Japan’s Michinoku Coastal Trail has shown how hiking tourism can support earthquake recovery; a model which quake-affected region, central Honshu’s Noto Peninsula, hopes to embrace. For now, a new tour along existing trails hopes to encourage visitors back, through its hyper-local food scene, onsen and community spirit.
When the ground began to shake on New Year’s Day 2024 during an afternoon walk with her mother in the small city of Nanao on central Honshu’s Noto Peninsula, tour guide Kaho Shoji wasn’t overly concerned.
“Earthquakes happen all the time,” says the 47-year-old. But when the main shock came several minutes later, at 4.10pm, she knew it was serious. “We couldn’t stand up straight,” Kaho recalls. “Branches were falling down… and it was so loud, like roaring.”
But Kaho and her family, who had gathered at her mother’s home in Nanao to celebrate the new year, were lucky. The 7.5-magnitude earthquake (7.6 on Japan’s own shindo intensity scale), and the tsunami that struck the peninsula’s northeast coast within minutes, reaching heights of 21.8 feet, claimed more than 500 lives. Together, they also damaged or destroyed more than 107,000 homes across Japan’s mostly rural Ishikawa Prefecture, where over 30 percent of the population is over 65.
A year on, Kaho is sharing her story as our group of eight prepares to set off on a coastal stroll on a new tour developed by Walk Japan in the wake of the disaster. Our guide Kaho, who has worked with the company for a decade, was central to its development of the four-night Onsen Gastronomy: Noto tour, which has its first public departure in April 2025.
“The earthquake damage was much worse than I expected,” says Walk Japan’s Kyushu-based CEO Paul Christie, who first visited the globally important agricultural region, known for its Indigenous vegetable and rice varieties in July 2024 after a local community organization reached out with a call to action. Yet Paul saw an opportunity for sustainable tourism to support the recovery of the peninsula, where the populations of some municipalities have declined by as much as 10 percent since the earthquake.
“Local businesses told us they didn’t have enough customers,” Paul explains. “As a small-group operator, we have the ability to support businesses that are still open without getting under people’s feet.”
From the Nanao Bay seabream garnished with seaweed foraged by his neighbors to the strawberry and adzuki (red bean) pudding, I taste his passion for good food and supporting his community in every bite.
Walk Japan is the first major walking tour operator to launch post-quake tours on the Noto Peninsula—even before the earthquake, this off-the-beaten-track area of Japan’s main island received few international tourists—but it’s not the first tour it has developed to support earthquake recovery in Japan, which weathers some 1,500 quakes per year.
The company is among a growing number of operators offering itineraries on the Michinoku Coastal Trail, a 637-mile (1,025-kilometer) route in northern Honshu. Developed by the government in collaboration with NGOs and locals after the monumental 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, it seems this type of tourism is playing an important economic role in the region’s recovery.
There are now government plans to establish a long-distance hiking trail on the Noto Peninsula in a similar bid to stimulate the economy and help locals heal from tragedy. In the meantime, Walk Japan’s Onsen Gastronomy: Noto tour offers an opportunity to experience the region’s existing walking trails, superb seafood and salubrious onsen stays, as well as hear powerful stories of resilience and community spirit.
Our tour begins in the underrated regional capital Kanazawa (home to the ancient art of gold leaf) at the gateway to the peninsula, which escaped major earthquake damage. As we make our way north around the peninsula extending some 62 miles (100 kilometers) into the Sea of Japan, we visit ancient temples, feast on fresh-caught snow crab, tour niche museums (who knew the Noto Peninsula had a bridal curtain museum?), and soak up the bucolic scenery on leisurely coastal walks; a dedicated minibus shuttles us between stops. Our interactions with locals rebuilding their lives and communities add a rich layer to the experience.
The second day of the tour takes us to the devastated west-coast fishing village of Kaiso, where a coastal uplift of 13 feet (four meters) caused by the earthquake rendered the town’s port inoperable. Here, Noto chef Yutaka Kitazaki has temporarily opened a restaurant in a former publishing house beside a half-collapsed building.
