Bakery Hopes Tourists Go Crackers For Deer
Tourist businesses in Japan are getting ready for a new wave of visitors with the easing of COVID-19 border controls.
A bakery in the ancient capital of Nara has ramped up its production of crackers that visitors can feed to deer in a park. It's a popular tourist attraction.
The deer crackers are made of rice bran and wheat.
The maker has been selling them for more than 100 years. But sales have suffered since the start of the pandemic.
Owner Takeda Yutaka says he looks forward to welcoming "as many people as possible" to Nara, and hopes they buy plenty of deer crackers.
He says there were times the bakery made only about 1,000 crackers per day. That's roughly one-tenth the number before the pandemic.
But a domestic travel promotion campaign has helped restore daily output for this autumn to about 10,000.