A photo that was shared on Twitter purporting to be of Nyasirimbi village in Nyamira County is false. The photo was shared by a Twitter user on Tuesday, August 31, 2021 at around 9.31AM. It was retweeted and shared many times from his timeline.
A reverse image search on Google reveals that the photo is, actually, of the ancient village of Shirakawa-go located in the Shogawa River Basin of Gifu Prefecture in Japan.
According to an article published by Trip101, the Historic Villages of Shirakawa-go (and Gokayama) are the scene for the popular anime Higurashi no Naku Goro ni (English: “When They Cry”), and the location has also been classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Trip101 reports that Shirakawa-go is a village of only 2,000 people, but since becoming a World Heritage Site, the number of tourists has increased rapidly. According to the Shirakawa-go town hall, in 2013, 1,230,000 people visited, and 70,000 people stayed overnight.
“Located in a mountainous region that was cut off from the rest of the world for a long period of time, these villages with their Gassho-style houses subsisted on the cultivation of mulberry trees and the rearing of silkworms,” UNESCO says on its website.
On the other hand, little is known of the existence of the so-called Nyasirimbi village in Nyamira County. A search of the name does not show up any place in Nyamira, only landing on tweets on the false photo and general results on Nyamira County.
VERDICT: This photo and caption are misleading as a fact-check reveals the area captured is not Nyasirimbi village in Nyamira County but the ancient village of Shirakawa-go in Japan.
[This story was produced by Business Today in partnership with Code for Africa’s iLAB data journalism programme, with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie ]
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