Japan’s disaster plans fail to keep pace with tourist boom

When the ground shook off Iwate prefecture at 9pm on Wednesday, the magnitude 6.0 jolt – the latest in a series of sizeable tremors – barely registered in a country still mopping up after two powerful typhoons and bracing for a fresh bout of torrential rain and landslides. Natural disasters have long been a fact of life in Japan, where schoolchildren rehearse earthquake evacuations the way other n