Businesses in quake-hit Japanese city tap well water to reopen

A beauty salon and a supermarket are among several businesses in a city in central Japan rocked by the New Year’s Day earthquake turning to well water to resume operations.

Such businesses are helping to restore a sense of normalcy to residents affected by the quake, many of whom are still relying on emergency water supplies at gymnasiums and elementary schools due to water outages that persist in the city of Nanao in Ishikawa Prefecture.

The Real Hair Cutting You beauty salon started to offer free shampoo services to evacuees on Jan. 4, three days after the 7.6 magnitude tremblor, because its building did not suffer any major damage and its staff were unharmed by the disaster.