This design was the result of a local contest among children from Toyooka Elementary School near Tajima, Hyogo Prefecture and won by Akana Yamamoto. The Oriental white storks, a Japanese Special Natural Monument, are now bred and raised in the local Hyogo Park after having gone extinct from the region.
Quite interestingly on November 29th, 2009, this aircraft suffered a birdstrike -probably with a heron- during takeoff at Izumi; it left substantial damage to the airplane including a 14x18 centimeter dent left of the nose cone.
