Wajima: Noto Airport in Wajima in the central Japan prefecture of Ishikawa resumed accepting commercial flights Saturday, nearly a month after the region was hit by the 7.6-magnitude earthquake on New Year’s Day.

All Nippon Airways plans to operate three round-trip flights a week between Tokyo’s Haneda Airport and Noto Airport until the end of February.

On Saturday morning, an ANA flight from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport arrived at Noto Airport, which had suffered cracks in its runway due to the quake.

Kumiko Sugita, 69, from Sukagawa in the northeastern Japan prefecture of Fukushima took the flight, worrying about her younger brother and his wife, who live in the Ishikawa town of Noto.

“I had been waiting for the airport to reopen soon,” she said.

Eiko Hara, 84, from the Ishikawa town of Anamizu, has decided to stay at her eldest daughter’s home in Hachioji in Tokyo. “I was even more scared because I was living alone. From today, I can finally sleep in peace.”

Hisashi Yagi, an 82-year-old owner of a bookstore in the Ishikawa city of Suzu, has decided to move to a secondary evacuation facility in Chiba Prefecture, east of Tokyo, with his wife and their eldest sun.

“I have no intention of leaving my hometown” for good, he said. “I want to somehow reopen my bookstore while making Chiba my second hometown.”

Noto Airport started accepting rescue helicopters the day after the Noto Peninsula earthquake. It was reopened to Self-Defense Forces planes more than 10 days after the temblor, following repair work. Preparations necessary for the airport to accept commercial flights were completed Thursday.

Before the disaster, ANA operated two round-trip flights a day between Haneda and Noto airports. The flight schedule from March has yet to be decided.

JIJI Press