Japanese town fears for future after deadly quake

Nestled at the foot of Mount Kurikoma, this town escaped the worst of Saturday’s 7.2-magnitude earthquake.

One inn on the mountaintop was swept away by landslides, killing at least four people staying there, as bridges snapped and roads were buried under mud and boulders.

Satake, 63, said she was worried about whether people would still want to come to the mountain after the quake, the strongest to strike inland in the tremor-prone nation in eight years.

“Part of our customers are tourists who visit Mount Kurikoma, especially in autumn when the red leaves are beautiful,” she said.

Elsewhere in the area, inn keepers have another problem — the volcanic hot springs renowned for their restorative qualities have stopped running.

“The hot spring stopped coming up. I don’t know what to do,” said Kurao Mitsuzuka, the 69-year-old manager of the Yunokura Onsen hot spring inn.

“Maybe the quake changed the course of the underground water. I’ve been told that hot water might return after several aftershocks,” he said. At another hotel nearby, inn keeper Kenichi Sato has the same problem.

“Hot spring stopped coming up. I don’t know the real cause, it could be a problem with electricity or pipes.

“In addition, we have to fix a bathtub which cracked and replace broken window glass. But shops don’t have glass that isn’t broken.”

Even before the quake struck, killing at least 10 people and leaving 12 more unaccounted for, this town had been struggling after a local railway line was abolished last year.

Despite the rare alpine plants and native forests on the 1,627-meter (5,338-feet) Mount Kurikoma, the long-distance buses from Tokyo bypass the town and the local train line through rice fields has become overgrown with weeds.

“We recently started making efforts to attract tourists back to our town, collaborating with the inns on the mountain top. Then the quake devastated them,” said Ikuya Sugawara, 54, head of the Art Inn Sugawara.

In a further tragic twist, two of the people discovered dead in the mud of the landslides were advisors on tourism to the local authorities, who had been attending a meeting on how to encourage more visitors.

It’s not just the inn keepers who are worried about their livelihoods — other businesses also relied on the hotels for custom.

Shops and hotels owners sometimes set up roadside stalls to sell local specialities including iwana, a kind of mountain trout.

“But I’m afraid I can’t get iwanas anymore, at least for a while, because the iwana farms on the hill tops are destroyed,” Sugawara said.

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