Delicious food, beautiful landscapes and hot springs are some of the highlights for visitors to Tohoku, a region still recovering from the disasters of 2011.
Tohoku's attractions have drawn people from across Japan but so far have largely failed to lure foreign tourists, even though other parts of the country are enjoying an unprecedented tourism boom.
With the Upper House election set for July 10, expanding inbound tourism is something Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Liberal Democratic Party can claim to have accomplished.