Tokyo, April 23: Japan’s tourism sector is experiencing a difficult time as the nation endures the devastating effects of a radiation leak caused by the recent earthquake.
The Sensoji temple in the Asakusa district of the capital — the city’s oldest Buddhist temple — is suffering from the side effects of the March 11 quake,
“This is a holy area for Japanese Buddhism. People come here to get a sense of traditional Japanese culture. Many foreigners come here for that reason,” said a monk at the temple.
“Three or four days after the disaster, the number of foreign visitors here dropped sharply. There was not a single bus. In fact I would say the fall was some 90 to 100 percent,” Asakusa Tourism Federation Chairman Shigemi Fuji said.
In Okinawa, there has been a 20 percent drop in the number of tourists.
More than six percent of all jobs in Japan are related to travel and tourism.
“Last year in 2010, we had a record high figure of visitor arrival, which was 8.6 million, and then in January and February we still had an increase of 6.8 percent, but then in March it decreased by 50 percent. So there was great damage,” Nozomi Tsuji of the Japan National Tourism Organization said.
She blamed the media for what she called “exaggeration” of the radiation level at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
“I think there is a bit of exaggeration so that people feel things are really bad in Japan, but the radiation level is actually not so high. Tokyo’s radiation level at the moment is lower than for example Singapore or New York,” she noted.
The Tokyo Electric Power Co., the plant’s operator, says the level of radiation in the water that leaked into the sea is 20,000 times the annual legal limit.
The deadly earthquake was followed by a gigantic tsunami that disabled the power generator to the plant’s cooling system, and caused explosions at the reactors.
The National Police Agency estimates the number of dead and missing from the disaster at around 28,000.
——-Agencies