That's why Cosmos opens in the late afternoon - for them. The main train line was recently rebuilt to connect with major cities like Sendai, about 60 miles to the north, and Tokyo, about 150 miles south.īut there isn't much entertainment for the 1,000 or so people who have come back to live here, many of whom are elderly. There are several ramen shops open for lunch and a few new hotels. Since 2017, Namie has seen progress and new businesses have sprung up. It's one of the few places to get food in town. In the kitchen in the back, a small staff prepared mostly Korean food, with no set menu - plates of kimchi and rice cakes started flowing as soon as customers sat down. Minza Lee dishes up bowls of kimchi to serve to customers.
She pointed to the glitter, the decorations, the ceilings - as if wanting to show evidence that she accomplished what she had set out to do.Īt Cosmos Karaoke, tambourines sit on a stool ready for use during group singalongs.
"So I decided that I had to bring the light, the brightness, the energy." Everything was rotting and falling apart," Lee said in March. "When I first came here, it was so depressing. The ceiling is painted like a bright blue sky with fluffy white clouds. The room is filled with glittery blue velvet booths topped with big floral pillows. She hung big, long posters on the walls showing pink and purple cosmos flowers, which appear to be dancing to the near-constant music. So she moved to Namie for good and opened this bar named after the town flower - one of the most popular blooms in Japan, known as the fall cherry blossom. "They said, 'You're going to live in a nuclear town? You're crazy!' But the more they pushed back, the more I said, 'Yes, I absolutely will.' "
"Everyone was against it," she remembered. Minza Lee, 63, opened Cosmos Karaoke to bring "the light, the brightness, the energy," to the town, she says.
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