Having drawn a legion of new fans to the sport of curling, the Japan national women's team has been using its popularity to empower the seaside town of Tokoro, on the shores of Hokkaido's Lake Saroma.
Since the team won bronze at the Pyeongchang Olympics in 2018, the country's first Olympic curling medal, Tokoro, with a population of 3,400, was thrown into the national spotlight as the home to the Olympic heroes.
Three members of the team's four-person lineup, sisters Chinami and Yurika Yoshida, and Yumi Suzuki, were born and raised in Tokoro, a town that faces the Sea of Okhotsk and Lake Saroma and is located deep in the wilderness.