: 2464px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="c40fefa9"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2026/03/c7fe8229ee80fd2db56d66f33aa9c335.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-460018" class="wp-caption-text"> Mr. Yura became editor-in-chief in October 2011. Walking pose with &#8220;Globe-Trotter,&#8221; to which he is very attached.</figcaption></figure>
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<figure id="attachment_460024" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-460024" style="width: 2464px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="8a3a0288"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2026/03/5de87a7e8b07a29db7707c56951e587e.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-460024" class="wp-caption-text"> The &#8220;aruco&#8221; series launched by Mr. Yura</figcaption></figure>
<figure id="attachment_460028" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-460028" style="width: 2464px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="e518137b"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2026/03/53606c6650b214aade7102fdd188ab7d.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-460028" class="wp-caption-text"> Chikyu no Arukikata&#8221; was first published in September 1979. At a time when most travelers were traveling in groups, an overseas guidebook for individuals was revolutionary.</figcaption></figure>
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 Shinya Nishizaki, courtesy of Mr. Yura (as a student)

 Chikyu no Arukikata" has been loved by overseas travelers since its first issue in 1979. However, once the COVID-19 crisis took hold and stay-homes took root, sales dropped 90%. The magazine was in danger of extinction. A must-read for all working people!　The editor-in-chief who brought about a V-shaped recovery talks about his "plan from the bottom of the barrel.

Corona sales down 90%&#8230; Editor-in-Chief of Globe-Trotter: &#8220;Jojo&#8221; and &#8220;Sengoku&#8221; hit one after another&#8230; Planning plan at rock bottom.

Corona sales down 90%… Editor-in-Chief of Globe-Trotter: “Jojo” and “Sengoku” hit one after another… Planning plan at rock bottom.

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