Hometown Stories

Rebuilding Lives After the Kumamoto Earthquake (2022x12)

Data di messa in onda: Mag 22, 2022

Minamiaso once welcomed 6 million visitors a year. Then the tourism industry suffered catastrophic damage in the 2016 Kumamoto Earthquake. At 1 inn, a pair of guests were killed, another took 5 years to rebuild, while another reopened just as the COVID-19 pandemic struck and faced a string of cancellations. Will the innkeepers of Minamiaso ever recover, financially or emotionally? Several years after the earthquake, we look at the people working to rebuild their businesses – and their lives.