Moreton Bay and Japan: A Friendship 35 Years in the Making

Moreton Bay and Japan: A Friendship 35 Years in the Making

If you've been keeping an eye on what's happening around the bay lately, you might have noticed that Moreton Bay is quietly building something pretty special on the world stage. Our region's connection with Japan goes back more than three decades, and right now, it's as alive as it's ever been.

A Friendship City Relationship Worth Celebrating

Moreton Bay's bond with Sanyo-Onoda, a city tucked away in Yamaguchi Prefecture in Japan, stretches back 35 years. The two cities have maintained an official Sister City relationship for over 30 years, and that connection has only deepened over time. It's the kind of ongoing relationship that doesn't just sit in a filing cabinet at the council offices. It actually means something to real people and real businesses here at home.

When Sanyo-Onoda Mayor Goji Fujita and his delegation visited Moreton Bay in late 2025, council pulled off one of the more creative gestures you'll come across in local government. The City of Moreton Bay, the University of the Sunshine Coast, and Brendale-based Hip Hops Brewers teamed up to brew a limited-edition craft beer to mark the occasion.

They called it the Tomodachi Lager, which means "friendship beer" in Japanese. The Japanese-style rice lager fuses subtle seaweed flavour with bright yuzu citrus notes, using locally grown sea lettuce harvested right here in the bay. The sea lettuce, locally known as aosa in Japan, was developed through a partnership between Hip Hops Brewers and aquaculture researchers from UniSC Moreton Bay, making it a genuinely local product with a distinctly Japanese soul.

It's the kind of thing that makes you proud to be from around here.

A New Trade Deal With Shizuoka

The friendship with Japan isn't just symbolic, though. Moreton Bay Council has been laying some serious groundwork on the trade side of things too.

Mayor Peter Flannery recently signed a new Memorandum of Understanding with Mayor Takashi Namba of Shizuoka City, the capital of one of Japan's major economic prefectures, cementing a growing partnership across aquaculture, food and beverage, sport, research, and tourism.

Japan is Queensland's second largest export market, and the agreement opens a direct channel for Moreton Bay businesses to sell their products and services into the Shizuoka market. For local producers and operators, that's a real opportunity worth paying attention to.

The timing lines up nicely too, with both the 2027 Women's Softball World Cup coming to Redcliffe and the 2032 Olympics and Paralympics on the horizon. The MOU specifically calls out those events as opportunities to build sport-related ties between the two cities.

Making Waves on the Global Innovation Stage

Here's something that might surprise you. City of Moreton Bay has been selected as one of only two cities worldwide, alongside Rome, to partner with the Tokyo Metropolitan Government on a major open innovation challenge. That's right, our backyard region sitting alongside Rome on the world stage.

Under the Tokyo-funded program, five Japanese startup finalists will travel to Australia, where one will be chosen to work directly with Council for four months on a fully funded proof of concept tackling either disaster resilience or asset management.

This builds on years of engagement through the G-NETS program, including summits, study tours, and knowledge exchange on disaster management, and follows Mayor Flannery attending the Global City Network for Sustainability conference in Tokyo at the personal invitation of the Governor of Tokyo.

It's not just networking for the sake of it. This is Moreton Bay putting itself on the map as a place where serious ideas get tested.

What It Means for Locals

For people living and working in the Moreton Bay region, this growing relationship with Japan is more than a press release. It's creating real pathways for local businesses to explore export markets, for researchers at UniSC to collaborate with international partners, and for the broader community to engage with a culture that values craftsmanship, quality, and long-term thinking.

Whether you're a local foodie who tracked down a can of Tomodachi Lager at Brendale, a tradie wondering what the 2032 Games means for work in Redcliffe, or a business owner thinking about what Japan's markets could mean for your product, the seeds being planted right now matter.

Moreton Bay has always had a lot going for it. It's starting to look like the rest of the world is figuring that out too.