A small seaside town in Japan has used funding from a Covid-19 relief grant to build a giant squid statue.
It is a 13m long statue that is located in the port of Noto, it is a place where flying squid is a town’s delicacy.
25m yen, which equates to around $228,500; £164,700, of the relief funding has been used to build the giant squid statue.
Noto officials have explained that this is a long term investment to lure tourists back to the destination after the global pandemic.
Currently, Japan has taken a dip for the worst with another surge of coronavirus cases. Tokyo is under a state of emergency – a third of the whole country since the pandemic started.
Noto is a fishing town in Ishikawa on Japan’s central-west-coast. The area overall has had a low number of cases, but has noticed that the amount of tourism has significantly dropped.
Noto received a large grant, which was given as an emergency economic boost to support regional areas. The total amount of national grant was 800m yen, which is $7.3m;£5.3m.
Thoughts on the Covid grant being spent on a giant squid statue?
When the fund was given to all local regional areas, it wasn’t compulsory to be spend directly on Covid relief. However, even though this was the case Noto have been criticised on spending a large sum of the grant on a giant squid statue. This has had a negative view especially as the pandemic isn’t over yet.
One local told that while the statue may be effective in the long run, the money could have been put towards more necessary items like medical equipment and long term care facilities.
However, a spokesperson for the town told Fuji News Network that the statue would be a tourist attraction and part of a long term strategy to help build tourism for Noto and the famous flying squid
Similarly to other countries, the coronavirus pandemic has badly hit Japan’s tourism industry. The country is hosting the Olympics this year, but there are not going to be any international fans allowed at the event. This has been estimated to be a loss of 200bn yen ($1.8bn; £1.3bn), according to Takahide Kiuchi, an executive economist at Nomura Research Institute.
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