It's now been several years since the Fukushima disaster took place and residents have already started moving back to the area. But communities in the region are still struggling to survive and they're struggling to entice tourists to take a chance on traveling back to the region.

One village in the area is looking toward habanero ice cream to help.

The farming village of Hirata that's located in northeastern Japan, about 45 kilometers southwest of the Fukushima Daiichi plant, had seen demand for its produce drastically decline after the tsunami disaste. But they're now turning to locally grown hot peppers to make some habanero soft-serve ice cream to try and bring life back to the area and restore the reputation. Habanero is usually too spicy for Japanese consumers, until they came up with the idea to make ice cream with it.

And for any consumer who can put up with the "hellish spicy" level of spice, they reportedly get their ice cream for free. Now, word about the new ice cream has spread around social media and tourists are traveling to the region from other parts of the country to try it out.

The ice cream has already been tried by hundreds of people and customers are able to customize the spiciness depending on how much chili powder is sprinkled onto the ice cream. The number of farmers in the region now cultivating peppers for the endeavor has grown to at least 12 from the 3 that started out.

The 'spiciest village in Japan'...

Now promoting itself as the spiciest village, they're hoping that the habaneros are going to help entice more people to visit the region and buy not only the ice cream but other vegetables being grown there as well.

Pics:
pic 1 – Kyodo via bankokpost
pic 2 - pixabay

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