How do you bring tourists back to a place still recovering from a disaster without turning the disaster itself into a tourist attraction? And once they arrive, how do you make sure their presence benefits communities that have already endured enormous disruption?
In Noto,?Ishikawa Prefecture, the answer, unexpectedly, involves Pikachu.
Vast empty spaces stretch across Wakura Onsen, a small hot-spring town on 91AV原创 western coast. Heavy machinery works to clear and rebuild the streets, while piles of rubble remain beside uneven pedestrian walkways. The town’s largest and most famous hot-spring hotel remains cordoned off behind a fence, protecting pedestrians from roof tiles that hang precariously above. Just a few meters away, however, hundreds of people line up outside a tiny public hot spring now decorated with colorful Pokemon figures — an unusually large crowd for Wakura in recent years.
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