By far the most common sign along this road twisting up the Iya River in Shikoku's remote Oboke Gorge, a spectacular chasm that is the deepest in Japan, is "under construction."
Cartoon animals smile from the many warnings about roadwork and slope reinforcement as cement trucks thunder by. Down the valley, cranes swivel over a massive unfinished concrete public square close to a traditional vine bridge that draws busloads of visitors.
But the package tourists see little of the harsh reality of the community. Despite the plethora of public works projects, prolonged unemployment and migration by the locals have left the mountainsides littered with empty houses.
The economic woes of rural Japan are particularly poignant in the Iya Valley, one of the country's three "hidden" mountain areas. The farming settlements founded by refugees from the Heike clan after its defeat by the Genji clan in 12th-century civil wars lasted for generations, but they are now threatened with extinction.