Japan: land of the rising tourist numbers?

The Asahi beer is ice-cold. Naoki Doi takes sips from it between bites of curry. The bespectacled tour guide has asked me and my family to eat fast: he's taking us around some of Kyoto's outstanding shrines and temples, and there's a lot of them to see.

He is, he says, relieved to have some business again. In March this year, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck off the Coast of East Japan, sending a devastating tsunami towards the shore. The tsunami wiped out entire towns across the country's Pacific Coast, and caused a meltdown at the Fukushima Daichi nuclear plant.

But while Japan has rebuilt large parts of the damaged areas, tourism in the country took a huge hit. Kyoto may be 500 miles south of Fukushima Prefecture, but it still felt the impact. "I had 40 or 50 bookings for May onwards, all from foreigners," says Doi. "They all cancelled. Every one. Every reservation. I had some locals coming for tours, but nobody else …My income fell to about 30% of the usual. I got some money from the bank, a temporary emergency loan."

Kyoto is a city known both for its temples and for its traditional ryokan inns with tatami-matted floors, futons and paper screen walls. The night before, we'd stayed at the Tamahan Ryokan, which bills itself as a completely traditional inn (despite having super-fast Wi-Fi in the rooms).

Source: Guardian.co.uk