“He drives a minivan to take workers to the plant,” she said, gesturing toward a man sitting at the counter. Pointing to another man sipping a beer, she added, “And he works in construction, so they’ve been busy too.”

“We’re all for nuclear power, and you can print that,” Ozaki said.

In the mostly residential neighborhood around her restaurant, hotel rooms and local inns were also packed with workers preparing to reopen Shikoku Electric Power’s Ikata nuclear plant, nestled next to Japan’s inland sea at the base of the verdant Sadamisaki peninsula. Nearly eight years after an earthquake and tsunami triggered nuclear meltdowns at Tokyo Electric Power’s Fukushima Daiichi plant, the battered industry is making a quiet and somewhat unexpected return in Japan.

That is a far cry from the 54 running before 2011 - all of which were idled after the Fukushima disaster - but more than analysts and experts expected, considering it seemed at the time like the end of the road for the country’s nuclear industry.

A Reuters analysis calculates that as few as six more reactors are likely to restart within the next five years, eight will mostly likely be mothballed and that the prospects for two dozen others is uncertain.