Suzu: A Turkish restaurant owner in Japan is serving kebab to people affected by the Noto Peninsula earthquake on Jan. 1, as a way to express gratitude for Japanese support to his home country following a massive quake last February.

Selcuk Eryilmaz, 44, traveled to the peninsula in Ishikawa Prefecture, central Japan, with his food truck from the western prefecture of Osaka to serve food to victims of the New Year’s Day quake.

Eryilmaz, who is from Cappadocia in central Turkey, runs a restaurant in the city of Daito in Osaka. He came to Japan after marrying a Japanese woman, and opened the restaurant in 2010.

He said that his family and relatives survived the February 2023 earthquake in Turkey, but a friend and a child of an acquaintance lost their lives. He received words of support from many regular customers and collected more than 600,000 yen in donations.

Eryilmaz had been thinking that he wanted to return the favor when the Noto Peninsula earthquake struck. He applied to provide support soon after the quake, and loaded his food truck with kebab ingredients such as chicken to head to the city of Suzu in Ishikawa on Monday evening.

At noon Tuesday, Eryilmaz was at Horyu elementary and junior high school, which had been turned into an evacuation center. Victims came in droves for his kebab sandwiches.

“It’s good,” Yu Nishihana, 29, who enjoyed Eryilmaz’s kebab after spending two weeks at the evacuation center, said. “Right now, food is the only thing I look forward to.”

The situation is more serious than expected, Eryilmaz said, adding that he wants to come again so that people can smile as much as possible.

Foreigners living in Japan are providing food to quake victims at other evacuation centers as well. Mazen Salim, 49, head of the Toyama Muslim Center, who is from Syria, has offered vegetable curry at five locations including in Suzu and the town of Noto in Ishikawa since Jan. 5. The Toyama Muslim Center is located in Toyama Prefecture, which neighbors Ishikawa.

Salim said that he also took part in disaster relief following the 2018 earthquake in Hokkaido, northernmost Japan, and the 2020 torrential rains in Kumamoto Prefecture, southwestern Japan. He said that he wants to continue providing food until victims can return to their homes, noting that blankets only need to be distributed once but warm food is necessary every day.

JIJI Press