About 50 women who manage inns in Niigata Prefecture traveled to Tokyo on Thursday to seek support for their businesses, which have been bludgeoned by the deadly quakes that hit the region in October.
The innkeepers visited the headquarters of East Japan Railway Co. in Shinjuku, lobbying for the full resumption of operations on the Joetsu Shinkansen Line as quickly as possible.
The bullet train service linking Tokyo and Niigata was halted after a train derailed near Nagaoka Station due to the Oct. 23 quakes, which hit the Chuetsu region of Niigata Prefecture.
Weeks after the quake, the shinkansen service linking Nagaoka and Echigo Yuzawa stations remains suspended.
JR East told the group it will strive to fully restart of the service.
According to the inn association to which the women belong, 314,000 people canceled reservations for rooms and dinner parties at hotels and inns at hot springs and other resorts in the prefecture between Oct. 23 and Nov. 9.
This means these establishments lost 70 percent to 80 percent of the reservations that had been made before the quake. The inns have since received few new room or dinner reservations, according to the association.
The figures do not include hotels and inns in municipalities including Nagaoka and Ojiya, where many buildings were destroyed or severely damaged by the quakes.
"There are false rumors that all areas of Niigata Prefecture are dangerous (due to the quakes), and that appears to be behind many of the cancellations," said Harumi Kaneko, secretary general of the association.
The association members also visited the Land, Infrastructure and Transport Ministry and other government bodies to solicit support for their businesses.
