  Affected by urbanization, centralization and the decrease of overall
population, Japan has been making efforts to revitalize the rural areas across
the country. One particular effort is to increase tourism to these rural areas
via regional branding, using local farm products as tourist attractions across
Japan. Particularly, a program subsidized by the government called Michinoeki,
which stands for 'roadside station', was created 20 years ago and it strives to
provide a safe and comfortable space for cultural interaction between road
travelers and the local community, as well as offering refreshment, and
relevant information to travelers. However, despite its importance in the
revitalization of the Japanese economy, studies with newer technologies and
methodologies are lacking. Using sales data from establishments in the Kyushu
area of Japan, we used Support Vector to classify content from Twitter into
relevant topics and studied their causal relationship to the sales for each
establishment using LiNGAM, a linear non-gaussian acyclic model built for
causal structure analysis, to perform an improved market analysis considering
more than just correlation. Under the hypotheses stated by the LiNGAM model, we
discovered a positive causal relationship between the number of tweets
mentioning those establishments, specially mentioning deserts, a need for
better access and traf^ic options, and a potentially untapped customer base in
motorcycle biker groups.
