Independent: The Japanese town hit by 'Typhoon Girl'
What strikes you most about the centre of Obuse is what's missing. There are no bland concrete box buildings, no criss-cross of overhead electric wires, no harsh neon lights. Instead, the view from my lunch table is a perfect balance of ancient pine trees and earthen roof tiles. Walkways made of chocolate-brown chestnut wood wind between the mottled buildings, and along them people stroll in the snow, holding brightly coloured paper umbrellas high to protect them from the falling flakes. It's a vision most hope to find when they visit Japan. But decades of earthquakes, bombs and a relentless push for progress have seen many beautiful landscapes lost, torn down and replaced by the new and the bland. Now one small company is fighting back. The 250-year-old Masuichi sake brewery has revived a landscape many thought was lost for ever and the woman leading the charge isn't a lifelong local. She's a blonde American who saw a culture worth saving and got to work. Since joining the brewery in 1994, Sarah Marie Cummings has become a legendary figure. Nicknamed "Typhoon Girl", her whirlwind of activities includes founding town beautification committees, saving ancient buildings from the bulldozers and reviving craft skills that threatened to die out...more...
More Cummings here and here. Details of the new guest house Kyakuden here.
