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KASHIWAZAKI, Niigata Pref. (Kyodo) Hotels and inns in Kashiwazaki, the Niigata Prefecture city hardest hit by a magnitude-6.8 earthquake on July 16, have suffered roughly 30,000 cancellations for room reservations, city officials said Friday.

While operators of about half of the 110 lodging facilities had to tell reserved guests that the facilities were rendered unusable because of damage from the temblor, many tourists canceled reservations citing safety concerns at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant of Tokyo Electric Power Co., the officials said.

The local tourism office said it wants to get the word out that the area is safe, possibly running newspaper adds.

Kashiwazaki, on the Sea of Japan coast, has a number of beach resorts that are normally crowded with summer tourists.

According to the tourism office, sales at beach houses equipped with lodging facilities in the city are about 10 percent of those in a normal year. Even though there was no damage to the facilities from the quake, they suffered massive cancellations, with roughly 80 percent of the tourists citing concerns over a radiation leak.

The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant — the world's largest in terms of capacity — suffered a series of problems from the quake, including minor radiation leaks that local officials have said pose no health hazards.

Currently, only about half of the city's 110 lodging facilities are accepting guests. In addition to the damage to their buildings, cooking and heating gas is in short supply nearly three weeks after the quake, with supply fully restored to only 28 percent of the city's area.

The Japan Times: Saturday, Aug. 4, 2007