Japan is confident of its chances of winning a US$6 billion bid to build a thermonuclear plant designed to deliver clean energy from hydrogen.
Japan is bidding against the EU, which last month chose the southern French town of Cadarache as its candidate to stand against the northern Japanese village of Rokkasho-mura for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project.
"We want to compete fairly and squarely to the best of our ability," Hidekazu Tanaka, an official with the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry, said recently.
"As this is very important for the energy of the future, we want to make sure our country succeeds," he added.
The Japanese site has many assets: the proximity of a port, a ground of solid bedrock and the close proximity of an American military base which means that Rokkasho-mura has already the services available to accommodate foreign researchers in a comfortable environment.
French competitors have admitted that Japan is a serious candidate for the project.
French junior minister for research and new technology Claudie Haignere called Rokkasho-mura "a quality site" during a recent visit to Tokyo.
"The two countries have more or less the same advantages, namely a strong competence in nuclear fusion and well-prepared sites with good transport infrastructure," said Dominique Ochem, nuclear adviser to the French embassy in Japan.
Located in the prefecture of Aomori, in the North-East of the large island of Honshu, Rokkasho-mura's site covers 253km2 at the edge of the Pacific Ocean.
The ITER project would be established on a site near an existing industrial center, in the district of Iyasakatai, on an immediately available area of 70 hectares (compared with 180 hectares in Cadarache), with an additional 70 hectares for use in the event of extension.
"Rokkasho-mura offers many advantages, a stable bedrock, flat ground and the port of Mutsu-Ogawara which can handle cargo of up to 1,000 tonnes," said the site's official booklet.
However, with Tokyo 700km away and with a population of only 46 people per square kilometer, Rokkasho-mura is considered by some critics to be in the middle of nowhere.
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