Japan’s Tohoku region has recovered swiftly, with six prefectures visiting Taiwan to warm up for the maple viewing season

By Li Xinyi, compiled and reported

After the earthquake and tsunami, Japan’s Tohoku region had largely returned to normal in less than half a year. The six prefectures of Tohoku jointly visited Taiwan to hold a tourism promotion event. In addition to expressing gratitude for Taiwan’s support for Japan, they also briefed the public on the recovery status of the six prefectures after the disaster. Currently, Japan still has restricted areas near the nuclear power plant, but the rest of the region is operating as normal. All the summer festivals held annually in Tohoku have taken place as scheduled. With the upcoming peak autumn foliage season, EVA Air plans to resume its regular Taipei–Sendai flights on October 30.

Since the Great East Japan Earthquake on 3/11, although tourist destinations have resumed normal operations, Japan’s tourism industry still faces the issue of a lack of return of foreign visitors. Tohoku covers an area approximately 1.8 times that of Taiwan. If calculated based on the general international nuclear disaster evacuation range of 80 kilometers, cities such as Sendai and Aizu-Wakamatsu are not within this zone. For non-disaster-affected areas, Japan hopes people from around the world will visit to support the normal operation of local tourism. In terms of transportation, the Tohoku Shinkansen has been running normally again since late August, and the Tokyo–Aomori service, which only began operating on March 5 of this year, is also back to normal.

Sendai Airport’s domestic flights quickly resumed normal operations on April 13, and international routes restarted on July 25. To welcome the upcoming peak travel season in Tohoku, EVA Air will resume its twice-weekly flight service starting from its winter schedule on October 30, with bookings now open. Other flights include the Akita–Seoul route, which remained operational after the earthquake; Asiana Airlines’ Korea route will resume regular flights on September 25; and Continental Micronesia’s Guam route will return to normal operations starting October 2.