Anyone would have forgiven him for seeking stability in a big city after his restaurant in the mountains was damaged in a landslide. But he tells us how his passion for cooking with all-Noto produce sourced directly from farmers and producers guided him instead to stay put on the peninsula.
Served on world-renowned Wajima lacquerware—painstaking produced in 124 stages—rescued from a ruined warehouse, the kaiseki (multi-course) lunch that Kitazaki prepares for us is a Michelin-worthy love letter to the peninsula’s hyper-seasonal produce.
From the Nanao Bay seabream garnished with seaweed foraged by his neighbors to the strawberry and adzuki (red bean) pudding, I taste his passion for good food and supporting his community in every bite.
“We can’t rebuild by ourselves; we need tourists to come.”
- Takamistu Haiya, municipal official
In Kaho’s hometown of Nanao on the peninsula’s east coast, an urban wander leads us to a shoyu (Japanese-style soy sauce) brewery where Masako Torii shows us how she produces artisan soy sauce by hand. The 70-year-old tells us how she immediately evacuated to the same local park as Kaho and her mother when the earthquake struck, fearing the worst for the third-generation family business when she saw dust rising from her small factory as she fled.
But fortunately, the damage was minimal. And it made her more determined to get back to work to fulfil her orders, Kaho translates, as I breathe in the umami aroma of fermenting soybeans.
A year on from the earthquake, the famed north-coast lacquerware town of Wajima remains a confronting scene. Once a key tourism draw, its colorful morning market—one of 200 structures engulfed by an earthquake-triggered fire—has been bulldozed.
Dozens of collapsed homes and businesses still await removal, while rows of temporary housing cabins line up neatly along the foreshore. But while it’s difficult to ignore the carnage, we’re not here for dark tourism.
Our visit to the largely unscathed Wajima Museum of Urushi Art with its magnificent lacquerware exhibits, topped off by a fine-dining extravaganza served up by another determined chef, Yusuke Inoue, at his downtown Wajima restaurant, feels more like hope tourism to me. Indeed, locals tell us the trickle of tourists returning to the peninsula is helping them to move on.
Among them is Masao Yoshimura, who manages a deep seawater desalination plant, salt factory and live seafood storage facility in the east-coast peninsula town of Ogi, which played a critical role in supplying water to the region after the Noto quake cut off the municipal supply. The disaster has taken an emotional toll on his family, he says, but talking about it with us is therapeutic for him.
On the shores of neighboring Tsukumo Bay, municipal official Takamistu Haiya proudly introduces us to ‘Squid King’, a 43-foot-long (15-meter) squid statue—controversially built with COVID-19 funds—to promote the region’s squid-fishing heritage that has become a symbol of recovery after surviving both the earthquake and tsunami. As an Australian, an appreciation for ‘big things’ is baked into my DNA—but I discover plenty of other reasons to visit this area of the peninsula, a 4,000-year-old settlement and peaceful bayside walking trail fringed by rockpools among them.
“We can’t rebuild by ourselves; we need tourists to come,” says Takamistu, wearing his trademark plush squid hat, of which he has four on rotation.
After busy days exploring the peninsula, the warm, velvety waters of an onsen (hot spring)—a tradition Japan is lobbying UNESCO to inscribe on its intangible cultural heritage list—is a welcome luxury. At the elegant Hyakurakusou ryokan (traditional inn) perched on a rocky Tsukumo Bay headland, which lost its waterside restaurant (and nearly a few guests) to the tsunami, a unique ‘cave onsen’ overlooks the serene teal waters of the bay.
Sinking into a steaming alfresco pool, I admire the snow-capped Japanese Alps rising up across the bay. If this is what sustainable earthquake recovery tourism looks like, bring it on.
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The writer was a guest of Walk Japan.
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Sarah Reid is an award-winning travel writer, editor and author with a passion for positive-impact adventures and exploring underrated destinations. Her book credits include The Sustainable Travel Handbook, published by Lonely Planet.
